COM 3534

Week 3

Reading Guide: Bradley Gorham – “The Social Implications of Stereotypes: Implications for Media Audiences”

Write or type your answers the questions below. As you read, annotate, making note of keys ideas and specific sentences in the reading(s). Provide textual supportfor your answers, as appropriate. Please come to class with your answers and be prepared to discuss the reading. Remember also that the reading guide serves as only part of your notes for the reading. You are responsible for all the material covered in the readings, whether discussed in class or not.

  1. What does the author state is his purpose? That is, what does he plan to prove in his article?
  2. According to researchers Hamilton and Trolier, what is a stereotype?
  3. Define schema. How are schemas connected to stereotypes?
  4. What is priming? How does it work with schema?
  5. Discuss Devine’s1989 study – hypothesis, the testing of it, the results. What have other studies since Devine’s found?
  6. Discuss Pettigrew’s theory of the ultimate attribution error.
  7. Discuss the study conducted by Peffley and collegues.
  8. Discuss the study conducted by Power, Murphy and Coover.
  9. Discuss the study conducted by Domke, McCoy and Torres.
  10. What are the implications of the research discussed for media consumers? What can audience members do to try to counteract the effects of automatic activation of stereotypes?
  11. What can media organizations (journalism, PR, advertising, broadcast) do to try to limit the extent to which their products automatically activate stereotypes?
  12. Explain these quotes:
  • “Cultural stereotypes of minority groups…tend to reflect the biases and histories of the majority, such that the people being stereotyped are reduced to a few characteristics that are socially relevant for understanding that group’s place in society.” (page 18)
  • Our own cognitive processes may inadvertently reinforce the dominant positions some social groups enjoy, despite our conscious intentions to the contrary. (21)
  1. Explain howGorham’s essay either supports or argues against these 2 quotes?
  • “If I am not who you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.”–James Baldwin, 1967
  • “We are told about the world before we see it. We imagine most things before we experience them. And those preconceptions, unless education has made us acutely aware, govern deeply the whole process of perception. They mark out certain objects as familiar or strange, emphasizing the difference, so that the slightly familiar is seen as very familiar, and the somewhat strange as sharply alien.” –Lippman, Public Opinion, Chapter VI

1/18/19