How useful are stereotypes?

Great Debates
1

From here

Even though many people object to the stereotyping of people from the South, the above incident is stereotypical of what one would expect from the South.

Of course, it’s not the case that 100% of the people living there have these beliefs/attitudes, but the important thing is, a significant enough percentage do have these beliefs/attitudes as to enable such things to happen in the South but not in California, for example.

In general, since it is agreed that stereotypes don’t apply to 100% of the population they describe, can’t we say that they form predictive models as to how those populations, as aggreates, behave?

If I say that there were demonstrations because the price of sushi went up, would people think that that happened in Saudi Arabia or in Japan?

If I say that thousands of people complained about seeing a breast on TV, would people think that that happened in the U.S. or in the EU?

Of course, the above things could have happened in the unlikeliest of the two places, but that is not the point.

The point is that a predictive model need not be 100% accurate. It tells people things like: “If you go to live in New York, you will likely encounter these sorts of people, and these sort of social situations. If you go to live in South Carolina, you will likely encounter these sorts of people, and these sort of social situations”
And people can make a decision as to where they want to live, go visit, or make other relevant decisions.

In any case, it seems that the human brain is designed to act as a sort of Baysian filter that continually updates an internal MAP estimate of how others behave, and acts accordingly. I think that no amount of new-age “we are all individuals” rhetoric will stop the human brain from attempting to model its surroundings.

Is this correct, or are stereotypes obsolete remnants of a “bad old days” era?

2

I saw that too and wondered how many people in the young-Earth society go to Imax movies.

There is a difference between stereotyping someone and profiling them. One ignores all outward signs based on a single trait and the other takes in all outward signs and ignores individual traits.

Profiling is a natural skill that everyone developes. It serves us in everything from dating to basic survivial. Stereotyping is something that is taught.

3

To the contrary, they are not good predictive models at all. We do not act as aggreates.

I can completely accept that Serapiglia finds this banning by theater owners only in the South as a true statement and still believe that it reflects nothing about most people living in the South.

What do you think that you can tell about me from knowing that I live in the South? (I am an 11th generation Southerner who grew up in rural West Tennessee and I live in Nashville.)

4

As I implied above, I can tell you nothingabout you. You could be a tofu-eating Birkenstock-wearing liberal.

But, for some events (like adding creationism to textbooks, allowing gay marriage, etc) I can tell you which states or parts of the country are more likely to have thos events than others.

e.g.
adding creationism to textbooks: more likely in the South
allowing gay marriage: more likely in California and New England

I don’t have to know the exact temperature of every spot in Texas and Alaska to be able to tell you that, on average, Texas is hotter than Alaska.

5

Key problem- sometimes stereotypes are not based on factual experience but on rare contact with the visible other, an exemplar that is actually atypical of reality.

For example: Mr. MidAmerica’s only experience with with seeing Italians is gangster movies. All of his exemplars are Italians are gangsters. That becomes his prototype for ItalianAmerican beyond reality even if he logically knows it is a distorted view.

Lack of experience with an accurate sample population leads to inaccurate modeling. Worse those models senisitize us to expereinces that are consistent with them and to relatively ignore experiences that are in conflict.

6
  • wonders if that bit of irony was intended *

One point is that this is probably less of a sterotype-based action on IMAX’s part, and has more to do with them looking at cases of the local wackos protesting the local governments about evolution in schools and such. So they just asked themselves if they were in the mood to get picketed by a bunch of people and decided no–even though the grand majority of everyone in the area might otherwise be fine with the content.

7

I think that stereotypes are an invaluable way of conducting one’s everyday affairs. However, like any generalization, it’s easy to misapply them (as Zoe so effectively demonstrated above). A generalization doesn’t necessarily hold true for any single individual (when applied top-down), nor does any individual necessarily fit a generalization (when applied from the bottom-up).

In other words, it seems to me that they’re correlations, not causations. While not perfectly accurate, they’re not content-free either. Of course, as DSeid points out, if the “sample size” used to establish the correlation isn’t big enough, errors and misjudgments are bound to happen.

8

I kinda like the stereotype of a “tofu-wearing, Birkenstock-eating liberal”.

9

To evaluate the usefullness of stereotypes I think you would have to determine the cost of not having that or any stereotype. What if you have no preconceptions… is that worse than a overgeneralizing stereotype ?

So if you are going to the southern/midwest US and you have no idea of their redneck and bible bashing ways is that bad for you ? If you go to Japan and you don’t know they are supposed to be hygiene crazy ?

I think there is some usefullness… even if its to avoid social blunders of saying you don’t beleive in God in one case and not sneezing in public in the other.

10

Wether that was a typo, or concious humour, it was great B-C

I find steriotypes have there uses, but mostly in recognising the ones that might be being implied about yourself, and then chosing to go with them, or depart from them in humorous fashion.
Though steriotypes can be associated with accurate impressions of average behaviour of the target group. It is interesting and sometimes upsetting that they are often innaccurate at even predicting the normal behaviour of a group, often because steriotypes aren’t formed by considering the steriotyped group as a whole but by a visibal minority within that group.
English football fans are steriotyped as racist thugs, even though that is a tiny minority of English Football fabs. On the other hand the steriotype of English being tea drinkers is probably an accurate average discription.
From what I see and hear, African American men are mostly family orientated and not interested in owning a gun and would never have anything to do with any hard drugs. Unfortunately steriotypes are so strong that this is rarely what a white person thinks when confronted by a random black guy.

11

To me your question seems twisted. Yes, I agreed with you that stereotypes don’t apply to 100% of the population they describe. I doubt that they fully apply to anyone since stereotypes are usually very shallow; they don’t describe three-demensional human beings. So why should should a shallow model be predictive about a large population and how it will behave? My answer to your question would have to be no.

With very few exceptions, I have seen no valid predictive models for people who live in New York as opposed to people who live in South Carolina. You are more likely to hear Gullah spoken in South Carolina, for example, but that is only a small portion of the population. Charleston is considered a very refined and civilized city (as I heard it referred to in a program broadcast from NYC this morning.)

The friends that I have who have visited New York City have raved about the hospitality with which they were treated. People went out of their way to help them find their way around. My own experience has been limited to Kennedy Airport where everyone was warm and pleasant – and to the Bronx Expressway where everyone was fast.

I have friends who live in New York – one famous and one a working girl – and both are “just folks.” But then, they are both from Tennessee.

You may have intended to imply that, but when you said, “If you go to live in South Carolina, you will likely encounter these sorts of people…” I inferred that you thought that stereotypes gave you a predictive model on which you could form some opinion about what people here are like.

If you can tell nothing about me, you can tell nothing about anyone in particular.

Of course, I did give you a hint that you seemed to pick up on when I told you I live in Nashville. Indeed, Nashville is liberal and supported John Kerry in the Presidential election. But I’m really a little to the left of most liberals.

Nashville has a larger Kurdish population than NYC.

And I do like baked tofu, iced chia, hummus and chicken fried steak. My granddaughter wears the Birkenstocks; I wear boots, sneakers, heels, and OPI Japanese Rose Garden toenail polish. I also wear jeans, kimonos, a sari, Harris tweeds, Neiman-Marcus perfumes, and a hat from Lord and Taylor – not usually at the same time. I love opera, ballet, the Band, and jazz. Two members of my family have read all of The Great Books of the Western World series.

Many of these kinds of things I hold in common with my friends who are Southerners. One of my high school classmates (there were 36 of us), and a lifetime friend, was summoned all the way from the South to serve as an attorney on a big lawsuit involving the New York City school system within the last three or four years.

I am a Christian – pro choice, pro-gay rights, anti-death penalty, anti-bigotry. I live in a multi-cultural neighborhood.

Yet I am very ordinary. Use this as a predictive model of some of the kinds of people that you will meet in the South. But no two of us are alike.

12

All stereotypes are based on a grain of truthfulness - or at least start out that way, I think some persist long after they have ceased to be even occasionally true - and as such, are useful in dealing with groups of people. The mistake that is often made is to move from the general statement (for example that English people drink a lot of tea, which is true - 1,000 cups each per year on average) to the specific case - that any particular Englishman (say Mangetout, because it is always safest to talk about people when they’re not here) drinks tea, because he may well not… stocking up on tea before Mangetout arrives is a correct response to the stereotype, but expressing shock and amazement when he turns you kind offer down is not.

Grim

13

This is incorrect.

If I have a bag with 80% red balls in it and 20% blue balls in it, then I can tell you, before you even pick any balls from the bag, that the balls you pick will most likely be red.

If you go ahead an pick one ball and keep it hidden in your palm and ask me: “What color is the ball?”, I will not be able to answer.

But that doesn’t mean that my knowledge that 80% of the balls is red is useless. If I have another bag with 20% red balls and 80% blue balls, and I get to pick from only one bag and want to maximize the likelihood that I will get a red ball, I will definitely choose from the former bag, not the latter.

Similarly, if you’re about to move to either New York or South Carolina, and you want to pick the state that is the most likely to allow gay marriage, or most likely to not put creationism in science textbooks, then you pick New York.

This doesn’t mean every New Yorker is against creationism or for gay marriage, but that is immaterial. Knowledge of the stereotype of a New Yorker and of a South Carolinian helps you determine which course of action is most likely to be beneficial.

14

Again Polerius presuming that you had an accurate sampling to start with.

We humans do a very good job at using prototypes to help us make reasonable predictions. We do it at very basic levels that are hardwired, completing circles and borders in our visual systems even when the whole edge is not seen. Usually these systems are accurate, under the circumstances that they were designed for. but when put in odd circumstances they can lead to faulty conclusions. You know them- optical illusions and the like.

The same holds for all levels of perception and stereotypes are the cultural group level equivilent of an optical illusion. We are often seeing things that are not acccurate reflections of reality; things that are not really there.

15

But you cannot predict with any certainty at all the color of the ball that you will take from the bag or what is within the ball. Each blue ball is unique. Each red ball is unique.

16

Name a Southern state that has “creationism” in its science textbooks.

17

Stereotypes are true problems when a person is unwilling to accept someone act counter to expectations.

I have expectations, justified or not, about how various people will behave in various circumstances. Often these expectations are correct, and at times they aren’t. I try to allow people the oportunity to be themselves, and am always willing to be open to folks being who they are, not who I expect them to be. On the other hand, it’s more often than not beneficial to rely on expectations so as not to be surprised.

18

Eonwe, you really don’t like being surprised – even when you have expected a negative? (Love your name, BTW.)

In South Carolina, our metaphorical bag of blue and red balls would not be an 80-20 split. It would be 58-40 with a couple of odd balls thrown in.

In New York, the ratio would be about the same, but with blue balls predominating. (I never dreamed in my entire life that I would ever need to write that particular sentence.)

Someone who is looking for liberal friends might be more comfortable in Allendale County, South Carolina where the vote was 72% blue than in Hamilton County New York where the vote was only 31% blue. That would depend on what other qualities you enjoy in your friends.

But you know how counties are; you have to look at the individual communities.

And you know how communities are; families can certainly differ.

And in my family? Mother is a Southern Baptist who voted for Nixon in 1968. My father was open to the idea of reincarnation and believed in “from each according to his ability and to each according to his need.” (He didn’t much fit the stereotype of a small town grocer and farmer.) I suspect a lot of families are like that.

My source for election information: CNN: Election results by state

Cite, please.

19

Er, no, maybe I wasn’t being totally clear (which, at this hour, is likely). My point was just that I’ve got to have some expectations going into any situation; I’m never a blank slate, and I don’t really strive to be. I just try to hold those expectations at bay until they either pan out or end up not happening at all. Either way it’s ok. Particularly if it’s a negative proven wrong, or a postive proven right.

Come on… you set yourself up for that, admit it! :slight_smile:

20

Well, I’ll use the example of the “cheap jew”. I’ve seen a certain mode of behavior regarding money by jews that I rarely see exhibited among non-jews. They can be very penny pinching, and some even use their jewishness as an excuse to be cheap. However, when it comes to hospitality, they generally are not cheap at all. While they are not interested in sharing their money with me in any way, they have little problem sharing the goods or services that money has brought them. My longest outstanding debt, is actually to a jew. I am going to pay it back this weekend in fact, after having given his brother 300 I owed him this evening. So while I have been offended by cheap behavior in my jewish friends in the past, I have also seen great feats of generosity from the same person.

Stereotypes exist, and people fulfill the expectations all the time, but the stereotype doesn’t even fit a single person all the time let alone the aggregate. I don’t automatically assume that a jew will be cheap, but I can certainly extrapolate whether or not they will be based upon other behaviors. Oftentimes that extrapolation is done by examining multiple stereotypes.

Erek ;j