13 Consequences of Stereotypes

So, having defined stereotypes, what are the consequences of stereotyping?

There is no doubt that stereotypes are useful. They serve a function. The social world is often too rich, complex, and fast-paced for us to take in every single piece of individuating information. Especially given that we are social creatures and our brains have developed in ways to speedily process the world around us, stereotypes allow us to make quick decisions on limited information.

Outgroup Homogeneity

Indeed, stereotypes allow us to make assumptions about an individual based on their group membership. The group stereotype is applied to the individual. For instance, you are told that you are going to meet an accountant called Shaun. What comes to mind?

1. Good with numbers

2. Probably boring

3. A man

4. Dressed in a brown or black suit

Here, we applied a group stereotype to an individual. Every individual who has been categorized as a  member of the group (in this example, a person as an accountant) is perceived to imbue the same qualities (the same stereotypes) as the whole outgroup. If we apply the same stereotype to different outgroup members, the result is that all outgroup members are seen as highly similar to each other. This resulting effect is referred to as outgroup homogeneity:

The tendency for members belonging to an outgroup to all be perceived as similar to other members of the same outgroup.

This is one of the outcomes of categorizing a person (or object) into a social (or object) category – it increases perceived similarity between the objects within the category (a new apple is seen as similar to other apples; expanding the realm of categorization, we also see that the same new apple is seen as more similar to other fruit than it is to a vegetable). With relatively low levels of contact with the outgroup, we do not get to learn any differentiating information about the outgroup members. As such, the group remains homogeneous. In those few instances when we do come into contact with outgroup members, it is usually in a setting that highlights group memberships. Thinking back to social identity theory, when group memberships are highlighted, we are more likely to behave as members of a group (fulfilling the group stereotype), thus providing “evidence” for the stereotype (Linville et al., 1989).

Contrary to the outgroup, the ingroup is seen to be made up of diverse individuals. While they all share the same ingroup identity, we know some ingroup members are introverts while others are extroverts; some enjoy eating cheese while others do not; some like horror movies while others like romantic comedies. The ingroup is seen as heterogeneous. There are times, however, when we see the ingroup as homogeneous as well! Come to class to learn when this happens.

Outgroup homogeneity is prevalent and universal (Bartsch, Judd, Louw, Park, & Ryan, 1997; Brown & Hewstone, 2005). Indeed, if you are politically conservative, how do you think of those who are politically liberal? Similarly, if you are politically liberal, how do you think of those who are politically conservative? Chances are, you see the other group as being made up of similar individuals.

Perceptual Confirmation

Second, stereotypes colour our perception of behaviour. For instance, at the beginning of the module, I asked you to complete a short Qualtrics exercise. I either presented OPTION A or OPTION B to you and asked you to rate action on how aggressive, positive, and well-intentioned it was.

This exercise (adapted from Brehm, Kassin, Fein, and Burke, 2008) shows how changing the target category while leaving the rest of the sentence the same, can conjure up vastly different scenarios. What leads to these differences? Well, our stereotypes. Our stereotypes influence perceptions and interpretations of the behaviour of various group members (Brehm et al., 2008). The more abiguous the situation, the more likely our stereotypes are to fill in the blanks thus reducing the ambiguity* (Dunning & Sherman, 1997). This effect is called perceptual confirmation

Interpreting information (behaviour) in stereotype-consistent ways

For instance, lets disambiguate some of the above scenarios:

• A construction worker yells at a 14-year old girl to be careful of a falling brick as she walks across the construction site.
• A skinhead grabbed the arm of an elderly woman crossing the street to move her out of the way of a car that ran a red light and was about to hit her.

Once you remove the ambiguity, there is less room for our stereotypes to influence your perception of the scenario (although I am sure you will still have some room for stereotypes to influence how “aggressive” the behaviour was by a construction worker).

* Given that stereotypes help reduce ambiguity of a situation, how can you connect this to Subjective Uncertainty Reduction Theory?

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

Stereotypes create self-fulfilling prophecies. A self-fulfilling prophecy is when

expectations of an another person’s behaviour cause that person to behave consistently with the expectation

Word, Zanna, and Cooper (1974) demonstrated the powerful effects of self-fulfilling prophecies. Study 1 had a naive white participant act as a job interviewer who was to interview two applicants (the two applicants being trained confederates of the experiment). One of the applicants was a white person and the other was a black person. When the participant was interviewing the black applicant, they sat further away (M = 62.29 inches) compared to when they were interviewing the white applicant (M = 58.43 inches, p < .05). They also spent less time interviewing black applicants (M = 9.42 minutes) compared to white applicants (M = 12.77 minutes, p < .01) and made more speech errors (M_{Black applicant} = 3.54 errors/min versus M_{White applicant} = 2.37 errors/min, p < .05).

There is another form of a self-fulfilling prophecy called stereotype threat.

“When members of a stigmatized group find themselves in a situation where negative stereotypes provide a possible framework for interpreting their behaviour, the risk of being judged in light of those stereotypes can elicit a disruptive state that undermines performance…in that domain.”

(Spencer, Logel, & Davies, 2016, p. 415)

Consider thee  following quote by Allport (1954):

“Ask yourself what would happen to your own personality if you heard it said over and over again that you were lazy, a simple child of nature, expected to steal, and had inferior blood. Suppose this opinion were forced on you by the majority of your fellow citizens. And suppose nothing that could do would change this opinion—because you happen to have black skin”

(p. 142)

For over a century, cultural bias in intelligence tests and systematic racism that sought to undermine Black Americans has resulted in Black Americans scoring lower on standardized tests than White Americans (see Steele, 1992). Many have adopted this negative stereotype that Black Americans are not as intelligent as White Americans rather than recoginsing situational factors that better explain acheivement gaps (those of you who are familiar with correspondence biases and self-serving biases can apply these here).  Indeed, these stereotypes are so pervasive that they have been adopted by Black Americans themselves.

Steele and Aronson (1995) hypothesized that in social situations where this negative stereotype (regarding African Americans’ intelligence) is salient can inhibit performance on intelligence tests by African Americans. Steele and Aronson recruited white and black American students to participate in their study. They were to complete a 30 minute test based on the verbal Graduate Record Examination. Before completing the test, half of the black and white participants we told that the study was about “various personal factors involved in performance on problems requiring reading and verbal reasoning abilities” – these instructions were intended to highlight the diagnosticity of the test (and thus highlighting the negative stereotype) to create a threatening situation for black, but not white participants. The instructions to the other half of the participants made no mention of the diagnosticity of the test.

Below we see the results. The black participants in the “diagnostic” condition performed significantly worse than white participants in the “diagnostic condition”. When no mention of the diagnosticity of the test was made, black participants performed as well as white participants. Here, we see how situational cues can affect individual performance.

Stereotypes as Precursors to Prejudice

While we will cover intergroup attitudes and prejudice in more detail in the next module, it is instructive to start combining our understanding of how our cognitions (how we think) affect our affections (how we feel).

Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, and Xu (2002) provide a powerful framework for understanding how stereotypes combine to give rise to our attitudes towrads a group – the stereotype content model. Fiske and colleagues argue that two stereotype dimensions, warmth and competence, accurately capture the major content of stereotypes. They go on to argue that different combinations of warmth (high vs. low) and competence (high vs. low) yeild unique intergroup attitudes and emotions.

What predicts warmth and competence? Competition and status (respectively). If a group is seen as competitive, they are rated low on warmth. If they are seen as non-competitive, they are typically rated as high on warmth. Low status groups are rated as low on competence whereas high status groups are rated as high on competence. Ratings of various groups tend to be universal and replicable across cultures (see Cuddy, Fiske, Kwan, Glick, Demoulin, Leyens et al., 2009; Cuddy, Norton, & Fiske, 2005; Fiske, Cuddy, & Glick, 2007)

For instance, age stereotypes hold that older people, like our grandparents, are seen as non-competitive and low on status (relative to other groups). This places them high on warmth and low on competence (Abrams, Eller, & Bryant, 2006; see Cuddy et al., 2005, cross-cultural evidence). As a result, people look with pity upon old people. Homeless people, on the other hand, are rated as low on both warmth and competence. This particular combination of stereotype content results in feeling contempt

Links to an external site. towards them. Asian Americans, as seen by White Americans, are rated as high on competence, but low on warmth, leading to emotional reactions like threat and/or envy. Ingroup members, who score high on both warmth and competence, are treated with admiration.