In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example, an expectation about the group's personality, preferences, appearance or ability. Stereotypes make information processing easier by allowing the perceiver to rely on previously stored knowledge in place of incoming information. Stereotypes are often faulty and resistant to new information. Research on the accuracy of stereotypes has yielded mixed results: studies on national-origin and astrological-sign stereotypes found them to be inaccurate, while studies on gender stereotypes found them more likely to reflect reality. Although stereotypes generally have negative implications, they may also be positive or neutral. They can also be broken down into two categories: explicit stereotypes, which are conscious, and implicit stereotypes, which are subconscious.
Explicit stereotypes An explicit stereotype is a belief about a group that a person is consciously aware of and knowingly uses to judge others. If a person judges someone from a group for which they hold an explicit stereotype, their decision bias can be partially mitigated through conscious control. However, attempts to offset bias due to conscious awareness of a stereotype often fail to be truly impartial, as they may either underestimate or overestimate the bias created by the stereotype.
Empirical research demonstrates that explicit stereotypes operate through deliberation and controlled reasoning rather than simple and automatic association. In a study on age stereotypes, Huang and Ruthermund (2023) looked at how people consciously judge and apply explicit stereotypes in different situational real life scenarios. Researchers had participants view an elder person walking across a crosswalk and asked them to think and rate how well stereotypic words such as "slow" applied to that individual. The results showed that people do not apply stereotypes and judge blindly, rather they consciously weigh and evaluate the context before choosing to apply a stereotype.
Implicit stereotypes
Implicit stereotypes are those that lie in individuals' subconsciousness, that they have no control or awareness of. "Implicit stereotypes are built based on two concepts: associative networks in semantic (knowledge) memory and automatic activation." Implicit stereotypes are automatic and involuntary associations that people make between a social group and a domain or attribute. For example, a person may believe that both women and men are equally capable of becoming successful electricians, yet still associate the profession more commonly with men. Similarly, a person may believe that both men and women are equally capable of being great teachers, yet still associate the profession more commonly with women.
In social psychology, a stereotype is any widely adopted thought about specific types of individuals or certain ways of behaving intended to represent the entire group of those individuals or behaviors as a whole. These thoughts or beliefs may or may not accurately reflect reality. Within psychology and across other disciplines, different conceptualizations and theories of stereotyping exist, at times sharing commonalities as well as containing contradictory elements. Even in the social sciences and some sub-disciplines of psychology, stereotypes are occasionally reproduced and can be identified in certain theories, for example, in assumptions about other cultures.
Relationship with other types of intergroup attitudes Stereotypes, prejudice, racism, and discrimination are understood as related but different concepts. Stereotypes are regarded as the most cognitive component and often occur without conscious awareness, whereas prejudice is the affective component of stereotyping, and discrimination is one of the behavioral components of prejudicial reactions. In this tripartite view of intergroup attitudes, stereotypes reflect expectations and beliefs about the members of groups perceived as different from one's own, prejudice represents the emotional response, and discrimination refers to actions.
Although related, the three concepts can exist independently of each other. According to Daniel Katz and Kenneth Braly, stereotyping leads to racial prejudice when people emotionally react to the name of a group, ascribe characteristics to members of that group, and then evaluate those characteristics.
Possible prejudicial effects of stereotypes are: Justification of ill-founded prejudices or ignorance Unwillingness to rethink one's attitudes and behavior Preventing some people of stereotyped groups from entering or succeeding in activities or fields Stereotypical racial comedy plays a part in prejudice. Research by researcher Thomas Ford had participants watch a comedy or neutral skit featuring an African American characters in a stereotypical way. They then read a short story in which a student was assaulted by an offender whose race was implied by using names that were tied to traditional backgrounds (Tyrone and Todd). This study consisted of 40 white college students to which the research question was answered with clear evidence that those who watched the comedy skit gave the offender "Tyrone" a significantly higher guilt rating while "Todd" received no change.
Content
Stereotype content refers to the attributes that people think characterize a group. Studies of stereotype content examine what people think of others, rather than the reasons and mechanisms involved in stereotyping.
Early theories of stereotype content proposed by social psychologists such as Gordon Allport assumed that stereotypes of outgroups reflected uniform antipathy. For instance, Katz and Braly argued in their classic 1933 study that ethnic stereotypes were uniformly negative.
By contrast, a newer model of stereotype content theorizes that stereotypes are frequently ambivalent and vary along two dimensions: warmth and competence. Warmth and competence are, respectively, predicted by lack of competition and status. Groups that do not compete with the in-group for the same resources (e.g., college space) are perceived as warm, whereas high-status (e.g., economically or educationally successful) groups are considered competent. The groups within each of the four combinations of high and low levels of warmth and competence elicit distinct emotions. The model explains the phenomenon that some out-groups are admired but disliked, whereas others are liked but disrespected. This model was empirically tested on a variety of national and international samples and was found to reliably predict stereotype content.
An even more recent model of stereotype content called the agency–beliefs–communion (ABC) model suggested that methods to study warmth and competence in the stereotype content model (SCM) were missing a crucial element, that being, stereotypes of social groups are often spontaneously generated.Koch, A.; Imhoff, R.; Dotsch, R.; Unkelbach, C.; & Alves, H. (2016). "The ABC of Stereotypes About Groups: Agency/Socioeconomic Success, Conservative-Progressive Beliefs, and Communion". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 110, 675–709. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000046 Experiments on the SCM usually ask participants to rate traits according to warmth and competence, but this does not allow participants to use any other stereotype dimensions."Groups' warmth is a personal matter: Understanding consensus on stereotype dimensions reconciles adversarial models of social evaluation". Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 89, 103995. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2020.103995 The ABC model, proposed by Koch and colleagues in 2016 is an estimate of how people spontaneously stereotype U.S. social groups of people using traits. Koch et al. conducted several studies asking participants to list groups and sort them according to their similarity. Using statistical techniques, they revealed three dimensions that explained the similarity ratings. These three dimensions were agency (A), beliefs (B), and communion (C). Agency is associated with reaching goals, standing out, and socio-economic status, and it is related to competence in the SCM, with some examples of traits including poor and wealthy, powerful and powerless, and low and high status. Beliefs are associated with views on the world, morals and conservative-progressive beliefs, with some examples of traits including traditional and modern, religious and science-oriented or conventional and alternative. Finally, communion is associated with connecting with others and fitting in and is similar to warmth from the SCM, with some examples of traits including trustworthy and untrustworthy, cold and warm, and repellent and likeable.Koch, A.; Yzerbyt, V.; Abele, A.; Ellemers, N.; & Fiske, S. T. (2021). "Chapter One – Social evaluation: Comparing models across interpersonal, intragroup, intergroup, several-group, and many-group contexts". In: Gawronski, B. (ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 63, pp. 1–68). Academic Press. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.aesp.2020.11.001 According to research using this model, there is a curvilinear relationship between agency and communion.Dragon, P.; Holland, R.; Szumowska, E.; Suska, A.; Kossowska, M.; & Wigboldus, D. (2022). "Explaining the relationship between agency and communion by means of lay personality theories and connectionist modelling". https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/g847b" For example, if a group is high or low in the agency dimension, then they may be seen as uncommunal, whereas groups that are average in agency are seen as more communal.Cao, Y. T.; Sotnikova, A.; Daum'e, H.; Rudinger, R.; & Zou, L. X. (2022). "Theory-grounded Measurement of U.S. Social Stereotypes in English Language Models". North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics. This model has many implications in predicting behaviour towards stereotyped groups. For example, Koch and colleagues recently proposed that perceived similarity in agency and beliefs increases inter-group cooperation.Koch, A.; Dorrough, A.; Glöckner, A.; & Imhoff, R. (2020). "The ABC of society: Perceived similarity in agency/socioeconomic success and conservative-progressive beliefs increases intergroup cooperation". Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 90, 103996. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2020.103996
Functions Early studies proposed that only rigid, repressed, and authoritarian individuals relied on stereotypes. However, contemporary research has refuted this, showing that stereotypes are widespread and better understood as shared group beliefs—held in common by members of the same social group. Modern research asserts that full understanding of stereotypes requires considering them from two complementary perspectives: as shared within a particular culture/subculture and as formed in the mind of an individual person.
Relationship between cognitive and social functions Stereotyping can serve cognitive functions on an interpersonal level and social functions on an intergroup level. For stereotyping to function on an intergroup level (see social identity approaches: social identity theory and self-categorization theory), an individual must see themselves as part of a group, and being part of that group must also be salient for the individual.
Craig McGarty, Russell Spears, and Vincent Y. Yzerbyt (2002) argued that the cognitive functions of stereotyping are best understood in relation to its social functions, and vice versa.
Cognitive functions