PS 474, Political Psychology

Lecture Outline: The Political Psychology of Prejudice

I. Intro

A. Which pictures indicate prejudice, against what group and why? (UnderstandingPrejudice.org)

B. Why study prejudice and stereotyping in a course in political science? Why prejudice and stereotyping are so prevalent in political perceptions and behavior.

1. Politics is group centered

2. Cognitive misers use heuristics

3. Political rhetoric

C. Defining Stereotypes, Prejudice & Discrimination

1. Stereotypes: A set of beliefs about the personal attributes of a group of people

2. Prejudice: A biased evaluation of a group, based on real or imagined characteristics of the group members

3. Discrimination: Negative behavior toward someone based on their membership in a group

II. Racial attitudes in the 21st century: dramatic progress and bewildering stagnation

A. For every general trend of progress there is striking evidence of disappointment and stagnation in politics, entertainment, public opinion, the economic progress of Blacks, and racial discrimination (e.g., field experiments)

III. Spencer Piston, “How Explicit Racial Prejudice Hurt Obama in the 2008 Election”

A. See study questions!

IV. Kuklinski and Cobb’s List Experiment in “When White Southerners Converse About Race”

A. Unobtrusive measures of prejudice and the bogus pipeline experiment

B. The convergence thesis and the “New South”

C. The List Experiment

D. Interpreting the findings

V. Keith Payne, et al. 2010. "Implicit and explicit prejudice in the 2008 American presidential election"

A. Why should implicit attitudes matter for political behavior?

B. Explicit versus implicit attitudes

C. Measures of implicit prejudice: strengths & weaknesses

1. Implicit Association Test (IAT, Greenwald et al., 1998)

2. Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP, Payne)

a) Warning manipulation: to make sure people are not controlling their response

b) 2008 American National Elections Study

(1) Prejudice measures

(a) Implicit: Payne’s AMP

(b) Explicit: Piston’s stereotype measure + Racial resentment

(2) Two routes by which implicit attitudes might affect voting decisions

(a) Directly, independent of explicit prejudice

(b) Indirectly, serving as input for explicit attitudes

(3) Findings (see figures below)

(4) Summary