9/15/06
Stereotyping
Lee Jussim
Cambridge Dictionary of Psychology
David Matsumoto, Ed.
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“Stereotype” is a noun and refers to a thing – people’s beliefs about groups (see entry on
Stereotypes). “Stereotyping” is a verb and refers to action – the use of stereotypes to judge other
people. It typically refers to using stereotypes to judge a particular person. If, for example, people
rate the intelligence of a student from a lower social class background less favorably than they rate
the intelligence of a student from a higher social class background, despite identical academic
performance on identical tests, people’s social class stereotypes would appear to be influencing and
biasing their judgments of these particular students. The primary questions addressed by research
on stereotyping have been: 1. What types of influences do stereotypes exert on how we judge
individuals; 2. To what extent do people rely on stereotypes versus individuating information (see
below) when judging other people?; and 3. Under what conditions are people more or less likely to
rely on stereotyping when judging other people?
Perceiver, Target, and Individuating Information: Some Necessary Jargon
Everyone in social interaction both perceives other people and is a target of other people’s
perceptions. Nonetheless, in order to have a comprehensible discussion of the role of stereotypes
in person perception, it is necessary to distinguish the “perceiver” from the “target.” The perceiver is
the person holding and possibly using a stereotype to judge the target, who is, potentially, a target of
stereotyping. Thus, despite the fact that everyone is both perceiver and target, this discussion, like
most on stereotypes and person perception, relies on the artificial but necessary distinction between
perceiver and target.
What is the alternative to “stereotyping”? It is the use of individuating information – judging
individual targets, not on the basis of stereotypes regarding their group, but, instead, on the basis of
their personal, unique, individual characteristics. “Individuation,” therefore, refers to judging a
person as a unique individual, rather than as a member of a group, and “individuating information”
refers to the unique personality, behaviors, attitudes, accomplishments, etc. of a particular target.
Ways in Which Stereotypes can Influence Judgments of Individual Targets
There are two broadly separable ways in which stereotypes can influence how people perceive a
particular target. Biases occur when stereotypes influence perception, evaluation, memory and
judgment. Biases alter how a perceiver judges a target but do not necessarily directly affect the
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target. Self-fulfilling prophecies, however, occur when the stereotype influences perception because
it first alters targets’ actual behavior (which is then perceived accurately). Each of these are
discussed next.
Biases. Stereotypes lead to many biases in perception, evaluation, judgment, attribution, and
memory. Typically, these are stereotype-confirming biases – biases that involve seeing targets as
more consistent with the stereotype than they really are. Stereotypes bias perception -- for example,
people may sometimes perceive a man as more assertive or aggressive than a woman, even when
their behavior is similar. Stereotypes bias judgments -- for example, Whites are more likely to judge
a Latino or lower SES defendant as guilty, compared to a White or middle class defendant, even
when the evidence is identical. Stereotypes bias attributions – for example, given the same life
experiences, Whites will view an African-American on welfare as lazier and less competent than a
White on welfare.
Stereotypes also sometimes lead people to adopt different standards of judgment for different
groups. People will often adopt a lower standard for judging the athletic performance of Whites, the
academic performance of African-Americans, and the math achievements of girls than they use for
judging, respectively, the athletic performance of African-Americans, the academic performance of
Whites, and the math achievement of boys.
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,
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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.”
Self-fulfilling prophecies. 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
literature have involved demonstrating the potentially self-fulfilling effects of stereotypes involving
race, sex, and physical attractiveness. For example, in simulated job interviews, stereotypes have
led African-Americans and women to perform objectively worse than, respectively, Whites and men.
Similarly, school-age children tend to perform at school at levels consistent with their parents’ sex
stereotypes – if the parents think students of their child’s gender are superior at math, their child
does better; if the parents think students of the other gender are superior at math, their child does
worse.
To What Extent Do Stereotypes Bias Judgments?
Bias. Stereotypes produce both biases and self-fulfilling prophecies, at least sometimes. In fact,
so much research has found evidence of stereotypes biasing person perception, judgment, and
memory that some researchers have suggested that stereotypes are a “default” basis for person
perception (this is the idea that people routinely rely on stereotypes rather than individuating
information, except under relatively unusual or infrequent circumstances). Consequently, a selective
reading of the evidence can lead to a very compelling story about the power and pervasiveness of
the biases produced by stereotypes, along the following lines: “Stereotypes influence judgment, they
influence attribution, they influence memory, and the even change objective reality!”
Such a story would be “true” in the sense that none of its component claims are false, but it
would also be woefully incomplete. This is because this compelling story systematically ignores the
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very large number of studies that show little or no evidence of stereotypes biasing perception of
leading to self-fulfilling prophecies. To date, over 300 studies of the role of stereotypes in person
perception have been performed, and these have been subjected to multiple meta-analyses (a
sophisticated statistical technique designed to obtain the overall, average effect sizes obtained from
multiple studies performed on similar or related topics). The bottom line from the meta-analyses is
that, despite the existence of some very compelling individual studies, on average, the overall
influence of stereotypes on person perception is quite modest, corresponding to a correlation of .10
between target group and judgments.
This means that, on average, stereotypes substantially affect about 5% of people’s judgments
about individuals, which, of course, is the same thing as not substantially affecting 95% of their
judgments. It can also be viewed as meaning that a one standard deviation change in a stereotypebased expectation for a target leads, on average, to a one tenth of one standard deviation change in
perceivers’ judgments of a target. Such an effect is about one half the size of the typical effect found
in social psychology. This means that, although stereotypes can and sometimes do have wideranging influences on perception and judgment, typically, such effects are modest.
This is in stark contrast to the strong, robust effects of individuating information. Nearly all
studies that have compared effects of stereotypes to that of individuating information find larger –
and, typically, much larger – effects of individuating information. Meta-analyses have shown that
individuating information typically correlates about .70 with judgment and perception. This means
that individuating information affects nearly all judgments people make about individuals; it means a
one standard deviation change in a stereotype-based expectation produces a seven tenths of a
standard deviation change in perception; and it is among the largest effects ever consistently found
by social psychologists.
Self-fulfilling prophecy. An essentially similar pattern has occurred with respect to self-fulfilling
prophecies. Again, a selective reading of the evidence can be used to craft a story that emphasizes
the power of stereotypes, especially those involving race, sex, and physical attractiveness to create
their own reality through self-fulfilling prophecies. Unfortunately, however, many of these studies
have proven difficult to replicate. In some cases, there have been no attempts to replicate, and, in
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others, the replications have failed. So what is one to believe? Again, a good answer comes from
meta-analyses. In general, perceivers’ expectations have self-fulfilling effects of about .2 on target
behavior. This means that, out of 100 targets, self-fulfilling prophecies substantially change the
behavior of 10, which also means they do not substantially change the behavior of 90. It means,
e.g., that a stereotype-based expectation that is one standard deviation lower than the mean would
reduce, on average, targets’ SAT scores by 20 points. .2 is close to the average effect found in
social psychology.
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, if they occur across many interactions, they may add to one another and
accumulate to become quite 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, self-fulfilling prophecies are more likely to
dissipate (shrink, get smaller) over time and across perceivers than they are to accumulate.
Under What Conditions are Stereotypes Most and Least Likely to Bias Judgments?
Because of the potential for stereotypes to systematically harm or disadvantage members of
particular groups, research has explored the conditions that increase their effects and those that
eliminate their effects altogether. In general, stereotypes have larger effects on perception when
people are not well-acquainted with the target, when perceivers have little or no individuating
information about the target, and when they have ambiguous individuating information. Stereotype
effects are also larger when people “essentialize” groups – when they believe members of groups
have some sort of universal “essence” that binds them all together in some way (see the entry for
Stereotypes for more details). Stereotype effects are frequently reduced to zero when perceivers
have a great deal of clear individuating information about a target.
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Stereotyping Can Increase the Accuracy of Person Perception
Not all influences of stereotypes on judgment are unjustified. In many situations, it is
reasonable, appropriate, and justified for people to use their expectations as a basis for making
predictions about particular individuals and for “filling in the blanks” when faced with unclear or
ambiguous situations. First, consider a nonsocial example. In the Northern Hemisphere, it is
usually much warmer in July than in January. People are, therefore, doing something quite
reasonable if they expect any particular July day to be warmer than any particular January day. This
is a reasonable expectation, despite the fact that, sometimes, daytime highs in January are warmer
than nighttime lows in July.
This basic principle – that an accurate belief can lead to an expectation that is as accurate as
possible under the circumstances – is just as true for social beliefs, such as stereotypes, as it is for
nonsocial beliefs. So, if without any additional, relevant individuating information, if people expect
any given woman to be shorter than any given man, or if they expect any given doctor to be
wealthier than any given janitor, or if they expect any given Latino-American adult to have completed
less education than any given Asian-American adult, they are similarly simply being as reasonable
and rational (and as accurate) as possible, in the absence of specific relevant information about
each target.
Similarly, accurate beliefs can often be appropriately used to “fill in the blanks” when perceiving
ambiguous situations. For example, people interpret a fidgety interviewee to be “nervous” if they
believe the interview is about sex, but “bored” if they think it is about international economics. So, if
people find out that both a member of a pacifist group and an Al Qaeda member “attacked” the
United States, they are simply being reasonable if they use their beliefs about pacifists and Al
Qaeda members (their stereotypes) and assume that the anti-war activist’s attack was a verbal
critique of U.S. policies, but the Al Qaeda attack was something much more dangerous.
Only a very small number of studies have examined whether stereotypes increase or reduce the
accuracy of perceptions and judgments, but what they find is most interesting. If the stereotype itself
is accurate (see entry on “Stereotypes” for a fuller discussion of accuracy and inaccuracy in
stereotypes), “stereotyping” (i.e., using the stereotype to judge an individual) will often increase the
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accuracy of those judgments, at least in the absence of perfectly clear and relevant individuating
information. (When individuating information is perfectly clear and relevant, people should rely
exclusively on it for making judgments – as, in fact, most research shows they do). On the other
hand, when the stereotype is inaccurate, stereotyping reduces the accuracy of person perception
judgments.
For the practical purposes, therefore, of eliminating unfair biases and maximizing accuracy,
therefore, an important starting point is simply understanding how and when stereotypes enhance or
reduce the accuracy of person perception:
1. An influence of an inaccurate stereotype on person perception will almost always reduce the
accuracy of person perception judgments. For example, consider people holding a manifestly
incorrect stereotype: That Asian-Americans are educationally disadvantaged (Asian Americans earn
college and graduate degrees at higher rates than any other racial/ethnic group tracked by the U.S.
Census). If these perceivers’ erroneous stereotypes influence their judgments of particular Asian
targets, they are most likely going to underestimate the academic accomplishments of Asian targets.
That is, they will be both biased and wrong.
2. When perfectly diagnostic individuating information is available, people should use that,
regardless of how accurate their stereotypes are. For example, if Bob is 65 years old and has
gotten into eight car accidents in the last four years, and James is a 21 year old who has not had an
accident in the last four years, one should conclude that James is a better driver than Bob, even
though, in general, older people are safer drivers than are younger people.
3. When perfectly diagnostic individuating information is not available, if people also hold an
accurate stereotype, relying on that stereotype will generally increase, not reduce, the accuracy of
their person perception judgments. If, for example, we learn that both Jane and Joe like to play
basketball, even though people who play basketball may, on average, be taller than those who do
not, it is still justified, reasonable, rational, and most likely to be accurate if one guesstimates that
Joe is taller than Jane.
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Conclusions
Stereotyping occurs in a wide variety of ways. Stereotypes influence people’s perceptions,
judgments and evaluations of, attributions and memory for, and interactions with other people.
It is most likely to occur when targets’ behavior or attributes are unavailable or unclear. However,
people also easily discard their stereotypes when judging others, at least when they have clear,
individualized information about those others. Although there are conditions under which
stereotypes can strongly influence person perception, in general, such influence is weak, fragile, and
fleeting, largely because, in general, people rely heavily on individuating information when it is
available.