Attitudes and Stereotypes are formed based on a physical attribute or a physical truth. A couple of three components to the frame of mind, a cognitive element, this is actually the thoughts and values about the group or person, how we perceive them. An affective component, these are the emotions towards that group or specific, for example hate or anger. Lastly the behavioural part is the activities or the behavior directed at an organization or individual based on the cognitive and affective components.
An attitude or stereotype can develop from an experience that we have had before, this is named a Friendly Schema. Sociable Schemas are mental representations that may be about you, other people and specific and common interpersonal situations. We use Friendly Schemas during impression creation before we've even attained someone, they are our prospects of an organization or person.
Attitudes and Stereotypes can be created from information that people are given about a group or person, the way in which this information is offered to us can influence our sustained impression of that group or person. Whenever we use the info shown to us first as our prolonged impression it is called the Primacy Effect and when we use the information provided to us last to create our lasting impression it is called the Recency Effect. The Asch review of 1946 saw Asch try to determine whether the order that information was presented with about a person affected the impression made of that person. He wrote two lists of adjectives, one possessed the positive characteristics at the start and the second had the positive characteristics by the end of the list. Asch concluded that the people who were given the list that had the positive characteristics at the start were much more likely to truly have a positive view of the individual then your people given the second list. This shows the Primacy Effect, if we are describing someone and give the positives first we will give a positive picture of the person. Recency Result is more likely that occurs when there's a time wait between two models of information. Luchins (1957) performed a study to show this. He offered individuals two paragraphs about a man called Jim, one of the paragraphs was positive explaining Jim as extrovert and the other was negative explaining him as introvert. One group were asked to read the positive paragraph first, have a fifteen tiny break where they were to learn a magazine and then read the negative paragraph. The next group were to do the same but read the negative paragraph first, hold the rest and then browse the positive paragraph. Luchins found that if the members were distracted through the break they were more affected by the next paragraph that they read.
Within both these studies participants received descriptive words and paragraphs to spell it out someone. In an earlier analysis by Asch in 1946 he found out that we look for central features in someone's personality, the Central Attributes dominate the impression that people are forming of the person while the Peripheral Characteristics have very little affect on impression formations. This means that our impression creation can be effected by what words are being used to describe someone as well as the order that it is directed at us. He discovered that using words like 'warm' or 'cold' to spell it out someone impacted the ranking of that person, these were central features but using words like 'polite' and 'blunt' experienced no effect on the rating, they were peripheral features.
To have a prejudice is to have an extreme attitude or belief, Tajfel devised Friendly Identification Theory it claims that individuals in a natural way strived for a positive image and that people enhance our social identity by placing others into in/away categories. He devised a three component model, firstly people categorise themselves into communities to help them to raised understand their sociable environment. Secondly there is certainly Social Identification where in fact the person adopts the behaviour associated recover group and thirdly there is Friendly Comparison where the individual compares there group to others, to keep there self-esteem they need to compare well to other groups.
Tajfel (1970) carried out a study to aid his Social Id Theory, he randomly put children aged between 11 and 14 into 1 of 2 groups plus they were resulted in believe that it was on the basis of what famous designer they favoured. No one in the communities had any relationship. They were asked to allocate rewards out to both groups based on models they had produced. The studies concluded that the children confirmed group favouritism, these were more likely to provide the reward to their in-group. Tajfel concluded that individuals do take action favourably to the in-group even when membership of the group is private. Tajfel's research has been recognized by Taylor and Jaggi (1974) who completed a report on Muslims and Hindus, they discovered that when they asked a Hindu why another Hindu acted in a desirable way they would conclude that it was because that Hindu was a good person but when asked about why a Muslim acted in a desirable way they would conclude that it was because of an outside influence. This analysis has shown that the members have acted within an ethnocentric way and also have favoured folks from their faith over people from another religion. Both Tajfel's and Taylor and Jaggi's studies also show how people act favourably to an in-group, however they do not explain how negative behaviour can form within groups. The method of the study does have good internal build, however he uses children in the analysis and they may react differently to people. As he used children it may also has some moral issues, the members were deceived as these were unaware of the study that was taking place which means they were not given the right to withdraw. Tajfel's theory that people action prejudice because we shoot for a positive image is over simplified, it doesn't consider that we participate in many groupings and which of those groups are most significant to us, it lacks ego-validity. Nonetheless it does give us some understanding to why some prejudice form so the research has good face validity.
Sherif (1936) have a study to aid his Realist Turmoil Theory, he wanted to investigate why prejudice develop within organizations, he used a field research to demonstrate this. Sherif (1936) arbitrarily put guys aged between 11 and 12 into teams, one of the groups was called Rattlers and the other Eagles. At first the groups weren't aware of the other person and lived in cabins a distance aside they built up strong inter-group relationships. Then Sherif (1936) set up activities between your two groups to produce a competition of resources, for example the boys could have a game of tug-of-war and the winners would get the best food at a celebration afterwards. This resulted in Sherif (1936) saying that the kids acquired become 'wicked, disturbed and vicious', there is name calling plus they even raided each others cabins. Sherif (1936) then tried to reduce the level of prejudice and discord between the organizations by giving them a typical goal, he setup pursuits like raft building to do this and the animosity soon sub-sided when they were asked to interact. Minard's (1952) analysis of the minors supports Sherifs results in minimizing prejudice giving people a standard goal. Minard (1952) found that the segregation and discrimination that been around between black and white miners above floor disappeared when they were working below the ground and all staff had interdependence. However Tyerman and Spencer (1983) challenged the theory that competition was sufficient enough for group conflict, they studied several young man scouts that acquired strong a friendly relationship bonds, these males got part in similar activities as those in Sherif's research when by using an annual camp and their friendships remained throughout your competition. The competition continued to be friendly and there is no upsurge in in-group favouritism. Ethics are called into question in the technique of Sherifs review, there is an aspect of deception as the males started this study not knowing what was about to happen, this means that they were probably not given the to withdraw and because these were unaware of what was happening they could not give knowledgeable consent. The largest ethical issue in this review is the fact that it used young kids, the experiment would have caused the members some problems which message or calls into question whether they received the security they needed. Sherif succeeded in providing us some explanation of why prejudice develops within organizations and it includes good ecological validity, we can apply this research to real life situations where there is competition for resources. However, prejudice can't be explained solely by the competition of resources and can have other contributing factors.
Adorno (1950) viewed whether there was a particular personality linked to a prejudice and bad attitude. Adorno's started out his research on the anti Semitic mother nature of Europe in the 1930's and 1940's, this is when he first developed his questionnaire. Adorno's (1950) questionnaire is called the F-Scale, F ranking for fascist, it was devised to measure if someone possessed an authoritarian personality, Adorno (1950) thought that a high scoring final result on the questionnaire means that a person had the sort of personality that was more likely to develop prejudice. He also concluded that folks with authoritarian personalities averted introspective and self examination and were unlikely to improve their views. Adorno's (1950) methodology may be flawed as it is suffering from acquiescent response placed, any agreement with a question causes a high report so that it is hard to tell apart whether a high score means an individual has an authoritarian personality or if they have an acquiescent character. Adorno's theory has generated a whole lot of research into the idea of the authoritarian personality which continues to be occurring today. Altmeyer (1996) devised an identical questionnaire and he found that folks who obtained high were more likely to have prejudice views against homosexuals and people with Helps. Adorno's theory of the Authoritarian personality will clarify how certain individuals may be more likely to develop prejudice but it generally does not explain how prejudice develops in communities, a huge group could all show prejudice to another group but every individual within that group could have some other personality.
Social Individuality Theory and Realistic Turmoil Theory help explain why prejudice evolves within communities. Both ideas show us how exactly we as humans want to be part of an organization and how within our 'ego-defence' we strive to make our 'in-group' seem the best, to achieve this we will establish a confident prejudice about our very own in-group. Sometimes we will establish negative prejudice to help make the 'in-group' superior. The Authoritarian Personality theory will go some way to detailing why certain individuals may be more inclined to build up prejudice as a result of type of personality they have, though I think our personalities are much more complex and are difficult to categorise in a single questionnaire. Each one of these theories contribute to explaining why attitudes, stereotypes and prejudice form.
