Podcast recording

The psychology of stereotypes and prejudices is discussed in this transcription. Human brains tend to seek out the easiest way to satisfy their goals, leading to the formation of person schemas and perceptual biases. Person schemas group individuals based on similarities, ignoring differences. Perceptual biases are based on perceived group membership rather than actual identity. These biases can lead to unfair treatment and discrimination. Unconscious biases affect decision-making in professions like judging and hiring. Studies have shown biases towards white males over black males. Video games perpetuate racial stereotypes, influencing younger generations. Stereotypes and prejudices have significant consequences in various aspects of life. Awareness and education can help combat these biases. Society should prioritize learning and challenge assumptions. If you ever wonder why people are so judgmental, perhaps even as far as to say biased, well it may be closer to home than you think. Today we're going to be talking about the psychology of stereotypes and prejudices. It turns out human brains tend to seek out the easiest possible way to satisfy their goals. Cognitively, we want to do the least amount of work. This is how things like person schemas and perceptual biases come about. Person schemas are a grouping our brain has made based upon similarities between individuals in a group while ignoring their differences. This helps make mental processes be quicker and more efficient. It would take significantly longer and require more effort to meet every new person and then construct an idea of them in your mind. People make assumptions that group qualities apply to every individual group member, when in reality group members are not as similar as we assume and members of separate groups are not as dissimilar as we assume. Perceptual bias is the idea that people are malleably defined and one's actual group membership is not known but whatever we perceive them to be is what we assume they are. Furthermore, their actual group membership doesn't really matter compared to what we assume they are. These tend to be things like one's race, ethnicity, gender, and age because these can be seen from a distance and therefore they don't require much brain power for us to perceive and assume. We also tend to think that our own group is better than those around us simply because we belong to said group. I'm sure we can all think of a time when based on our general perception of someone we assumed we knew their qualities. Even if they were seemingly harmless in the moment, like we saw someone who looks more feminine, we would most likely assume that they were female. Or we saw someone with darker skin than our own skin tone and assumed they belonged to a different group than we do. Now although this is a natural process, it does not mean that it is a positive thing that we do. It can have detrimental consequences. We use these stereotypes when they have no root in fact to justify prejudices which then motivate discrimination. On a larger scale, people like judges, hiring managers, and other professionals may have these unconscious biases and cognitive processes that influence their decision making. A judge may see a person of color and the simplest cognitive process for them is to adhere to the stereotypes they've seen, which then negatively influences their decision. This is a serious example. It could be the difference between innocence and unjust imprisonment. This is not a hypothetical situation, considering these things happen in the real world more often than we would like to believe. There have been many studies that have showed employers having biases towards white male candidates over their black male counterparts, even when all other portions of their qualifications were the same. It was even stated in the study that a black male with no criminal history was seen as equivalent to a hiring manager as a white male who had just gotten out of prison. These are just a few examples of minority groups receiving bias treatment based solely on the minority group one assumes they belong to. Learning about these sometimes unconscious processes can help us be better people. This is not to say everyone is a bad person, but that we have some work to do to combat some of these processes so that they don't grow into larger feelings, beliefs, and behaviors. Most people are not aware of how many stereotypes they feed into. We tend to think that we are better people than we really are. We also tend to think that we are extremely different compared to other groups, when in reality we all are much more similar. And our group membership does not automatically indicate our attributes or qualities. The same goes for other people based on their group membership. I came across a study that explored how video games and video game related content perpetuate minority stereotypes. This is interesting because in the last few decades video games have only become more and more popular, especially amongst younger communities. These younger communities go forward to shape our future and they are being influenced by the content that they are consuming. I personally enjoy video games since I was able to play them and to this day it is one of my favorite pastimes. Anyone who has played a mainstream game before has probably seen the sexualization of female characters. This is something I have seen frequently talked about, but I have not seen the same attention given to racial stereotypes. This study focuses on racial stereotypes depicted in video games and video game content. You may be thinking that video games don't even include real people, but due to the failure of reality monitoring, studies have shown that people treat their imaginations like they are real life images, then using these imaginary things as support for the stereotypes they already uphold. In the video game content that this study used, all the black males were depicted as either being violent, athletic, or both. Furthermore, the study found that a significant percentage of the white males depicted fighting were fighting in a socially sanctioned setting like the military, whereas the black males were depicted simply fighting each other or fighting someone. The video game related content was also found to perpetuate the model group stereotype of Asian people where it was being like a really good student, something like that. Now you may be wondering why all of this is relevant. People tend to be influenced even if the information is false or fictional. This can lead to people thinking they have confirmation of these stereotypes when in reality, these are not real experiences that they had with a person of this group. It's false information that they have collected from something in their environment, like the video game content. This could then translate in some cases to discriminatory behaviors. In other portions of the study, they had a group of college level psychology students who were to video games of some nonviolent and some violent video games. The study found that even when the students explicitly denied subscribing to certain biases, the results showed that implicitly they held biases that influenced their actions. These stereotypes and prejudices can have tremendous consequences throughout every aspect of our lives, including social, economic, political, and even more. On the surface, these cognitive processes may seem heartless, but they impact the quality of life for many groups of people, especially people who are part of minority groups. Now this has been a lot of doom and gloom, however, it is not hopeless. We talked about before that being aware of these processes is the first step in not letting these unrealistic stereotypes influence our feelings and behaviors. The field of psychology is studying these life-changing topics every day. We are learning more and more about how our brain and its cognitive processes influence our actions, and how these actions impact our social interactions. As a society, we talk more about these things and prioritize learning rather than feeling ashamed of the biases we may not even know we hold. That may look like taking a second to think about whether we are jumping to conclusions about someone based on what group we are assuming that they belong to, even though they may not belong to that group at all. Or, stepping back and looking at our own group and if what we think we know about our group is simply exaggerated. In this age of the internet, we should be taking advantage of all this information and the knowledge at our fingertips, so that we don't make unrealistic assumptions based on false information that we've been given. Because they not only affect how we see the world, but how we treat other people, and how other people treat us.