Stereotype

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A stereotype is a thought or idea that says that all members of a group have an unrelated trait in common. Common examples include "all black men dance well," "all Asians drive poorly," and "all homeschoolers are Christian wingnuts." It differs from an "archetype" in that the latter is a model to follow rather than a (correct or otherwise) perception. It differs from genotype in that there's nothing you can really do about that one.

Stereotypes are most often encountered when dealing with discrimination, particularly racism, sexism, and homophobia. Stereotypes exist for a reason.^{[note 1]} A persistent stereotype in the population leads to preconceptions which may be wrong, but are difficult to shake off even when they are clearly shown to be wrong.

Even "positive" or "self-refuting" stereotypes can have lasting negative effects on those targeted by them. For example:

P1: All scientists are atheists.

P2: All atheists are "evolutionists". Similarly, all evolutionists are atheists.

C: All scientists are evolutionists.

P: All nudity is sexual (especially conventionally “ugly” people who are naked).

C: Nudists and naturists tend to simply be perverts.

Etymological roots[edit]

Originally from Greek: στερεός (stereos) "solid, firm" and τύπος (typos) "blow, impression, engraved mark", used to refer to an exact copy of a typeset page, made by double casting the entire page. The point of stereotyping was that it required no actual typesetting, thus greatly reducing the cost of book impressions after the first edition.

The idea that no original creativity was involved gave rise in a roundabout way to the modern definition, coined in 1798, as well as the related word "cliché".

As a logical fallacy[edit]

Stereotyping is a subcategory of the accident fallacy, which are fallacies that occur when a rule of thumb is taken to be something that is universally true. In the case of the stereotype fallacy, this is a fallacy that occurs when the following premises are used.

P1 - All people of group X have characteristic Y.

P2 - Person Z is a part of group X.

Conclusion - Person Z has characteristic Y.

If the person making this argument only believes that it is probable a person from group X has characteristic Y, then it is not a stereotype fallacy. What it might be, however, is an ecological fallacy. An ecological fallacy follows the following format.^[1]

P1 - People of group X have characteristic Y.

P2 - Person Z is a part of group X.

Conclusion - Person Z has characteristic Y.

Ecological fallacies occur when someone incorrectly applies a group characteristic to someone who is a part of that group. LAn example mentioned by Heather Krause^[2] is smoking and life expectancy. As developed countries have both higher life expectancy and buy more packs of cigarettes than developing ones, assuming the group characteristic "higher life expectancy" would apply to someone from a developed country who buys cigarettes would be an ecological fallacy, as it incorrectly applies a group characteristic to a person within that group.

If someone correctly applies a group characteristic to someone within a group, then no fallacy has been committed. This is something that is often overlooked by people with a more liberal slant.

Bayes' theorem actually requires group characteristics to be applied to individuals if, say, one wishes to know the likelihood that someone will get cancer based off a positive mammogram. For example, the P(A) Bayes' theorem uses to determine the likelihood of cancer in an individual might be the probability of cancer among the group "40-year-old women". Using the likelihood of cancer of the "40-year-old women group" to determine the likelihood of cancer with a 40-year-old woman is not a fallacy.

Use of stereotypes[edit]

Stereotyping is often used in advertising. Sometimes this is done harmlessly; other times it elicits many complaints, resulting in a scandal of some sorts. This can be done intentionally to increase exposure, although it is risky. In the short time or space offered by an advert, the advertiser often needs to get a story or point across without wasting time on introducing concepts or characters. The ballsy mother-in-law or the inept bank manager can be shown and the viewing public can quickly and easily apply a personality to the character in the advert. This works equally in films where a director or writer may not want to waste too much time on explaining who is the "good guy" and who is the "bad guy" (i.e., "let's just get to the giant robots fighting, already!"), so they lapse into using and playing up to stereotypes; the corrupt corporate executive who puts profits over people, the military hardass with zero compassion or establishing the token smart guy by dropping either "CalTech" or "MIT" into the conversation early on. In some respects, this is a legitimate use of stereotypes, albeit unimaginative and liable to be blasted by critics and social scientists who see such exploitation as reinforcement of social norms.

Stereotypes of science[edit]

A less uncommon stereotype is seen with anti-intellectualism. At the core of anti-intellectual stereotyping is the idea of scientists being partially insane, white-coat wearing, liberal scum who make sweeping didactic statements of fact that can change at any moment. Conservapedia's article on Professor values is a prime example of this activity. Other stereotypes are that "science" spends its time working on ridiculous things, or proving the blatantly obvious. This is seen often when newspapers report a so-called "common sense" finding and commentators go on about how it was blatantly obvious and a shameful waste of tax-payers' money.^{[note 2]}

What it isn't[edit]

It should be remembered that it's not really a "stereotype" if the trait being stereotyped is actually part of the definition of that group. To say that "all Christians believe in Christ" would not be a stereotype; however, to say that "all Christians are God-bothering, preachy freaks" would be a stereotype, as it has some basis in fact, but doesn't describe all the Christians.

When a stereotype is based on fact, and the "all" changed to "most" or "tends to", it really becomes a trend/archetype rather than a stereotype, such as "most women tend to have longer hair" or "people from Africa usually have darker skin" or "bears have a tendency to excrete in the woods." However, when an apparent trend/archetype is the conclusion of a stereotype, it really becomes a part of the stereotype.

Examples of stereotypes[edit]

Racial stereotypes[edit]

• All Jews are money hungry.
• All African American men are slow, stupid and will rob you at razor point, given the chance. (This is self-refuting because it is a conflation of two mutually exclusive sets of stereotypes: If any given African American man is slow, he can't succeed in robbing anybody of much; and if he is stupid, he only robs the thing that is of no particular value to the victim whenever he does succeed.)
• All African American men can run fast and have large, thick lips.

Country stereotypes[edit]

• All Americans are proudly stupid, ignorant, and jingoistic. Oh, the irony of writing this on the Internet.
• All British people like to drink tea and eat crumpets, and are either:
  • uncharacteristically polite and elegant,
  • or unruly anti-social delinquents.
• All Canadians are polite, love hockey, maple syrup, Tim Hortons coffee, and are Mounties. Sorry, eh!
• All flying Dutchmen are drug addicts.
• All French people hold baguettes whilst wearing a beret and onions round their neck.
• All (East) Asians:
  • know some form of martial arts.
  • are extremely intelligent,
  • have parents who are obsessed with academic success, are emotionally distant, etc.
• All Mexicans are:
  • illegal immigrants.^{[note 3]}
  • rapists.
• All Indians eat curry and defecate on the street.

Religious stereotypes[edit]

• All Muslims are Jihadists.
• All Buddhists are peaceful.^{[note 4]}

Sexual stereotypes[edit]

• Heterosexual women only truly like men who are taller than 6’, or at least more than 6” taller (and have a high income and a big… tongue).
• Heterosexual and bisexual men want women only for sex.
• MFF threesomes are not about the two women actually doing anything with each other.
• Women are not even sexually attracted to femininity in each other, therefore Lesbian women are biromantic heterosexuals, emerging trans men or asexuals in denial.
• All gay men are effeminate. (and vice versa)
• Only gay men truly like men who are shorter than 6’.
• All gays are pedophiles. (and vice versa)
  • and so are drag queens,
  • and trans women...
• All furries are zoophiles. (and vice versa)

Political stereotypes[edit]

• All conservatives (or right-wingers) are closed-minded, ignorant, uneducated, and bigoted.
• All liberals (or left-wingers) are hypocritical, oversensitive snowflakes. (i. e. they are really reverse conservatives)
• Feminism is more about women hating men than it is about women loving each other. (especially arguable in the case of certain extreme, nutpicked radicals, though to be precise, this is also based on the stereotype that two women do “nothing” in bed together)
• All vegans are high-horsed and preachy.

Miscellaneous stereotypes[edit]

• All heavy metal fans are obsessed with picky sub-sub-sub-genres.^{[note 5]}
• All fat people are lazy, ugly, and eat too much McDonald's. (To be precise, this is also based on a stereotype of McDonald's.)
  • All people who eat McDonald's are lazy, even if they may not be particularly fat or ugly.
• The movie Trolls: World Tour uses stereotypes as gags and plot points:
  • (Western) classical music is only instrumental.
  • Country music is all gloomy vs. Pop music is all happy.
  • All rock is hard rock.
  • All jazz, which is apparently only instrumental, is smooth jazz.
• All cats hate dogs (and vice versa).
• All RationalWiki editors are immature nerds. (Okay, you might have us there, halfway at least.)

Stereotype threat[edit]

Stereotype threat is a psychological phenomenon in which people suffer from anxiety due to the belief that they are confirming a stereotype about their particular social group, or that if they do not conform to this stereotype, they may be socially ostracised. This is known to have an effect on things such as performance on standardized testing.^[3] For example, the stereotype is that African-American and black people are less intelligent than those of other races. Thus, they may have anxiety about confirming this stereotype when they take the test and, as a result, actually perform worse than they otherwise would have. This is similar to the self-fulfilling prophecy.

Implicit association[edit]

Stereotyping can be explicit (i.e., consciously adopted as a belief) or implicit (unconsciously learned by association or otherwise). Implicit stereotypes can be caused by past experiences, memories, or thoughts. Implicit stereotypes differ from explicit stereotypes in that explicit stereotypes are purposeful, and may be controlled by one's actions or thoughts.

Examples[edit]

Implicit association tests have shown that words like lazy and incompetent are more associated with images of obese individuals than images of thin ones. ^[4] This association is stronger for thin subjects than overweight ones.

The Democratic Party is associated with feminine words including librarian (which is bizarre, given the millennia of males fighting their sisters’ power to learn to read), nurse, and skirt, while the Republican Party is associated with masculine words including janitor, trousers, and razors, regardless of subjects' political affiliation or gender.^[5]

Implicit Association Test[edit]

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is used to gauge stereotyping in subjects, for example, by asking them to associate male or female gender to certain words or objects.^[6] Some media reporting seems to imply that you can discover how bigoted you are by taking the IAT.^[7] However, the test cannot predict how you as an individual will act, it can only predict trends in the larger population, much like how not everyone with a high Body-Mass Index is actually obese. Use of the test in determining specific forms of discrimination has also been criticized -- critics note that the test more likely measures the similar but distinct phenomenon of in-group and out-group effects than specific stereotypes, per se.^[8]

Avoidance[edit]

Implicit stereotypes can be changed, altered, diminished, or strengthened by promoting a counter-stereotype, or being in the company of others who don't believe the stereotype (attending a women's college may reduces associations between leadership and males).

Effects of gender stereotypes[edit]

This graph shows gendered performance on a standardized task under 3 circumstances: 1. No prior priming. 2. Priming the test takers with information suggesting a negative male stereotype for performance. 3. Priming the test takers with information suggesting a negative female stereotype for performance.

Aside from the explicit harm stereotypes cause to dis-empowered groups through promoting direct prejudice, being exposed to (completely artificial) stereotypes can create social divisions where none existed before. This effect is called stereotype threat. In the example to the right, students were given a gender-neutral IQ test, in three groups: a control group, a group first exposed to stereotypes that males perform worse at the test, and a group exposed to stereotypes that females perform worse at the test^[9]. Exposure to stereotypes of any sort impaired female performance, whereas male performance was only hindered by negative male stereotypes. This highlights an effect where "balanced" stereotypes do not necessarily result in "balanced" effects on people. Most people of both genders incorrectly believe that exposure to stereotypes motivate women to perform better.^[10]

See also[edit]

• Pink Stinks
• Bigotry
• Discrimination
• Essentialism
• I'm not prejudiced, but...
• Nutpicking
• Meme
• Straw man
• Bias

External links[edit]

• Zing.
• Understanding Implicit Bias
• Implicit Steretype FAQ
• How Racists Sound to Normal People
• The IAT Test.
• The consequences of stereotypes, as proven by scientific study.

Notes[edit]

References[edit]