Don’t Fence Me In; Why Do We Stereotype?

One of the many things that frontal lobes do is inhibit inappropriate impulses and behaviour. Here are two examples of how my frontal lobes have recently saved me from serving a prison sentence:

Example One: I purchased a DVD from a well known electronics store and as I was exiting the store, their security alarm sounded. I walked straight over to the security guard and opened the store-labelled bag so he could see its contents. He looked inside, missed the receipt and held the DVD right up to my face with an expression that read “And where is your proof of purchase for this item you young, unshaven shoplifter?”. Luckily my frontal lobes overrode my initial impulse to staple the docket to his forehead. Instead, I reached inside the bag and held the docket up to his face in an attempt to convey a reply along the lines of “You would have seen that it was right inside this bag if your inability to accept that a young male is able to make a legitimate purchase from the store which puts food on your table didn’t make you so short-sighted, you stupid Neanderthal”. Frontal lobes 1, violent impulses wanting to cause grievous bodily harm to a prejudiced yet otherwise innocent security guard 0.

Example Two: Driving into the city on a Friday night I was stopped for a random breath-test. The following interactions took place whilst I waited in line to be breath tested:

Police Officer #1: Looks the car up and down from both sides then motions for me to wind down the window. Did you know your car runs out of registration at midnight tonight?

Me: Yes officer. This is actually my Dad’s work car and it has been registered but his work is still waiting to receive the new registration sticker from the RTA.

PO #1: Hmmm . . . well, it is illegal to drive an unregistered vehicle. I hope you’ve got a plan in place come midnight.

Me: Well the car is registered but my Dad just hasn’t got the sticker yet so I guess that’s the plan.

PO #1: Just remember that it’s illegal to drive an unregistered car.

Me: Yes, thank you officer.

Police Officer #2: Looks the car up and down from both sides. Did you know your car runs out of registration at midnight tonight?

Me: Yes officer. This is actually my Dad’s work car and it has been registered but his work is still waiting to receive the new registration sticker from the RTA.

PO #2: Well I hope you’ve got a plan in place come midnight cause it is illegal to drive an unregistered car.

Me: Yes officer, I’m aware of that. The car is registered it’s just that. . .

PO #2: And make sure that when you do affix the registration sticker to the windscreen you place it lower than this one. You can hardly even see this one through the tint.

Me:  . . . Ok, thanks mate.

Finally, I drove up to police officer #3 who was conducting the breath testing.

Police Officer #3: Looks the car up and down from both sides. Please count to ten slowly sir.

Me: 1, 2, 3 . . .

PO #3: That’ll do. Did you know your car runs out of registration at midnight tonight? I hope you’ve got a plan because it is illegal to drive an unregistered car.

Me: Yep, I’ve got a plan.

PO #3: Well I hope you do because it is illegal to drive an unregistered car.

Me: Yes I understand, thank you.

With frontal lobes ensuring that my fantasy of flattening three police officers with peanut sized brains and leaving them as bloody roadkill did not become a reality, I drove off into the distance.  Frontal lobes 2, murderous desire towards members of the police force whose discrimination and incredibly poor listening skills were annoying but certainly not grounds for a triple homicide; 0.

These examples raise two important issues about the experience of being judged according to negative stereotypes. Firstly it stings and, as is evidenced by the strength of feeling in these examples, this sting doesn’t fade quickly. Secondly, it can lead to atypical behaviour in the person being judged which ironically makes them adhere more closely to the stereotype than they normally would. Before exploring these issues in more depth however, some more basic questions about stereotyping need to be examined. What is it? Who does it? and Why does it occur?.

A stereotype is a type of schema, an expectation about how the world will work that is built up through our past experiences. As humans, we have a number of different schemas that we use to operate effectively in everyday social situations. We have expectations about the procedures that should be followed if we’re a customer at a restaurant (an event schema or script), how comfortable we will feel mingling with strangers at a party (self-schema), how much our sibling will like their birthday present (person schema) and what sort of person is most likely to be a DJ (role schema). A stereotype is a special type of role schema in which we hold a broad set of beliefs about the characteristics that members of a particular social category (such as gender, age, race or sexuality) are most likely to exhibit. A new individual we come across will activate more than one stereotype at a time because they fall into a number of social categories, however often one or a number of stereotypes will be stronger than others.

Holding stereotypes is an inherent part of being human. But stereotypes are not as evil, in and of themselves, as their reputation may lead us to believe. In fact, schemas and stereotypes have served us well in our ancestral history and to a large extent continue to do so today. They evolved to help us deal competently with the large amount of complex information we had to process. Our past survival depended on efficient processing of information. If each time we chanced upon a sabre toothed tiger in the jungle we took the time to process all available information anew we would have been eaten before we’d completed the task. So we developed cognitive shortcuts or schemas, preassembled mental frameworks into which new information could quickly be slotted rather than having to undergo complete processing. Nowadays our immediate survival is perhaps less dependent on schemas and stereotypes. However, they still help us to interpret and respond to everyday life events whilst preserving valuable cognitive resources which can be used in more interesting, unique or rewarding activities.

Imagine buying sausages for the BBQ you’re hosting tonight at a butcher’s store that you haven’t visited before. You enter the store and take a ticket from the machine at the counter, then wait in line to be served. In line, you write a quick text and send it to all the friends in your phone to invite them around to the BBQ. Once you’ve reached the top of the line, you order sausages and some pre-made vegie patties for the friends you’ve invited who are vegetarian.

Although it may not be obvious on the surface, schemas and stereotypes are saving you a lot of time and effort here. Your script for being served at a butcher’s shop means that you still function effectively in an unfamiliar setting. Rather than waiting fruitlessly to be served without a ticket or having to ask other customers what to do in this situation, your script buys you the time to be able to text your friends. You don’t deliberate about whom to invite because you know (from your self-schema) that the more people who are at these things, the better time you will have. You don’t need to ask the person behind the counter what they are doing there or whether they know anything about sausages because they are wearing a butcher’s apron. This piece of information activates your ‘butcher’ role schema and hence you order sausages from them without hesitation. Holding person schemas allows you to remember that some of your friends don’t eat meat and to cater for their needs accordingly.

Yet although stereotypes can be useful, their uncritical application to a group of people can blind us to characteristics of individual group members that do not fit the stereotype. What if, for example, being male is the most pertinent characteristic in my ‘butcher’ stereotype and the butcher’s store I walk into is staffed entirely by females. When it comes time to order, I’m going to be confused. There sure are a lot of women wearing navy and blue striped aprons in this store, but where’s a butcher when you need one?

Prejudice and discrimination come into the picture when negative stereotypes are used as the sole basis for judging a group and relating to group members. An individual must have criminal tendencies because they identify with a certain ethnicity, be of a lower intelligence because they are of a certain social class or be a junkie because they dress a certain way. Negative stereotypes have been found to operate at automatic, unconscious levels and prejudice and discrimination have been thought to inevitably follow. We are more likely to view groups to which we don’t belong (outgroups) as completely homogenous whilst overestimating the ability and diversity of members of groups to which we do belong (ingroups). Similarly, even if we are exposed to a broad range of information about outgroup members, we are more likely to select and remember information that confirms our negative stereotype than challenges it.

There are obvious problems that arise when behaviour is shaped by prejudice and discrimination stemming from negative stereotypes. As already mentioned earlier, being on the receiving end of this behaviour stings. Just because I’m a young male doesn’t mean I’m going to shoplift or drive an unregistered car. And as a young, white, middle-class, educated, Australian male living in a middle class suburb I’m aware that in terms of discrimination and prejudice I have had a very, very easy ride. Being judged according to negative stereotypes that exist about some of the social categories that I inhabit might be annoying but it won’t impinge seriously on my career or educational opportunities, result in forced removal from my parents, force me into slavery or lead to my death. Most of the categories that I fluked being born into enjoy a relatively discrimination free status within our society. Yet being judged on the basis of negative stereotypes that do exist about some social categories with which I identify still hurts immensely and makes my blood boil. Imagine how much more painful this experience must be for those who have to deal daily with negative stereotypes that are tied to every social category with which they identify and for those whose life quality is radically reduced due to the behaviour of people who hold these stereotypes.

Prejudice and discrimination directed towards an individual can also elicit abnormal behaviour from them which ironically conforms to the underlying negative stereotype. A number of studies have looked at this phenomenon, labelled stereotype threat, in the domain of performance on cognitive tests. If two groups of older people are given a test of cognitive ability, the group told that young people do better on the test will perform more poorly than the group that is told nothing about the test. Stereotype threat is even higher and its effects more marked when women are given difficult maths tests or Black Americans are given IQ tests. Negative stereotypes yielding poor performance expectations in both of these situations are so culturally prevalent that high stereotype threat exists even when nothing is said at the start of the test. Simply administering the test will result in poor performance. Performance improves significantly however, if stereotype threat is lowered by informing those sitting the test that members of different genders/races have been found to perform equally well on the test. Stereotype threat reduces performance on a test because valuable mental resources are consumed by two things; the anxiety that arises when an individual feels they may be judged according to a negative stereotype and the desire not to conform to this stereotype. Once stereotype threat is lowered, these resources are freed up and able to be used to enhance test performance.

Stereotype threat also influenced my behaviour in the two examples I provided. In both situations it elicited behaviour in me that was closer to the young punk I was expected to be rather than the more mature adult I normally am. I don’t shove dockets in the faces of store security guards, answer authority figures with tersely defensive replies or fantasise about inflicting extreme pain on other human beings. Curiously, I also met negative stereotype with negative stereotype, summing up the security guard as a Neanderthal and the policemen as peanut-brained idiots. Their inability to see past a negative stereotype when dealing with me meant that I could see no more than a negative stereotype when dealing with them. Whether my less than desirable ‘performance’ resulted from anxiety (as the stereotype threat theorists may say) or more from anger at the injustice of being judged unfairly (a “Fine, if you want negative stereotype, I’ll give you negative stereotype” moment) is uncertain. Of most importance though is that I automatically sank to uncharacteristically low levels of behaviour when others behaved in a way that indicated this was all that could be expected of me.

So how can we avoid being prejudiced and discriminating against outgroups if stereotyping is part of the human condition? And how can we manage to achieve this living in a world where negative stereotypes abound in everyday life in TV and print media, novels, song lyrics and conversations at the local shops? The landmark work of psychologist Patricia Devine at the University of Wisconsin is a good point of departure for answering these questions. Devine has questioned the assumed link between negative stereotypes and prejudice and discrimination. In her research with persons low and high in prejudice, all individuals, regardless of their level of prejudice were acutely aware of negative stereotypes. The factor determining whether negative stereotypes resulted in prejudice and discrimination was how closely these stereotypes conformed to personal beliefs that person held. This finding is important because it demonstrates that although stereotypes may be automatic, prejudice and discrimination do not have to be. However, ensuring that they aren’t is hard work. Those who were low in prejudice made a conscious effort both to inhibit thoughts congruent with negative stereotypes and to replace them with thoughts which negated the stereotype, reflected equality and were closer to their personal beliefs. Those who were high in prejudice just accepted the stereotype.

From Devine’s work it seems that the first step to guarding against being prejudiced and discriminatory is simply being aware of the negative stereotypes that exist around us. Being aware of these stereotypes can lead us to evaluate them against the reality we experience and then they can be shunned if found inappropriate. Objectivity in this evaluation is difficult however. If a certain stereotype appeals to us, we are more likely to look for and find evidence which confirms it. Making a concerted effort to identify people who prove to be exceptions to a negative stereotype and having positive interactions with members from groups considered outgroups can be good ways to shortcircuit this inbuilt cognitive shortcut mechanism.

Tiredness and stress harness mental resources and can therefore make the unquestioning acceptance of stereotypes more appealing. Being aware of this can also help to minimise prejudicial and discriminatory behaviour that we may more easily slip into when we find ourselves in these states. And there are ways to react when being judged according to a negative stereotype which are more helpful than the ways in which I reacted in the examples. As Oliver James describes in his pop-psych book They F*** You Up, the best way to deal with being typecast is to behave in completely the opposite way to what is expected. This practice forces the person who is doing the typecasting to reconsider the validity of their negative stereotype in a way which minimises threat and conflict. It would have given my frontal lobes more of a workout, but making eye contact with the security guard, smiling and heading in his direction before the alarm sounded may have resulted in a different interaction. It may also have resulted in the same interaction but at least I would have been a more innocent player in the negative stereotyping game.

With strong ties to our evolutionary background and our social, historical and cultural contexts, stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination are complex areas which are still in need of further research in the future. Looking at all this complexity, I sure am grateful for my frontal lobes.

If you’re interested in finding out more about schemas, stereotypes, stereotype threat and the studies mentioned in this article, check out the following references:

Abrams, D., Eller, A., & Bryant, J. (2006). An age apart: The effects of intergenerational contact and stereotype threat on performance and intergroup bias. Psychology and Aging, 21(4), 691-702.

Blair, I. V. (2002). The malleability of automatic stereotypes and prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 6(3), 242-261.

Devine, P. G. (1989). Stereotypes and prejudice: Their automatic and controlled components. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56(1), 5-18.

James, O. (2007). They f*** you up. London: Bloomsbury.

Johnston, L. C., & Macrae, C. N. (1994). Changing social stereotypes: The case of the information seeker. European Journal of Social Psychology, 24(581-592).

Macrae, C. N., Milne, A. B., & Bodenhausen, G. V. (1994). Stereotypes as energy-saving devices: A peek inside the cognitive toolbox. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66(1), 37-47.

Quinn, D. M., & Spencer, S. J. (2001). The interference of stereotype threat with women’s generation of mathematical problem-solving strategies. Journal of Social Issues, 57(1), 55-71.

Spencer, S. J., Steele, C. M., & Quinn, D. M. (1999). Stereotype threat and women’s math performance. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 35, 4-28.

Steele, C. M., & Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(5), 797-811.

Image courtesy of Robert A Dickinson on Flickr