12 Defining Stereotypes

The first time the word “stereotype” was used or coined was actually by a journalist, Walter Lippman (1922). He defined a stereotype as, “…generalizations about social groups that are rigidly held, illogically derived, and erroneous in content.” (Judd & Park, 1993, p. 109).

Demonstrating the “erroneous in content” part of the definition, La Piere (1936) performed one of the first studies (if not the first scientific study) into stereotypes. La Piere studied stereotypes held towards Armenians in America. Armenians were said to be dishonest, liars, and deceitful. La Piere investigated the degree of truth behind these stereotypes by studying the credit records of 308 Armenian-Americans in Southern California (Fresno) and compared them to the credit scores of 260 non-Armenians. While La Piere was obtaining the credit records from a store manager, the manage commented

“I can safely say, after many years in credit work, that the Armenians are, as a race, the worst we have to deal with. While I know some, of course, who are fine men, in general you cannot trust them without a signed contract, and only then the force of law can hold them to it”

(La Piere, 1936, p. 233).

Do the credit records reflect these stereotypes? The answer, simply, is “no”. La Piere found that 78% of the Armenians in his sample had good to excellent credit scores, which is comparable to the 76.6% of non-Armenians that had good credit scores. La Piere notes on the remarkability of these findings given that the majority of Armenians in America faced institutionalized racism (see next module) and were economically depressed.

In the same article, La Piere investigates the validity of another stereotype of Armenian-Americans – that they are violent. Some of the non-Armenian individuals that La Piere interviewed tried to justify their racist behaviour by stating that Armenians were responsible for the majority of crimes committed in Fresno (the city and county where the study was being conducted). La Piere, looking at the crime statistics for Fresno, found that Armenians made up 6% of the Fresnoan population but were involved in about 1.5% of arrests. Despite these statistics, prosecuting attorneys, judges, and staff in the District Attorney’s office held the negative stereotype that Armenians were violent.

Do stereotypes need to be erroneous?

The idea that stereotypes are inaccurate is hotly debated (see, for example, Jussim, Crawford, Anglin, Chambers, Stevens, and Cohen, 2016 for a review). We do find that some stereotypes are accurate. What do you think of when you think of an apple? Likely sweet and crunchy come to mind. If you see an apple you’ve never seen before, you are likely to think that it is sweet and crunchy. You apply the stereotype of the category apples to the single, new exemplar of apples without having tried it.

Similarly, when asked about a stereotype for an accountant, one might be “good at math”, and for a doctor, “intelligent”. These seem to be fairly accurate stereotypes about people in these two professions. When you see someone who is an accountant, you immediately assume that they are good at math. When you see a doctor, you immediately assume that they are intelligent. This exercise fundamentally changes the way we think about stereotypes. You see an individual who is part of a group (accountants) and you apply the group stereotype to the individual much the same way you see an apple and apply the stereotype of “apples” (sweet and crunchy) to the single exemplar. Allport and Tajfel were amongst the first to make such an argument – that stereotypes function as social categories (an accountant — accountants)  much like object categories (a single apple — category “apply”).

Such an re-conceptualization of the accuracy of stereotypes (they are erroneous) is not understood as a defining characteristic, but rather an empirical question. Some authors claim that stereotype accuracy is one of the most replicable effects in social psychology (Jussim et al., 2016). But, be careful, there may be an accurate stereotype (few Black people go to college) that leads to an erroneous stereotype: that Black people are not smart enough to get into college. Such logic ignores centuries of racial discrimination and its effects (e.g., social economic, social capital, bias in admissions, stereotype threat, and more) that better explain why fewer Black people are in College and completely refutes the erroneous stereotype that they are less intelligent. Note: I am using this example because it relates to the early research on prejudice and racism which we will cover in our next module.

Many definitions of stereotypes assume that stereotypes are always negative. This is also not the case. In the Armenian example above (liers, aggressive, thieves), those stereotypes are most definitely negative. Indeed, what we think of when we think of the word “stereotype” and how stereotypes often pop up in our lives, is mostly negative. In the accountant or doctor example, however, they are positive stereotypes. Therefore, it is also improper to think of stereotypes as purely negative. Stereotypes can be both positive and negative. We typically assign more positive stereotypes to the ingroup and more negative stereotypes to the outgroup.

So, how do we define stereotypes? Schneider (2005), after summarizing over a dozen definitions of stereotypes states “It is readily apparent that there is no real consensus on what stereotypes are.” (p. 17).

Dang.

Schneider (2005) does, at least, offer a simple definition

Stereotypes are qualities perceived to be associated with particular groups or categories of people

(p. 24)

Judd and Park (1993) also adopt a rather broad definition stating that

“[a] stereotype is an individual’s set of beliefs about the characteristics or attributes of a group”

(p. 110)

These simple definitions, by means of exclusion, do not talk about the accuracy or of the stereotype.

Perhaps a more complete definition would include a comment on valence and accuracy, like that offered by Jones  (1997), who defines stereotypes as

“a positive or negative set of beliefs held by an individual about the characteristic of a group of people. It varies in its accuracy, the extent to which it captures the degree to which the stereotyped group members possess these traits, and the extent to which the set of beliefs is shared by others”

(p. 170)

I think we’ll use Jones’ definition of a stereotype for this course.