Chapter 9: Prejudice: Disliking Others (2947.0K) - Bad Request

Recognition accuracy
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.0
Black
Race of photos
White subjects
Black subjects
White
(Sporer & others, 2007). Even infants as young as 9 months display better own-race
recognition of faces (Kelly & others, 2005, 2007).
It’s true outside the laboratory as well, as Daniel Wright and his colleagues
(2001) found after either a Black or a White researcher approached Black and White
people in South African and English shopping malls. When later asked to identify
the researcher from lineups, people better recognized those of their own race.
It’s not that we cannot perceive differences among faces of another group. Rather,
when looking at a face from another racial group we often attend, first, to group
(“that man is Black”) rather than to individual features. When viewing someone
of our own group, we are less attentive to the race category and more attentive to
individual details (Bernstein & others, 2007; Hugenberg & others, 2010; Shriver &
others, 2008; Young & others, 2010).
Our attending to someone’s being in a different social category may also be contributing
to a parallel own-age bias —the tendency for both children and older adults
to more accurately identify faces from their own age groups (Anastasi & Rhodes,
2005, 2006; Wright & Stroud, 2002; He & others, 2011). (Perhaps you have noticed
that senior citizens look more alike than do your fellow students?)
Distinctiveness: Perceiving People
Who Stand Out
Other ways we perceive our worlds also breed stereotypes. Distinctive people and
vivid or extreme occurrences often capture attention and distort judgments.
DISTINCTIVE PEOPLE
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you were the only person of
your gender, race, or nationality? If so, your difference from the others probably
made you more noticeable and the object of more attention. A Black in an otherwise
White group, a man in an otherwise female group, or a woman in an otherwise
male group seems more prominent and influential and to have exaggerated good
and bad qualities (Crocker & McGraw, 1984; S. E. Taylor & others, 1979). When
someone in a group is made conspicuous, we tend to see that person as causing
whatever happens (Taylor & Fiske, 1978). If we are positioned to look at Joe, even
if Joe is merely an average group member, Joe will seem to have a greater- thanaverage
influence on the group.
Have you noticed that people also define you by your most distinctive traits
and behaviors? Tell people about someone who is a skydiver and a tennis player,
report Lori Nelson and Dale Miller (1995), and they will think of the person as a
skydiver. Asked to choose a gift book for the person, they will pick a skydiving
Prejudice Chapter 9 335
FIGURE :: 9.7
The Own-Race Bias
White subjects more accurately
recognize the faces of Whites
than of Blacks; Black subjects
more accurately recognize the
faces of Blacks than of Whites.
Source: From P. G. Devine & R. S.
Malpass, 1985.