Categorizing an individual from a social perception helps to differentiate between groups easily (rather than thinking of an individual’s unique qualities), whether an individual is in their in-group or if others are in out-groups. Being in an in-group gives an individual a sense of social belonging. However this gives them a different perspective of how they belong to society, which is ‘outgroup homogeneity effect’. This emphasises the assumption that they have a great similarity among outgroup members, rather than ingroup members. Tajfel’s research on ‘overestimators and underestimators’ provided results how social categorization affects group behaviours. Participants were divided into ‘overestimators’ and ‘underestimators’ groups at random, after being presented of fast rapid dots slides (to avoid being counted), and tasks were to allocate points to members in the same group to be cashed in for money. Studies were shown of ingroup favourtism, as participants allocated points only to their own group, rather than the other group, and shown consistency of discriminating the outgroup members. This was a fairly played study, as participants didn’t have any long-term rivalry, nor competed for limited resource nor was known to each other nor have similarities to each other, so results obtained did not have any situational factors problems, however this shows by categorizing the participants, its gives them a great deal of social belonging and social identity as ingroup members. By giving participants ‘labels’ or ‘names’, they have a sense of belonging to the group, and soon retains the ideas of what kind of traits their groups has, their strengths and weaknesses to form their traits of what they believe in to be their stereotype group.
This lead to social comparison where the advantages of belonging in an ingroup against the outgroup can deeply influence our self-esteem. After a winning football match, college supporters tended to wear their own college logo clothings, unlike after a defeated match. Cialdini et al (1976) showed that positive self- concept is needed, as this resulted in a positive bias group comparisons, where participants where founded to have a more positive attitude towards their own group representation. According to Tajfel (1978), this was the “establishment of positive distinctiveness”, where the ingroup’s behaviours were similar of a positive attitude. From winning successes, this can attribute to ingroup members of their strong similar personality and actions traits, which ‘defines’ them of who they are as a group (group idenities) & of what kind of traits that an individual can believe in easily to categorize them of what kind of stereotype group they are.
Further researches show illusionary correlation, where false assumptions are made between membership of a social group and specific behaviours. This phenomenon causes people to overestimate the link between two variables, such as “women” and “the ability to do well in academic studies”, where it’s believed that “women can’t do well in difficult academic studies”. Forms of illusionary correlation can come in culturally based prejudice about social groups, where different ethics verses intelligence. This can be a ‘cognitive bias’, as attribution errors made by person’s tendency are often examples of it.
Conformation Bias is developed after illusionary correlations were made, where often people tend to oversee the information that they believe in already. When observing in a social manner, their attention’s spam is towards the behaviours they see of different individuals and ignore the beliefs of the particular traits of that stereotype group. Evidence from the Snyder and Swann (1978)’s research of female college students meeting either an introverted person (cool, quiet and reserved) or an extrovert person (warm, outgoing and easily sociable). Females were asked to prepare lists of questions for meeting person, and participants formed different perceptions of introverts and extroverts persons, for example, “what do you dislike about parties?” or “What do you do to liven up parties?”. This concluded from the research of participant’s stereotypes’ personality types.
This fairly links to the fact of why people recall stereotypes facts that support their stereotyping easily (selective remembering). The recalling of critical facts that are favourable to the individual (Howard and Rothbart 1980) explains the theory of why prejudices tend to remain constant over time, and this shows of why individuals believe in particular traits (beliefs and a cognitive process) of a stereotype group. This can emphasis of certain behaviours shown from each stereotype group, as individuals in in-group has beliefs of what they should become, and what their self-image should be. This acts as guidelines for them, as well as they use this to boost self-esteem to reach certain personal (or group) achievements, as by believing that by being in that group they can reach their goals.
However stereotypes can also affect our behaviours, and not only our perception and memory. Self- fulfilling prophecy states that the reactions of others, influences and soon becomes a part of our self-concept, and therefore we define what is our actual behaviour like (this can link to social-identity theory).
When subjects were given applicant’s descriptions (from law school applications), one group (group A) was informed that one impressive applicant was black, where the other group (group B) was informed that an impressive applicant was white. Results showed that participant’s in group A judged the black applicant much more positively than compared to the white, where the black applicant seemed to be more impressive and exceptional. When told the opposite, that is, a poor black applicant, subjects was more likely to be negative, and judged in a much more negative manner and unimpressive. Another similar study is with female applicants judged by men. Results from this study (Linville and Jones 1980) emphasises people’s expectations and their capability of imaging behaviour and traits, when told a certain ‘belief’. This is linked to social categorization, where the individual believes in traits being told from friends, or simply by observing and learning from medias, and therefore categorizing themselves easily, thinking they are ‘fitted’ into this particular group by matching with these certain traits. This is perhaps of how ethic stereotyping is worked by the individual as well, leading to racial (and sexual) discrimination acts.
In conclusion stereotypes are formed by social categorization, leading to social identity theory, whereas their effects of behaviours are affected by believing certain traits (illusionary correlation) and self- fulfilling shows us how we can percept traits to influence our behaviour.
