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9/15/06
Stereotypes
Lee Jussim
Cambridge Dictionary of Psychology
(David Matsumoto, Ed.)
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Almost everything about “stereotypes” is controversial. Typically, an article of this type would
start with a definition. However, controversy surrounds even the definition of “stereotype.”
Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination
Stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination are frequently used interchangeably in public
discourse, and even in some social scientific scholarship. Furthermore, there is no universallyagreed upon definition for any of these phenomena. Although this entry discusses the definition of
stereotypes in more depth later, it is important to point out that, despite differences in definition, most
social psychologists view stereotypes as a belief, prejudice as an attitude or affect, and
discrimination as some sort of behavior. Although related to one another, sometimes causally,
beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors are also clearly distinguishable from one another. A stereotype is
not the same thing as either prejudice or discrimination. It is a belief, not an attitude or behavior.
Furthermore, and perhaps even more surprising, there is little evidence strongly linking
stereotypes to either prejudice or discrimination. A small number of studies have correlated
stereotypes with prejudice, but those studies consistently find only a weak relation between them.
Even less research has examined the relationship between stereotypes and discriminatory behavior.
Although there is very little evidence that stereotypes cause discrimination (or vice versa), this is
because little evidence has addressed this issue. It remains possible, therefore, that future research
will show a powerful cause and effect relationship between stereotypes and discrimination. It is also
possible that there are specific conditions under which stereotypes are strongly related to prejudice
and discrimination. If so, as of this writing, they have yet to be discovered.
Are Stereotypes Inaccurate by Definition?
Many lay people and social scientists alike assume that stereotypes are inherently inaccurate.
One of the most effective ways to dismiss a person’s claim about a group (e.g., “they are ____“ [bad
drivers, rich, smart, dumb, aggressive, etc.]) is to declare “That’s just a stereotype.” To accuse
someone of “stereotyping” is to accuse them of doing something bad, unjustified, unfair, and
inaccurate. There are, however, serious problems inherent in defining stereotypes as inaccurate.
To understand why, however, (in)accuracy must first be defined.
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Social perceptual accuracy refers to correspondence between people’s beliefs (expectations,
perceptions, judgments, etc.) about one or more target people and what those target people are
actually like, independent of those same perceivers’ influence on them. Stereotype accuracy,
therefore, refers to the correspondence of the stereotype with what the target group is actually like.
Stereotype inaccuracy, therefore, refers to a lack of correspondence between the stereotype and
what the target group is actually like.
When laypeople and scientists define stereotypes as inherently inaccurate, or assume that
stereotypes are inaccurate, this leaves only two logical possibilities regarding what they might mean,
and both are seriously problematic. They might mean that:
1. all beliefs about groups are stereotypes and all are inaccurate;
or
2. not all beliefs about groups are stereotypes, but stereotypes are the subset of all beliefs about
groups that are inaccurate. The difficulties of each of these interpretations are considered next.
The Logical Incoherence of Assuming All Beliefs about Groups are Inaccurate
No social scientist has ever explicitly claimed anything quite as silly as “all beliefs about groups
are inaccurate.” Nonetheless, for decades, stereotypes were predominantly defined as inaccurate,
with virtually no evidence demonstrating inaccuracy. Furthermore, in empirical studies, the social
scientific scholarship has considered people’s beliefs about almost any attribute (personality,
behavior, attitudes, criminality, competence, demographics) regarding almost any type of group
(race, ethnicity, sex, class, age, religion, occupation, dorm residence, sorority membership, college
major, and many more) to be a stereotype. It seems, then, that, for all practical purposes, the social
sciences consider any and all lay beliefs about groups to be stereotypes.
Putting these implicit points together: Stereotypes are inaccurate; all beliefs about groups are
stereotypes; therefore, all beliefs about groups are inaccurate. Again, no researcher has ever made
such an absurd claim, but it is a reasonable, even inevitable, conclusion reached on the basis of
defining stereotypes as inaccurate and considering any and all beliefs about groups to be
stereotypes.
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Such a definition, however, is untenable on purely logical grounds. It would mean that:
1. Believing that two groups differ is inaccurate and
2. Believing that two groups do not differ is inaccurate. Both 1 and 2 are not simultaneously
possible, and logical coherence is a minimum condition for considering a belief to be scientific.
So, if defining stereotypes as inaccurate means that all beliefs about groups are inaccurate, this
definition can be discarded out of hand as logically incoherent and, therefore, scientifically
inadmissible. The alternative interpretation, however, that defining stereotypes as inaccurate does
not mean that all beliefs about groups are inaccurate, but that stereotypes are the subset of beliefs
about groups that are inaccurate, is similarly incoherent but for very different reasons.
The Incoherence of Assuming that Stereotypes are the Subset of Beliefs about Groups that Are
Inaccurate
On logical grounds, this perspective includes a tautology that limits its utility. If all stereotypes
are inaccurate by definition, then only inaccurate beliefs about groups can be considered
stereotypes. This is not necessarily a logical problem as long as we stick to our definition and
accept its implications. However, defining stereotypes as inaccurate does create serious problems
with respect to interpreting existing research on "stereotypes" and conducting new research. The
problem can be characterized in a simple logical form.
If not all beliefs about groups are inaccurate, but stereotypes are defined as the subset of
beliefs about groups that are inaccurate: 1. accurate beliefs about groups are not
stereotypes; and 2. beliefs of unknown validity cannot be known to be stereotypes.
The core problem with this perspective is that it sets the standard for figuring out whether some
belief is a “stereotype” exorbitantly high. Only when beliefs have been empirically demonstrated to
be inaccurate can one conclude that they are a “stereotype.” The core implication of this exorbitant
standard is that it invalidates nearly all existing research on “stereotypes” because so little has
demonstrated that the beliefs about groups are inaccurate.
No research on “stereotypes” has ever been framed as follows:
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“Is THIS belief about THAT group a stereotype? We are going to figure out whether THIS
belief about THAT group is a stereotype by assessing whether that belief is inaccurate. If
THIS belief is inaccurate, we will conclude that it is a stereotype. If THIS belief is accurate,
we will conclude that it is not a stereotype.”
Unfortunately, that is precisely how the question must be framed and answered before one can
know one is studying a stereotype, if “stereotype” is defined as the subset of beliefs about groups
that are inaccurate. If that question is not answered prior to conducting a study on “stereotypes” one
cannot know that one is actually studying a stereotype!
Holding psychology to this type of definition would mean concluding that decades and decades
of research framed as addressing stereotypes really has not. Indeed, there would be nothing left –
no studies of the role of stereotypes in expectancy effects, self-fulfilling prophecies, person
perception, subtyping, memory, etc. Indeed, we would have to throw out the bath water, the baby,
the tub, the faucet and the entire intellectual edifice upon which current scientific understanding of
“stereotypes” is based, because none of it has demonstrated inaccuracy before studying the
“stereotype.” In the future, perhaps those social scientists promoting a view of stereotypes as the
subset of beliefs about groups that are inaccurate will articulate what they would consider evidence
that could disconfirm their view of stereotypes as inaccurate, or the criteria they use for classifying
some beliefs (the erroneous ones) as stereotypes, and others as nonstereotypes.
Defining Stereotypes
“Stereotype” should be defined in a neutral manner, one which does not provide a false and
unjustified “resolution” of the accuracy issue by definition. A simple, broad, inclusive, pragmatic, and
coherent definition is: Stereotypes are beliefs about groups. This allows for all sorts of possibilities
not explicitly stated. Stereotypes may or may not: be accurate and rational; be widely shared; be
conscious; be rigid; exaggerate group differences; assume group differences are essential or
biological; cause or reflect prejudice; cause biases and self-fulfilling prophecies It is good that this
definition does not specify these things. Rather than foreclosing on answers to questions regarding
the nature of stereotypes by definition, it leaves them open for empirical investigation.
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What Is Not a Stereotype?
This definition excludes all beliefs about things other than human groups. It also excludes
beliefs about specific individuals. Rejecting defining stereotypes as inaccurate is not equivalent to
defining them as accurate. Accuracy is an empirical issue. Which naturally raises a question: How
(in)accurate are people’s beliefs about groups?
Accuracy of Stereotypes
Types of stereotype accuracy. Stereotype accuracy has been most commonly assessed in
either of two ways in the scientific literature. With discrepancy scores, researchers assess how
close to perfection people’s beliefs come. They assess the stereotype belief (e.g., “how tall (rich,
aggressive, etc.) is the average woman in the U.S.”) and compare that to criteria (e.g., the average
height (wealth, aggressiveness, etc.) of the average woman). The difference indicates how far
people are from perfection. Researchers also use correlations to assess how well people’s beliefs
about groups correspond to what those groups are like. They assess several stereotypic beliefs and
then correlate them with criteria (e.g., they might correlate people’s ratings of women’s average
height, wealth, and aggressiveness, with criteria for women’s height, wealth, and aggressiveness).
Discrepancy scores and correlations have been used to assess two types of stereotypes: cultural
and personal stereotypes. Cultural stereotypes refer to the extent to which a stereotype is shared by
the members of a culture, or a particular sample, and are usually assessed by sample means (e.g.,
the mean belief about women’s height in a sample is the best estimate of the cultural stereotype for
women’s height for the group sampled). Personal stereotypes are simply any individual’s beliefs
about a group, regardless of whether that belief is shared by others.
Nature of the evidence. Despite the pervasiveness of the assumption that stereotypes are
inaccurate, little scientific research actually investigated the accuracy of stereotypes until the 1970s.
Since that time, however, over 20 studies have examined the accuracy of people’s beliefs about
groups. This research has several major strengths: It has examined all sorts of stereotypes,
including those regarding race, ethnicity, sex, occupation, sorority residence, college major,
nationality, and political parties. It has also examined all sorts of beliefs: personality, behaviors,
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attitudes, demographic characteristics (e.g., income, levels of education, etc.), behaviors,
competencies, achievement, and tastes. Furthermore, the research has used all sorts of criteria for
accuracy, including U.S. Census data, other government records (such as board of educational
achievement data), results from meta-analyses of hundreds of studies (of sex differences, for
studies of sex stereotypes), and self-reports from representative or comprehensive samples of the
target population. Consequently, the results of this research do not reflect some idiosyncratic
pattern unique to some odd stereotype, target group, or criteria. The results of this research provide
evidence of levels of accuracy that should be surprising to anyone steeped in the “inaccuracy”
tradition of stereotypes, although they also provide evidence of inaccuracy.
Cultural stereotypes. In general, the accuracy of cultural stereotypes has proven to be one of
the strongest effects in all of social psychology. Correlations of the means of people’s beliefs about
groups with criteria typically exceed .7, meaning that, on average, cultural stereotypes are accurate
about 85-90% of the time. Discrepancy scores, too, show that cultural stereotypes (average beliefs)
correspond very closely, typically within 10%, of groups’ real characteristics.
Personal stereotypes. Personal stereotypes also show considerable accuracy, although typically
not as stunningly high as that of cultural stereotypes. Correlations between personal stereotypes
and criteria are typically about .4 to .5 (meaning that individual stereotypes are typically about 7075% accurate). Personal stereotype discrepancy scores, however, have received far less attention
in the scientific literature, so less is known about them.
Limitations to this literature. Despite its strengths, this literature also has some important
limitations. First, the accuracy of two of the other major types of stereotypes – religion and social
class – have received little attention. Second, the existing research has overwhelmingly examined
the stereotypes held by college students, largely because those samples are convenient, although
the few studies that have used nonstudent samples have found essentially the same patterns of
moderate to high accuracy as found by research relying on student samples. Third, most of the
research on stereotype accuracy to date has been conducted in the U.S. and Canada. Perhaps
stereotypes in other countries are less (or more) accurate.
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Inaccurate Stereotypes
Despite the impressive and surprising evidence of the accuracy of stereotypes, there is some
consistent evidence of inaccuracy in stereotypes. In the U.S., political stereotypes tend to have little
accuracy. Surprisingly, many people in the U.S. seem to have little knowledge or understanding of
the beliefs, attitudes, and policy positions of Democrats and Republicans.
There is also little evidence of accuracy in national stereotypes regarding personality. It is
probably not surprising that people on different continents have little accurate knowledge about one
another’s personality (e.g., that Indonesians do not know much about, say, Canadians, is not very
surprising). However, somewhat more surprising is that people from cultures with a great deal of
contact (various western European countries; British and the U.S.) also have highly inaccurate
beliefs about one another’s personality characteristics. Why some stereotypes have such high
levels of accuracy, and others such low levels, is currently unclear and is an important area of future
research.
Sources of Stereotypes
Where do stereotypes come from? Although the psychological literature has largely stressed
pernicious and irrational sources of stereotypes, those sources are more fairly described as a mix of
reasonable and rational and pernicious and irrational.
Categorization. Categories constitute a fundamental and pervasive feature of human cognition.
We have categories for everything from weather to furniture. Without them, we would be lost, not
being able to tell the difference between a chair and a mosquito. One of the things we categorize
are people. We categorize people on the basis of demographic characteristics (race, sex, class,
religion), nationality, ethnicity, occupation, political views, social roles, and many other types of
characteristics. There is nothing more inherently wrong or bad about doing so than there is about
categorizing anything else, and, indeed, to the extent that doing so provides us with useful
information about people, such categorization may have many benefits. Like other categories,
social stereotypes, to the extent that they are accurate, may provide us with a better understanding
of other people, facilitate social information processing, and facilitate social interactions. Of course,
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to the extent that they are inaccurate or inapplicable to a particular individual, they (like any
erroneous belief) can lead us to go wrong.
Social reality. The considerable evidence demonstrating at least some accuracy in stereotypes
strongly suggests the importance of one potential source of stereotypes: social reality. To the extent
that reality influences the content of stereotypes, those stereotypes will be accurate. For example,
people believe that African-Americans, on average, earn less yearly income than do other
Americans because, in fact, they do. This idea has long been a part of social psychology as the
“kernel of truth” hypothesis, which suggested that, even if stereotypes were mostly inaccurate, they
arose out of a “kernel of truth.” The evidence regarding accuracy, however, suggests that, at least
among many of the types of stereotypes that have been studied, there is far more than the modicum
of validity implied by the “kernel of truth” hypothesis.
Early socialization. The idea that people learn stereotypes when they are quite young, mostly
from family members, has been a part of the psychological lore for some time. And it may be true.
Unfortunately, however, there has not been much empirical evidence on this issue. Of course, a
lack of evidence does not mean that the idea is wrong, only that it has not yet been examined much.
Media. Everyone knows that the media is a major source of social stereotypes. Unfortunately,
however, despite what “everyone knows” there is very little clear evidence of powerful media
influences on stereotyping. Undoubtedly, some media portrayals of some groups have conveyed
narrow, inaccurate, and unflattering stereotypes (e.g., Steppin’ Fetchit African-American characters
who were ignorant, superstitious, and silly from the 1930s; “happy housewives” from commercials of
the 1950s and 1960s who were pathologically obsessed with cooking and cleaning). In general,
however, the evidence that people’s beliefs and attitudes in general are heavily influenced by the
media has been much more difficult to demonstrate than the widespread “knowledge” about
powerful media influences seems to suggest. Furthermore, in addition to unflattering stereotypical
images of groups, mass media also presents a considerable number of sympathetic and
counterstereotypical images of many groups (e.g., nearly every character ever portrayed by Sydney
Poitier; the Tom Hanks character in Philadelphia). In a very broad way, modern societies with
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freedom of speech and widespread mass media (e.g., Europe, Japan, North America, South Korea)
have greater gender equality than do societies that lack free speech and widespread media
(compare, e.g., the status of women in Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, South
Korea, and the U.S. to, e.g., their status in Burma, China, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia,
and Zimbabwe). This raises the possibility that, despite sometimes conveying nasty and inaccurate
stereotypes, mass media in free societies may ultimately function more to counter inaccurate beliefs
about groups than to convey invalid information.
Pernicious sources of stereotypes. It is also clear, however, that stereotypes also sometimes
reflect sources that are neither accurate nor benevolent. “System justification” refers to the idea that
people’s stereotypes will sometimes function to rationalize or justify the existence of systems of
oppression and exploitation. Similarly, “social dominance” refers to the idea that some people’s
beliefs and attitudes about groups stem from a motivation to dominate and exploit those groups. If it
is in “our” interest to take advantage of “them,” then our stereotypes are likely to suggest that they
deserve to be taken advantage of because they are incompetent, immoral, and inferior.
Similarly, stereotypes may sometimes reflect prejudice. Our dislike or fear of a group may
sometimes influence and distort our beliefs about that group, such that the group takes on more
negative and fewer positive characteristics than they deserve. Even if prejudice does not alter the
content of our beliefs about characteristics of a group, it may alter our evaluation of that
characteristic. For example, “we” may be thrifty” whereas “they” are cheap; “we” may be “firm”
whereas “they” are stubborn, and so on. Prejudice, system justification, and social dominance may
explain some of the extent to which stereotypes are not perfectly accurate, especially to the extent
that stereotypes favor advantaged groups.
Prescriptive Stereotypes
The discussion so far has focused exclusively on descriptive stereotypes – people’s beliefs
about the characteristics of groups. Prescriptive stereotypes, in contrast, refer to people’s beliefs
about the characteristics groups are supposed to have. Classic examples are “a woman’s place is
in the home” and “children should be seen and not heard.” They are operationalized in the laws of
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countries, for example, that do not allow women to vote or drive. The accuracy issue evaporates
with prescriptive stereotypes, because there are no objective criteria for determining how people
“should” behave. Nonetheless, prescriptive stereotypes are often particularly pernicious, because
they restrict the opportunities (economic, behavioral, political, academic, etc) of the targeted groups.
As such, they are a potentially powerful tool for oppression and exploitation.
Implicit Stereotypes
Implicit beliefs are beliefs that people hold despite being unaware of them, and are typically
assessed in social psychology through a variety of sophisticated methodologies, such as priming,
lexical decision tasks, and a dual categorization task called the “implicit association test.” Implicit
stereotypes, therefore, are stereotypes that people hold even if they are not aware that they hold
them. A considerable literature has demonstrated that, even when people claim that they are
completely egalitarian and unbiased, they often hold implicit beliefs that groups differ, especially in
ways that flatter their own group. The tone of much of the literature on implicit stereotypes also
suggests that they are often unjustified and pernicious. This may be true. Nonetheless, as of this
writing, no research has yet assessed the accuracy of implicit stereotypes (there is good evidence
for pernicious effects of implicit prejudice, but given the importance of the distinction between
stereotypes and prejudice, this does not constitute evidence of pernicious effects of implicit
stereotypes).
Consequences of Stereotypes
Biases. Stereotypes lead to many biases in perception, evaluation, judgment, attribution, and
memory. Typically, these are stereotype-confirming biases – biases that involve seeing the target
person or group as more consistent with the stereotype than they really are. For example, people
may sometimes perceive a man as more assertive or aggressive than a woman, even when their
behavior is similar. Sometimes, Whites are more likely to judge a Latino or lower SES defendant as
guilty, compared to a White or middle class defendant. People also sometimes generate stereotypeconsistent attributions for individuals and groups. Given the same life experiences, Whites will view
an African-American on welfare as lazier and less competent than a White on welfare.
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Less frequently (except in the case of memory, where this is common), there are stereotypedisconfirming biases – biases that involve seeing the target person or group as less consistent with
the stereotype than they really are. Especially when individuals strongly violate common
stereotypes – aggressive girls, successful African-Americans, etc. – people view them more
extremely (i.e., as more aggressive, more successful, etc.) than individuals with similar
characteristics who do not violate stereotypes. Sometimes, this pattern simply reflects a change of
standard (“tall” for a woman does not mean the same thing as “tall” for a man), but sometimes it
appears to represent a bona fide more extreme reaction to a stereotype-disconfirming target.
In the particular case of memory, there is clear evidence of both stereotype-consistent and
stereotype-inconsistent biases. People are particularly likely to remember clear stereotypeviolations. White rappers, women over 6 feet tall, and liberal Republicans stand out from the crowd,
and, as a consequence, are quite memorable. On the other hand, when people do not have a clear
memory about a particular target, they often rely on stereotypes to help “fill in the blank.” Without a
clear memory of a particular Republican’s stand on taxes, a politically knowledgeable perceiver is
likely to guess “wants to cut them.”
Research has documented these and other ways in which stereotypes bias perception,
judgment, and memory. Nonetheless, the overall extent to which stereotypes create such biases is
quite modest. Meta-analyses of the biasing effects of stereotypes typically show that, overall,
stereotypes have biasing effects corresponding to about a correlation of .10 (in other words, holding
constant targets’ personal characteristics, target group memberships correlate about .10 with
people’s judgments of individual targets).
Self-fulfilling prophecy. A self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when one person’s originally false
expectation regarding a second person leads that first person to act in such a manner as to cause
the second person to confirm the (originally false but now true) expectation. Because stereotypes
regarding a group may sometimes lead people to develop false expectations for a particular
individual, they have potential to create self-fulfilling prophecies. Indeed some of the most classic
and influential studies of self-fulfilling prophecies in the experimental social psychological research
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literature have involved demonstrating the potentially self-fulfilling effects of stereotypes involving
race, sex, and physical attractiveness.
Unfortunately, however, many of these studies have proven difficult to replicate. In general,
under naturalistic conditions (in contrast to experimental laboratory conditions), self-fulfilling
prophecies occur, but are generally quite modest in size (the typical self-fulfilling prophecy effect of a
perceiver’s expectation on a target’s behavior approximately corresponds to a correlation of .1-.2
between expectation and behavior under naturalistic conditions).
Some researchers have argued that these effects underestimate self-fulfilling prophecies in real
life because self-fulfilling prophecies may accumulate over time or across perceivers. The argument
goes something like this: stereotypes are widely shared so that stereotyped targets will be subjected
to inaccurate expectations again and again. Therefore, even though the effects may be small in
each interaction, across many interactions, they can become large. Despite the intuitive appeal of
this sort of hypothetical analysis, it has not been born out by much data – the published studies
examining the potential for self-fulfilling prophecies to accumulate all find that, in general, selffulfilling prophecies are more likely to dissipate (shrink, get smaller) over time and across perceivers
than they are to accumulate.
Accuracy. To anyone steeped in the “inaccurate, irrational, and unjustified” view of stereotypes,
it may come as a shock to discover that stereotypes, in addition to being more accurate than usually
given credit for, can also increase the accuracy of person perception judgments. Under the right
circumstances, however, that is exactly what may happen.
Because of the politically (but not logically or statistically) controversial nature of this claim, it is
important to state what this claim does not state. It does not state that relying on an inaccurate
stereotype increases accuracy. Relying on an inaccurate stereotype will reduce accuracy in judging
a person. It does not even state that relying on an accurate stereotype will always or necessarily
increase accuracy. When people have clear, relevant, useful individuating (i.e., personal)
information about a target, relying on a stereotype will generally reduce accuracy. For example, if
one learns that Mary is 6 feet 6 inches tall and that Bob is 5 feet 6 inches tall, one should judge their
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height on the basis of their height, not on the basis of the fact that, on average, men are taller than
women. Fortunately, this is what people do most of the time – when they know target group
membership and also have clear and relevant individuating information they overwhelmingly rely on
the individuating information in judging targets.
This claim also does not state that, when accuracy is unknowable – e.g., when it has never been
assessed and when there are no criteria capable of establishing accuracy – relying on a stereotype
increases accuracy. If accuracy cannot be assessed, no conclusions whatsoever about either the
accuracy of the stereotype itself, or about its role in enhancing or reducing the accuracy of person
perception can be reached.
The research literature also shows, however, that, in the absence of clear individuating
information, people rely more on stereotypes than when they have clear individuating information.
Does this increase or reduce accuracy? It depends. If the stereotype itself is inaccurate, this will
reduce accuracy. For example, if one believes that Norway is generally warmer than Egypt, and is
given little or no information about the temperature in Oslo or Cairo, one will likely reach an incorrect
conclusion, if one relies on one’s general beliefs. The same applies to stereotypes. If one believes
that women are more physically aggressive than men, and is asked to judge the aggressiveness of a
male and female target given little other useful information, one will likely reach an incorrect
conclusion.
But what about when people hold an accurate stereotype? If people correctly believe that it is
usually warmer in Cairo than in Oslo, even if they do not know today’s temperature, they will be right
far more often than wrong if they predict that, on any given day, it will be warmer in Cairo. The same
applies to stereotypes. In the absence of clear, relevant information, however, if people also hold an
accurate stereotype, relying on that stereotype will generally enhance the accuracy of person
perception predictions and judgments. This is a simple application of basic rules of logic and
statistics, especially Bayes’ theorem. One does not need to know every individual tiger and
housecat to know that, in general, tigers are more dangerous than housecats, even though there
may be some very tame tigers and some very dangerous housecats.
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Returning to stereotypes, if all one learns about Mary and Bob is that they play soccer, in
general, one will be accurate more often if one guesses that Bob is taller than Mary than if one
guesses that Mary is taller than Bob or that they are of the same height. The same logic also
applies to more social and psychological attributes, as long as there are clear criteria for accuracy.
Consider, for example, political attitudes. If one discovers that candidates Smith and Jones are prochoice, pro-gay marriage, and against increases in military spending, then, despite the fact that
Smith is a Republican from Oklahoma and Jones a Democrat from Massachusetts, people should
see their attitudes as quite similar on these issues. However, if one does not know Smith’s or
Jones’s political stances on these issues, and all that one knows is that Smith is a Republican from
Oklahoma, and Jones a Democrat from Massachusetts, one is likely to be correct more often than
not if one assumes that Smith is less supportive of abortion rights, gay marriage, and cuts in military
spending than is Jones.
Only a handful of studies have examined whether and when relying on stereotypes increases or
reduces the accuracy of person perception. Those studies, however, clearly show that relying on an
inaccurate stereotype reduces accuracy, but that relying on an accurate stereotype generally
increases accuracy. This pattern has been shown with a variety of stereotypes, including those
regarding sex, occupation, and college dorm residence, and a variety of attributes, including memory
for targets’ conversation, targets’ academic achievement, and targets’ personal preferences and
attitudes.
Stereotype threat. The effects of stereotypes discussed thus far focus exclusively on the
particular effects a particular perceiver’s stereotypes has either on that same perceiver’s judgments
regarding a target or on a particular target. Stereotype threat, however, refers to a very different
type of process, one that does not involve any particular perceiver holding any particular stereotype.
Instead, one of the main ideas behind stereotype threat is that knowledge of cultural stereotypes
pervades any given society. Especially when those cultural stereotypes are unflattering, targets of
those stereotypes are likely to be concerned or anxious about confirming them. This anxiety, in turn,
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actually reduces their performance in achievement-related domains, so that they become objectively
more rather than less likely to confirm those stereotypes.
Most of the stereotype threat research has focused on academic achievement, especially with
respect to African-Americans and standardized achievement tests, and women and math. In a
typical experiment, the cultural stereotype (race, sex) or the stereotyped attribute (intelligence, math)
will be made salient for some but not other participants, and then their achievement is assessed. It
is well established that achievement is typically lower under stereotype threat conditions.
This area, too, however, has experienced some degree of controversy. The manner in which the
results of some of the earliest studies were conducted seemed to imply that the race difference in
standardized test scores occurs only under stereotype threat. As such, it was widely interpreted as
suggesting that there were no “real” race differences in achievement; those differences were entirely
a nasty effect of the unflattering racial stereotypes that pervade American culture. Consequently, the
results of those early studies generated considerable enthusiasm in both scholarly journals and the
popular press, because they seemed to provide a clear social and situational explanation for race
differences in achievement.
Unfortunately, however, the enthusiasm for the conclusion notwithstanding, the studies do not
support the conclusion that stereotype threat explains very much of race differences in standardized
achievement test scores. The studies that addressed this issue all controlled for initial race
differences through the use of analysis of covariance. This was important because there were fairly
standard race differences in achievement among the samples prior to the studies. Results typically
showed that but the adjusted means, controlling for prior race differences in achievement, not the
actual means, were different only under stereotype threat conditions. In other words, under
stereotype threat conditions, the African-Americans’ adjusted mean was lower than Whites’ adjusted
means. However, in the control conditions, there were no differences in the adjusted means. It was
this lack of difference that led to much initial enthusiasm because it seemed to indicate there were
no “real” race differences in achievement.
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This result, however, does not mean that there were no race differences in the control
conditions. What it does mean is that, in the control conditions, the pre-existing race differences
were unchanged. It also does not mean that stereotype threat caused a race difference that, a
priori, did not exist. It does mean that stereotype threat increased the size of the race difference in
achievement (the difference in the adjusted means indicates that the prior difference got even
larger). Overall, therefore, whereas there is good evidence that, as a phenomenon and process,
stereotype threat can reduce the achievement of African-American students, there is no good
evidence that it explains much of the existing racial differences in academic achievement.
In contrast, however, most of the work on women and math did not use analysis of covariance
and did not use adjusted means (it used simple analysis of variance and unadjusted means). This
work, therefore, does indeed suggest that stereotype threat may account for much of the sex
difference in math achievement test scores.
Entativity and Essentialism
Entativity in stereotyping refers to the extent to which a group is perceived as a unified and
meaningful entity. People perceive some groups as more unified and meaningful than others
(contrast, e.g., “Jews” with “cashiers”). Essentialism in stereotyping refers to a belief that certain
group share “essential” characteristics – immutable characteristics endemic to all members of the
group. Laypeople vary considerably in the extent to which they hold essentialist views of particular
groups. To the extent that they do, however, their views differ sharply with that of most social
scientists, who conceive of most groups as largely socially constructed, reflecting the contexts,
motivations, cultural values, and power structure prevalent at the time.
Entativity and essentialism are important aspects of stereotypes for several reasons. First, many
of the biases created by stereotypes are stronger when a group is seen as being some sort of
coherent entity and when its members are seen as sharing some sort of inherent essence. Second,
essentialism has considerable potential to increase the difficulties involved in reducing intergroup
conflict. If “they” are in conflict with “us” because of their situation, context, and historical
circumstances, then perhaps there is something we can do to negotiate with them to provide a better
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situation or circumstance. But, if they are in conflict with us because they are inherently evil,
exploitative, rapacious, irrational, or immoral, all that we can do is try to kill them before they kill us.
The tone of the above paragraph could be read as implying that it is always true, or at least more
benevolent, to believe that those in conflict with us are products of their situations, and are not
necessarily inherently rapacious or exploitative. Such an implication is probably both true and
deeply unfortunate. People are indeed to a large extent products of their situations and historical
and cultural contexts. Nonetheless, even if no group of people is “inherently” dangerous or
aggressive, it is also clear that history is littered with examples of groups, ethnicities, and nations
that are reasonably described as extremely, even implacably, dangerous, aggressive, and
exploitative, at least at the time (e.g., the Romans, the early Islamic empires and modern Islamic
radical parties; Genghis Khan, the Spanish conquistadores; America vis a vis African slaves and
indigenous American people’s; Germany under the Nazis; Imperial Japan of the 1930s and 1940s;
Stalinist Russia; Maoist China). True believers in utopian ideologies, whether those ideologies are
ethnic (German master race), political (Marxism), or religious (medieval Christianity and Islam,
modern Islamic extremists), often become extremely aggressive. Indeed, there may be something
“inherently” and “essentialistically” dangerous about utopian/dogmatic systems that confer a sense
of moral superiority to believers and a motivation to impose their “superior” belief system on others.
In this context, it is not a question of whether non-essentialist beliefs are better than essentialist
ones. It is true that to view a group in essentialist terms, when there are no inherent features of
group members, is a potentially dangerous injustice. It is also true, however, that to view a group in
highly nuanced, contextualized, nonessentialist terms when their beliefs are, in fact, inherently
dangerous and aggressive (as was done by the appeasers vis a vis Germany prior to WWII), is also
potentially a very serious problem. Therefore, the main issue is not that all groups should be viewed
in non-essentialist terms. Instead, the issue (at least for academics and educators) is to convey to
our students and the lay public an understanding of the role of situational, historical, and cultural
factors in creating groups and group differences, and also an understanding of when it is more
versus less appropriate to view a group in essentialist terms.
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Conclusion
Stereotypes are nothing more than people’s beliefs about groups. They are much like other
beliefs. Sometimes they are reasonable, rational, useful, and make a lot of sense. At other times,
they are irrational, inaccurate, and do not make much sense. Although stereotypes can and do lead
to a wide range of biases in memory, judgment, and perception, in general, those biases tend to be
quite modest. Nonetheless, research has identified conditions under which stereotypes do have
some powerful effects, and it is under these conditions that stereotypes are most likely to play a
significant role in prejudice and discrimination.