Social Judgments - Essay Example

They suggested the stereotype is automatically activated in the presence of the stereotyped group and that low-prejudice people deliberately inhibited the activation of the stereotype and only low-prejudice people inhibited automatic stereotype-congruent thinking.

These studies suggest that in order to rectify stereotypical thinking, a person must be proactive in combating culturally biased thoughts internally. Does this mean that if we want people to not believe that stereotypes about our social group apply to us that we should avoid associated stereotypical behaviorsStapel and Blanton thought that such social comparisons influence one's perception of self (2004)? They tested to determine whether subliminal exposure to comparative information influences either implicit or explicit self-evaluation.

This study showed that automatic comparisons only occur when people are uncertain about themselves and need reassurance. When we are feeling grave self-doubt, socially comparative information automatically affects how we see ourselves. Does this mean to be confident in who we are we must maintain a positive attitude how we feel influences how we think (Clore 2007)? No matter what we do, a positive attitude empowers us. People with positive attitudes tend to validate their own thoughts where people with negative attitudes pigeonhole their own thoughts.

Positive attitudes promote one's own subjective experience, and negative attitudes inhibit it. Does this mean that to fully experience our lives we must try to look on the brighter side of things in dialectic terms, Stapel and Blanton's conclusions are in contrast to Devine's conclusions. How can we reconcile these differences empirically One way is to theorize that when people act in a way that is ambiguous it mobilizes feelings of suspicion in others and when they act forthrightly those feelings lessen in correlation with their attitude.

In order to delineate a consolidated understanding of these findings, we must ask certain questions of participants. How much do they feel they are engaged in life How do they see themselves Then, we would expose some of them to some experience where they observe others acting in a way that is subliminally culturally stereotypical. Others we would expose to experience where they observe others being gregariously culturally stereotypic. We would ask each group to fill out a questionnaire about how they felt about the observed behavior to see how they respond in terms of how stereotypic it was.

Then would determine if they have a more positive or negative attitude and how much they believe stereotypes in general. The aim would be to see how these ideas correlate with the independent variable of the ambiguous/gregarious behaviors observed. A chronological review of social studies in psychology yields compelling ideas about how we see ourselves and others. The progression of these studies forms the basis for continued heuristics.