A. Why should mass media be considered in psychological research on stereotypes & prejudice?

(1) Short term effects of television can be significant, yet small. At the same time television is pervasive with lots of heavy, repeat viewing and little one time use (Williams, 1985).

(2) TV does horrid job of portraying minorities fairly or equally (Busselle & Crandall, 2002; Entman & Rojecki, 2000; Mastro & Behm-Morazwitz, 2005).

(3) Exposure to television can increase acceptance of stereotypes (Herrett-Skjellum & Allen, 1996), and it can change the way we view social problems as well as the solutions we support (Domke, 2001; Domke, McCoy, & Torres, 1999; Hurwitz & Peffley, 1997; Peffley, Shields, & Williams, 1996).

B. Parasocial Contact: mediated contact through television and other media.

(1) Improved attitudes toward gays and transvestites among those without many gay friends (Schiappa, Gregg, & Hewes, 2005).

(2) TV influences the positive African American stereotypes among Japanese and the negative African American stereotypes among Caucasian Americans(Fujioka, 1999).

(3) Television viewing related to stereotypes of Native Americans as passive and impoverished (Tan, Fujioka, & Lucht, 1997).

(4) White criminals on television viewed as more justified than a Latino criminal's actions. The tendency was not related to self-esteem nor racial identity (Mastro, 2003). (See also Tajfel & Turner, 1986; Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987)

(5) Non stereotypical portrayals of African Americans improve the evaluations of African Americans held by those high in prejudice, and such portrayals do not have the same negative impact on low prejudiced and low contact Caucasian Americans (Mastro & Tropp, 2004).

C. Devine's automatic and controlled activation theory

(1) Positive depictions positively affect implicit, but not explicit prejudice and stereotypes (Dasgupta & Greenwald, 2001).

(2) Print media can change people's automatic interpretation of news events that involve minorities. Specifically, it can affect how personally responsible African American men are viewed for their plights and affect the credibility of African American women (Power, Murphy, & Coover, 1996).

D. What kinds of additional research can be done?

(1) Cook (1978) established certain requirements that would allow interracial contact to have positive consequences for prejudice reduction. Are they necessary for parasocial contact? They include:

Equal status in the situation
Salience of attributes that disconfirm stereotype
Need for mutual interdependence or cooperation to work towards a goal
Potential to reveal many details about individuals
Social norms that must support contact in many areas.

What kind of contact works?
Is the salience of ethnicity important?

(2) Is multiculturalism or color bindedness the goal?
(3) Is it appropriate to use the media in this manner to influence adults?

A. Review of necessary components

(1) Equal status among participants (task-related, SES)
(2) Cooperative activity (superordinate goal)
(3) Informal setting
(4) Institutional support for contacts

B. Effects

(1) Decreased illusion of homogeneity of outgroup (decategorization)
(2) Disconfirmation of negative stereotypes (decategorization)
(3) Increased perception of similarity (recategorization)

C. Meta-analysis of intergroup contact research (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2000)

(1) Basics: 313 samples; 90,000 participants; 25 nations
(2) The researchers used conservative procedures to estimate effect size. The likely result is an underestimation of the actual impact of the intergroup contact method on prejudice.
(3) What is the overall impact of intergroup contact?
(4) What aspects of prejudice were affected by contact?
(5) What participant factors influenced the contact-prejudice relation?
(6) Was the method more successful for some outgroups than for others?
(7) What are the primary implications of the results for designing interventions to reduce prejudice?

3. Breaking the prejudice "habit" (Devine, Plant, & Buswell, 2000)

A. Devine’s model of prejudice reduction describes attempts of low-prejudiced people to change their behavior. It is based on the distinction between effortful and automatic processes in cognition.

(Source: Franzoi, 2001)

B. Fundamental components

(1) After experiencing guilt in prior situations, people become highly self-focused in the presence of an outgroup member.
(2) Individuals compare their personal standards to the stereotyped thoughts. This creates attempts to reduce the discrepancy between standards and thoughts.

C. People's conscious efforts to suppress stereotypically biased reactions can, with sufficient practice, virtually eliminate automatic stereotype activation over the long term (Devine & Monteith, 1993; Dovidio & Gaertner, 1999). In fact, the overriding action can become a relatively automatic (i.e., non-effortful) response. In such a circumstance virtually all cognitive load is devoted to the overriding action--that leaves little if any resources remaning for stereotype activation.

D. The content of automatically activated stereotypes is sensitive to recent experience. There is now evidence that exposure to associations that are not dominant (e.g., male + sensitive; gay + good) reorients the attitude when it is subsequently elicited (Benaji, 2001). There is also evidence that the categories used to classify others can be shifted rather easily--at least temporarily. Click here for news item from Discover (2002, April).

E. Fazio & Hilden (2001): "Emotional reactions to a seemingly prejudiced response".

(1) How are the results consistent with the Devine et al. model of prejudice reduction?

(2) The authors noted that the ad had the least effect on people with negative racial attitudes, low concern with acting prejudiced, and low restraint to avoid dispute. Are there ads that can target this population without evoking agitation?

5. Jigsaw classroom

A. What prejudice reduction techniques are responsible for the outcomes observed with the jigsaw method of instruction?

B. What are obstacles to implementing the jigsaw classroom method in schools? How can they be overcome?