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In the last year's conflicted, difficult, and halting discussions of race relations in America, one of the things that I have heard over and over and over from my White colleagues are the phrases "I am not a racist" and "I am not prejudiced."
Over and over I have heard the phrase "I don't have stereotypes."
I know people of good will are hurt when accused of prejudice. But everything I know as a psychologist tells me that racial and ethnic stereotypes influence the behavior of anyone growing up in the United States. It's why a police officer looks at a 12 year old boy holding a toy gun in an urban park and shoots him.
Recognizing the fact of stereotypes and their influence on us is important.
Stereotypes are useful.
Stereotypes are useful summaries that help us predict attributes in the absence of data. They are cognitive shortcuts.
All of us have stereotypes. Liberal. Texan. Professor. Teenager. Stay at home mom.
Each of these labels activates a whole set of other ideas that we have previously associated with that label. So if I say someone is a professor, I am more likely to think tweed jacketed man with glasses than tatooed woman with green hair, even though I know professors who fit each of these descriptions. Not only am I more likely to think about bespectacled men in tweed, but I will respond faster on a whole host of judgement tasks that involve words I associate with the idea of 'professor,' like 'book' or 'smart' or 'liberal' or 'snob.' That's how stereotypes work.
Stereotypes are useful in the absence of data.
The label 'teenager' activates ideas like delinquency, emotional volatility, sex, and rebellion. If we know nothing about a person except that they're a teenager, we will predict they will be like our stereotype of a teenager. But if I know particular teenagers, when I think of them, my knowledge of their particular qualities will overwrite these stereotypes. So I think gifted violin prodigy who volunteers with kittens when thinking of Kaitlyn or Sherlock Holmes fantatic when I think of Ben.
Interestingly, some research says that when the particular individual we are considering is atypical of the stereotype of the group we place them in, the contrast of their individual characteristics and the stereotypes makes us think they are MORE DIFFERENT from the stereotype than they really are. For example, in an experiment run in our lab, we showed videos of 'romantic couples.' Men tend to be stereotyped as more physically aggressive in romantic relationships, especially in the context of domestic abuse. In the videos we showed, we manipulated that variable. The scripted words and behaviors of the couples were identical in all videos, but in two of the videos the man was the aggressor and in two it was the woman. We also shot the videos showing low and moderate physical aggression.
This design gave us both stereotype confirming behaviors (men hitting women) and stereotype disconfirming behaviors (women hitting men). In both high and low aggression conditions, people reacted strongly to men's aggression. This was not true to our contrary-to-stereotype women, however. In the low aggression condition, people did not notice women's aggression—either in their reports or as evidenced by change of heart rate. In the more aggressive condition, women who hit their partners were judged to be more physically aggressive than men and people's hearts showed a large jump when women hit their male partners.
In sum, men behaving consistent with stereotypes were judged as expected (low aggression noticed and rated as less aggressive than in the high aggression condition). But women's behavior that was inconsistent with stereotyped behavior was not noticed when it was low. When markedly different than stereotypes behavior was rated more aggressive than identical behavior by men.
If we extend these findings to stereotypes about race and ethnicity, this suggests behavior consistent with stereotypes will be noticed and thus maintained. Behavior not consistent with stereotypes may not be noticed and thus will not diminish the power of stereotypes (our viewers showed NO CHANGE IN HEARTBEAT when women hit their partners in the low aggression condition - people didn't even see it). Behavior that is strongly inconsistent with stereotypes may make a particularly strong impression because it contrasts with expectations.
A 20 Second Experiment
We naturally form stereotypes to help us predict behavior in situation where we don't know very much about the specific people we will be interacting with. Those stereotypes influence our behaviors and perceptions.
Let's posit someone grows up in an environment where they don't hear a lot of overtly bigoted or racist statements. How do stereotypes form? The answer is culture. We are good at building stereotypes. It doesn't take a lot.
Open a new tab. Google 'poverty' and click on 'images'. What do you see?
Now Google 'student'.
Notice anything?
Next thing I tried were 'genius', 'professional', 'business', and 'entrepreneur. It was striking.
You can play around with it. I was actually impressed by the relative neutrality of images that came up when I Googled 'criminal' and 'delinquent' or 'homeless'. I have been told that serious efforts have been made to change the models used in advertising content in response to protests about stereotyping, and that feeds into what we see in searches. But that is not true if one looks at representation of people engaged in violent crime on television or the media (although things have improved over the last few years). And the word 'terrorist'? I only saw one white supremicist come up in the first few pages that popped up on my screen (a Norwegian). This despite that fact that nearly twice as many people in the US have been killed by "white supremacists, antigovernment fanatics and other non-Muslim extremists than by radical Muslims" since 9/11. Boko Harom did not appear either.
Once you start noticing it, you'll see these patterns everywhere. Advertisers and journalists try to evoke our emotions quickly by showing us an image that will activate a whole lot of related ideas and create a shortcut to the ones they are trying to illustrate. My sister, who works in communications, tells me that stock photo images are particularly prone to stereotyped representations.
Interestingly, a study of Black and White consumers' perceptions of minority representation in advertising found that perceptions depended on ethnicity and in ways consistent with stereotyping and beliefs. When there were few Black models, Whites over-estimated their prevalence. When there were many, their estimates became more accurate. Blacks showed the opposite bias. They accurately perceived Black representation when numbers were low, but underestimated representation when it was high.
Recognizing Stereotypes Is An Act of Empowerment
It is human to see people and use basic categories to predict behavior in the absence of data. Recognizing that it is likely that ethnicity and gender are two ways we categorize people and that this is going to influence our judgment and reactions until we have more information is a first step in reducing its influence on our behavior. It allows us to start to exercise conscious control of our cognitions and understand ourselves better.
