25.9: Chapter Exercises

Chapter Exercises

1. What is the out-group homogeneity bias? Explain some cognitive (i.e., reasoning) mechanisms that could lead to it. Then explain some ways in which it could contribute to prejudice.
2. Give an example where the use of the availability heuristic helps foster a stereotype and explain how it does so. How could the danger of this be minimized?
3. What is a genuine correlation? What is an illusory correlation (and how does it differ from a genuine one)? Explain how such cognitive illusions could lead to prejudice and give a concrete example.
4. Many inner cities have become so violent that the leading cause of death of young black men there is now murder. Give an example of an internal explanation of this that involves a common stereotype of black males. Then give an external, situational explanation of the same phenomenon. How do the two explanations differ? What is their relationship to the ultimate attribution error?
5. List two stereotypes that are commonly associated with two groups. In what ways are they unfair? Identify faulty types of reasoning that may have led to the formation of each of these stereotypes, or that may have helped keep them in place once they were present.
6. What is the difference between an internal (or dispositional) explanation of an action and a situational explanation of it? What roles do these types of explanation play in the fostering and the maintenance of prejudice?
7. Give an example (real or imaginary) where the use of the representative heuristic helps foster or maintain a prejudice or stereotype and explain how it does so. How could the danger of this happening be minimized?
8. What is the ultimate attribution error? Explain how it resembles (and how it differs from) self-serving biases, on the one hand, and how it is similar to (and also how it differs from) the fundamental attribution error, on the other. How can the ultimate attribution error lead to prejudice?
9. What is modern racism and how does it differ from more the more traditional sorts of racism prevalent in our country several decades ago? Give a concrete example of modern racism.
10. How might dissonance reduction lead to prejudice? Explain the general mechanisms and illustrate your discussion with a concrete example.
11. What is the jigsaw classroom? How might the ideas it embodies be applied in other settings? Explain and give a concrete example.
12. Give an example of scapegoating that has occurred in recent years. What part did stereotypes play in it? In what ways did it involve faulty reasoning?
13. Give an example of communalism and note any harmful aspects of it. 14. Analyze each of the following dialogues.

1. Edna: I hear you just got hired as the manager of that new pizza place on Lindsey.

Wilbur: Yeah, and it’s a fantastic job. The only downside is the boss says I must hire some women delivery drivers.

Edna: So, what’s wrong with that?

Wilbur: Well, don’t get me wrong. I like women. But you know what kind of drivers they are. And they’ll spend twenty minutes talking to the people at each stop. They’ll be lucky to make two deliveries an hour. I mean, just look at my sister Sue. Four wrecks in just two years. And she can’t stop talking.

2. Sue: What’s up Edna? You look steamed.

Edna: Wilbur just drives me up the wall. He’s so prejudiced. He’s just like all men, though, such a sexist.

3. Professor Smith: Those right-wing fundamentalists are really getting out of hand. I support their right to free speech, but why do they have to use it to say such idiotic things? They must have IQs of about 40.

Professor Jones: I don’t like their views a lot myself, but some of them are extremely intelligent. That new student from Louisiana is a fundamentalist, and he’s the smartest person we’ve ever had in our graduate program.

Professor Smith: Well, if he’s a fundamentalist, maybe you’d better reevaluate him.

4. Bubba: Thank God somebody finally stood up for what’s right.

Sue: What do you mean?

Bubba: That bar down the street is throwing out the gays and lesbians. They should all be banned.

Sue: What have they ever done to you?

Bubba: Well, I’ve been lucky enough not to know any, but I know all about them. It’s like a disease. It’s one of the reasons the economy is going to hell in a hand basket.

Sue: But Tom’s gay, and everybody likes him.

Bubba: Well, I don’t mean him. He’s different. But you know what I mean.

15. Write a dialogue that illustrates the use of a stereotype, a second that illustrates scapegoating, and a third that illustrates a self-fulfilling prophecy.
16. Discuss some ways that more careful attention to evidence and reasoning might help reduce prejudices