This study expands upon the study of racial stereotyping through looking at the realm of professional sports. An athlete’s race, the sport an athlete plays, and the crime the athlete commits were all investigated to determine whether racial stereotyping plays a role in verdict and sentencing decisions. Participants were exposed to one of eight vignettes in a 2 (Race: White or Black) X 2 (Sport played: professional football or professional soccer) X 2 (Crime: sexual assault or performance enhancing drug use) design. The dependent variables measured are classified as “seriousness, guilt, and responsibility” and “sentencing.” Results from this study show that racial stereotyping does still play a role in terms of sentencing. While most of the hypotheses are partially supported, there is no full support of any one hypothesis. Data was expected to support the hypotheses that black athletes will be more harshly punished than white athletes. Results showed that there was a significant 3-way interaction on the variable “seriousness of crime” (p < .05; F(1, 151) = 5.20). The independent variable of crime type had a significant main effect on all of the variables excluding monetary fine and the sport violence variables (p < .05 for all). However, the direction of this effect differed per dependent variable. Race of the athlete only had a main effect on the variable of monetary fine (p < .05) in the direction of white athletes. No pattern was found in the results suggesting that perhaps participants may have responded opposite to racial biases.

Thesis (M. S.)--Montana State University--Bozeman, 2005. / Typescript. Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Michael Babcock. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 39-43).

Thesis (M.S.)--Montana State University--Bozeman, 2006. / Typescript. Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Richard A. Cook. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [22]-[24]).

The present investigation studied the effect of the sex typed labelling of tasks on children's performance. The children were selected from the 1st, 3rd and 6th forms. To investigate whether the sex appropriate labelling of the task had a direct influence on performance, the same measure of performance - a perceptual motor task - was used across all conditions. The task was labelled either as Needlework (female appropriate) or Electronics (male appropriate). Two main dimensions were investigated. Firstly, the effect of direct labelling of a task as sex appropriate or inappropriate. Secondly, the effect of the instruction to role enact a person competent at the task. In the second study, the role enactment procedure required the children to enact a same age peer whose sex was congruent with the sex typing.of the task. Results of both studies indicated that children perform better at tasks labelled as sex appropriate compared to sex inappropriate. Under the role enactment conditions in both studies, children performed at a higher level than under conventional testing procedures. However, whilst in the role enactment procedure there was no difference in the performance of girls between sex appropriate and sex inappropriate labelled tasks, boys perform better at sex appropriate tasks in both studies. Two measures of sex role stereotyping were used in the investigation. The Rosenkrantz, et al (1968) sex role questionnaire established that the sex role stereotyping of the sixth form sample was similar to a British adult sample. A measure of sex role stereotyping (S. Measure), was developed on a comparable sample of children to the sample selected in the present study. Although the direct relationship between sex role stereotyping and task performance was not established, results suggested the more rigid sex role stereotyping of boys. The third study examined further the effects of sex role enactment on children's performance at tasks. Children were selected from the 3rd and 6th forms. Two tasks were employed, differing on the dimensions of convergence-divergence and sex typing. The tasks were a mechanical reasoning test (D.A.T., 1973) and the Uses of Objects test (Hudson, 1968). Results indicated that under the conventional administrative procedures, boys scored better than girls on the mechanical reasoning test, whereas girls scored better than boys on the Uses of Objects Test. However, the effect of opposite sex role enactment differ- , ed for the 3rd and 6th formers. At the 3rd form level, boys , and girls scores reflected differences in performance according to sex typed dimensions. However, at the sixth form level, girls exhibited a slight but non-significant increase in mechanical reasoning scores and decrease in Uses of Objects scores, while boys'scores significantly decreased on both tasks. The results are interpreted in terms of the increased salience of sex-appropriateness of tasks at adolescence. Further, the results of the measure of sex role stereotyping, B.S.R.I (Bern, 1974) from which,due to sample size,only limited conclusions may be drawn, confirm the results derived from the S Measures of sex role'stereotyping of the stricter adherence of boys to the masculine stereotype

Research on prejudice has long been skewed by participants’ ability to monitor their reactions on overt measures of such attitudes. Accordingly, researchers created an implicit measure to study prejudice (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). The Implicit Association Test (IAT) was thus developed. Though the IAT has long been purported as the only ‘true’ measure of participants’ feelings and cognitions, recent research has suggested the measure is not as infallible as once purported (e.g., Smith & Zarate, 1990). The purpose of this study was to integrate existing research on exemplars and how they affect scores on the IAT. Results showed that priming participants with racial exemplars that vary in terms of stereotypicality and valence had little effect on Race-IAT scores. Further, contrary to previous research, significant differences between African American and European American participants on the Race-IAT did emerge.

No description available.

no / In three experiments we investigated the dynamics of impression formation when perceivers encounter unsurprising (e.g. male mechanic) versus surprising (e.g. female mechanic) social category conjunctions. In Experiment 1, participants took longer to form an impression of targets described using a surprising versus an unsurprising conjunction of categorizations. In Experiment 2, we investigated the stages during which impressions of category conjunctions are formed. While unsurprising category combinations were characterized with reference to ‘constituent’ stereotypic traits, surprising combinations were characterized initially by stereotypic traits but later by ‘emergent’ impressions. In Experiment 3, we investigated motivational states that drive the dynamics of category conjunction. We found that higher Personal Need for Structure (PNS) predicted the use of more emergent and fewer constituent attributes in the impressions formed of surprising combinations. Across all three experiments, more ‘causal attributes’ were used in descriptions of the surprising combination. We discuss the implications of these findings for developing a model of the dynamics and composition of social category conjunctions.

No description available.

Harry Potter-series are widely popular fantasy-novels that have influenced young readers all over the world on various issues, one being gender. Many arguments have been proposed to explain how the Harry Potter-series has a gender-biased attitude. Although previous research has covered a wide variety of claims, this essay will focus on examining the language and word choices made to describe the male and female characters of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The word choices consist of both traditionally masculine adjectives and verbs as well as adjectives and verbs with negative connotations. To obtain a comprehensive view of the gender-biased tone of the two novels, the essay will not only examine the language, but also investigate if there is a gender-biased way of portraying the characters based on how their behaviour is described. These observations will be combined with previous research which includes Sara Mills’ investigation of sexist language and indirect sexism, Heilman and Donaldson’s critical perspective on the Harry Potter-novels, and Turner-Bowker’s study of stereotyping in young readers’ literature. These studies support my arguments and show that that there is a gender-bias in the way the characters are described, both through language and in the way that the character’s act in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Individuals tend to underestimate situational causes and overly rely on trait causes in explaining negative behaviors of outgroup members, a tendency named the ultimate attribution error (Pettigrew, 1979). This attributional pattern is directly related to stereotyping, because attributing negative behaviors to internal, stable causes tends to perpetuate negative stereotypes of outgroup members. Recent research on implicit bias reduction revealed that circumventing individuals’ tendency to engage in the ultimate attribution error led to reduced stereotyping. More specifically, training White participants to consider situational factors in determining Blacks’ negative stereotypic behaviors led to decreased automatic stereotype activation. This technique was named Situational Attribution Training (Stewart, Latu, Kawakami, & Myers, 2010). In the current studies, I investigated the mechanisms and moderators of Situational Attribution Training. In Study 1, I investigated the effect of training on spontaneous situational inferences. Findings revealed that training did not increase spontaneous situational inferences: both training and control participants showed evidence of spontaneous situational inferences. In Study 2, I investigated whether correcting trait inferences by taking into account situational factors has become automatic after training. In addition, explicit prejudice, motivations to control prejudice, and cognitive complexity variables (need for cognition, personal need for structure) were investigated as moderators of training success. These findings revealed that Situational Attribution Training works best for individuals high in need for cognition, under conditions of no cognitive load, but not high cognitive load. Training increased implicit bias for individuals high in modern racism, regardless of their cognitive load. Possible explanations of these findings were discussed, including methodological limitations and theoretical implications.