ISTM that what this boils down to is that stereotypes can be true, but you can’t take them too far.
Meaning that suppose for an example it is a fact that members of Group A are more likely to have such-and-such characteristic than the average human being (or members of Group B). If you think of it that way and represent it that way, meaning your position is simply “members of Group A are more likely to have such-and-such characteristic than the average human (or members of Group B)”, then you are 100% accurate, and the stereotype in this form is not a distortion of reality. At the same time, if you put it as “all members of Group A have such-and-such characteristic” then your statement is a distortion of reality and is 100% incorrect.
However, even in cases in which your understanding of the stereotype is accurate, there’s another issue of whether you should act on it, versus giving the member of Group A a chance to be judged on their own merits instead of some statistical likelihood based on group averages.
I can’t think of a reason for members of a group agreeing with it being determinative of whether something is a fair representation. Especially for stereotypes which carry (or are thought to carry) some sort of negative connotation.
I am not sure about randomly selected people, but Catholic priests as a group are no more likely to molest children than any other group with contact with minors, like teachers or football coaches or suchlike. (Cite.)
All correct. Additionally, if you are speaking about groups, you are that much more likely to be correct, because statistics apply to groups.
Not 100%. If Group A has X characteristic at a significantly higher rate than randomly, and one assumes that every time you encounter a member of A he has characteristic X, you will be correct more often than randomly, all other things being equal. That’s why Jesse Jackson was more afraid to be followed down a dark street by a black person than a white one.
People make these kinds of guesses based on stereotype all the time. Are all Russians drunks? Are all Turks sober? No to both, but if you have no other information to go on and you assume that all Russians are drunks and all Turks sober, you will be correct significantly more overall than if you assume that both nationalities typically consume the same amount of alcohol.
It’s terribly politically incorrect, but many stereotypes are true, at least to some extent. And it does no good both to overapply, or to deny, that.
But that doesn’t make the statement “all members …” partially true. That statement is 100% false.
It’s completely untrue that all members of Group A have that characteristic. The fact that a higher-than-average percentage have that characteristic doesn’t change that.
It’s not politically incorrect; it’s just incorrect.
A stereotype by definition cannot be true, because a stereotype is not the sort of thing that’s amenable to the phrase “to some extent.” As soon as you start qualifying, you’ve stopped stereotyping. Russians consume more alcohol per capita than Turks isn’t a stereotype. Russians are drunks is a stereotype.
In general, that’s true. It just so happens I have a MUCH tighter handle on where my son is at any given moment than my Mom ever did.
My son is 10. When I was his age, I could just decide to go to the schoolyard and play roller hockey/stickball, and if a priest from the next-door church joined us, nobody thought twice about it. My parents didn’t fret over where I was, because they just assumed I’d be home by dinner time.
So, if there HAD been any child molestors in my parish, they’d have had free access to me regularly. It wouldn’t be NEARLY tht easy for anyone targeting my son.
Secondary point (I’ll use a deliberately silly example): members of Group A are widely perceived to be extremely ticklish. It just happens to be true! Among themselves, members of Group A tell a lot of jokes about how ticklish they are.
BUT… if any outsiders crack jokes about how ticklish those A folks are, members of Group A will get angry and huffy and insist there’s absolutely NO truth to that perception.
People also like to ignore cases which don’t fit their preconceived ideas. E.G the Rwandan Genocide demonstrated that “good” christians have no problem with being violent actors.
The Yugoslav Wars, Cambodia killing fields and heck the systematic genocide of native americans by “Christians” shows that the OP’s premise is without merit.
I also believe that your claim that “many stereotypes are true” is without merit, please provide cites that the ethnicity of your parents or the location where they happened to breed has any value in prediction an individuals behavior.
I will concede that this happens. But the reason for it is simple. Rarely do people make value-neutral generalizations about ethnic groups like this one. Usually the generalization implies something negative.
Take the stereotypical dietary choices of black Americans. Theres nothing objectively “bad” about watermelon and fried chicken. But the stereotype is not harmless, because it is associated with imagery of black people being so obsessed with these foods that they steal for them. So when black people scoff at the watermelon-and-fried-chicken theme, it’s not the foods as much as the greater stereotype they are responding to.
There is a stereotype that all Americans are fat. Most Americans, regardless of weight, would agree that we’re a fat populace, so it probably is closer to a generalization rather than a flat-out stereotype. But lurking behind the stereotype is a more caustic one–that Americans are fat, greedy, and lazy. So if someone from Japan, let’s say, made fun of fat Americans, we’d probably take offense at it because the greater stereotype would be lurking in the background even if not overtly presented.
Probably what happens when a stereotype converges on truth, is that members of the group disavow themselves from the faction fulfilling the stereotype. “Your stereotype does not apply to people like myself. It does apply to those other guys over there, though. Feel free to hate those guys. We hate them too. That’s why we don’t hang out with them anymore.”
What is that worth, though? To my mind that part of the issue is rarely addressed. OK, let’s pretend the Russian in this example is more likely to be a drunk than the Turk is. What do you do with that information? If you’re invited to the Russian’s house, do you assume you should bring vodka or assume you shouldn’t? Do you bring wine to the Turk’s because he probably won’t have any or do you bring none because he probably won’t want it? Do you decide not to invite them out for drinks for opposite reasons? It seems to me that if you want to come across as a decent human being, any information you glean from “accurate” stereotypes has to be confirmed in person anyway.
That doesn’t make sense to me at all. (And I’ve also never encountered that association, FWIW.)
IMO the real issue is that you can make anything into a sort of insult if you treat it that way, even if there’s no rational basis. Just knowing that the other guy is saying something that he thinks is derogatory can be hurtful, even if in reality it’s completely benign. (As another example, some people use “Jew” as an insult.)
It would generally be worth something when dealing with broad groups of people rather than individuals.
For an example off the top of my head, in marketing campaigns.
Even what you view as “harmless” generalizations work the the effect of you assigning arbitrary collections of people in “out groups”.
There is a real effect where people exhibit in-group favoritism and out-group negativity. By tossing these people in arbitrary containers due to their lineage or physical traits you allow yourself and others to commit ultimate “ultimate attribution error” (Yes religion is primarily gained through lineage)
The fact that you do not realize that there is a cost to these irrational generalizations is most likely due to the fact you are in a privileged in-group who does not suffer from the negative effects.
Possibly, yes- although people often resent being stereotyped. I would think the people behind marketing campaigns want to make generalizations based on facts, rather than just employing stereotypes. So on a day to day level, I don’t see the value of knowing that “If Group A has X characteristic at a significantly higher rate than randomly, and one assumes that every time you encounter a member of A he has characteristic X, you will be correct more often than randomly, all other things being equal.”
Sometimes the facts are available and sometimes they’re not.
But meanwhile, if you’re some guy who wants to open a liquor store and your two choices are a location in a Russian neighborhood and a location in a Turkish neighborhood, you would be adivsed to go with the Russians, all else being equal.
Correct, and type casting someone who just happens to more melanin than the people in power as loving watermelon and fried chicken is a good way to bomb a marketing campaign. For the other readers who may be ignorant of the classism that is the basis for this racist stereotype…Go look what the cheapest fresh fruit and what the cheapest meat is. This “harmless” characterization has quite a bite if you are on the receiving end.
Even “positive” stereotypes have negative effects on people, especially if by chance they don’t fit the stereotype.
If you are talking about countries…I would go with Turkey, the competition is much lower due to regulations.
If you are talking about neighborhoods in Western countries I think you would have to show that there is real economic benefit.
Heck, my home town was on the border with Utah, if profits are your goal that was one of the best locations to be in the world.
Do you have any evidence that Turkish ex-pats drink at a lower rate that the population in general. Or are you basing this question on pure biases and stereotypes?
Yes, and it was a ridiculous example. That’s not really your fault. It’s the problem with trying to come up with situations where stereotypes are useful: it’s always ‘in the absence of all other information,’ and when does that actually come up? Who decides where to build a store based solely on stereotypes about the drinking habits of the national origins of the people who live in the neighborhood? My guess is it’s someone who is probably going to go out of business in a hurry. The “information” in the stereotype is far less useful than any number of facts you would want to have before you start a business. What is the value of being correct about some characteristic “more often than randomly, all other things being equal?” All other things are never equal.
Saying “all else being equal” is just a simple way to have a case where the factor being discussed actually tips the scales.
But anything which is the deciding factor when all else is equal will generally be a factor among others when all else is not equal.
In this hypothetical liquor store example, suppose there were already 47 other liquor stores in the Russian neighborhood and none in the Turkish neighborhood, then you might be better off with the latter. But suppose there were 7 in the Russian neighborhood and 4 in the Turkish? Then you would have to balance things.
There could any number of examples. E.g. you can advertise your porduct in media outlet that caters to Group A or one that caters to Group B. And so on.
I understand what the phrase means and why it’s used. I’m asking when a stereotype would actually be useful, and this is a hypothetical that doesn’t take place in the real world. You would not ever make this kind of decision with no other information available and no other factors involved. Anyone in this position would prefer actual data to stereotypes. So what is the value of stereotyping here?