Stereotype

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For other uses, see Stereotype (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with Stereotypy.
See also: Labelling
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An 18th-century Dutch engraving of the peoples of the world, depicting the

inhabitants of Asia, the Americas and Africa in their typical dress. Shown below
are an Englishman, a Dutchman, a German and a Frenchman.

Police officers buying doughnuts and coffee, an example of perceived stereotypical

behavior[1] in North America.
Social psychology defines a stereotype as a generalized belief about a particular
category of people.[2] It is an expectation that people might have about every
person of a particular group.[citation needed] The type of expectation can vary; it
can be, for example, an expectation about the group's personality, preferences,
appearance or ability. Stereotypes are sometimes overgeneralized, inaccurate, and
resistant to new information, but can sometimes be accurate.[3]

While such generalizations about groups of people may be useful when making quick
decisions, they may be erroneous when applied to particular individuals and are
among the reasons for prejudicial attitudes.

Contents
1 Explicit stereotypes
2 Implicit stereotypes
3 Etymology
4 Relationship with other types of intergroup attitudes
5 Content
6 Functions
6.1 Relationship between cognitive and social functions
6.2 Cognitive functions
6.3 Social functions
6.3.1 Social categorization
6.3.1.1 Explanation purposes
6.3.1.2 Justification purposes
6.3.1.3 Intergroup differentiation
6.3.2 Self-categorization
6.3.3 Social influence and consensus
7 Formation
7.1 Correspondence bias
7.2 Illusory correlation
7.3 Common environment
7.4 Socialization and upbringing
7.5 Intergroup relations
8 Activation
8.1 Automatic behavioral outcomes
9 Accuracy
10 Effects
10.1 Attributional ambiguity
10.2 Stereotype threat
10.3 Self-fulfilling prophecy
10.4 Discrimination and prejudice
10.5 Self-stereotyping
10.6 Substitute for observations
11 Role in art and culture
12 See also
12.1 Examples of stereotypes
13 References
14 Further reading
15 External links
Explicit stereotypes
An explicit stereotype refers to stereotypes that one is aware that one holds, and
is aware that one is using to judge people. If person A is making judgments about a
particular person B from a group G, and person A has an explicit stereotype for
group G, their decision bias can be partially mitigated using conscious control;
however, attempts to offset bias due to conscious awareness of a stereotype often
fail at being truly impartial, due to either underestimating or overestimating the
amount of bias being created by the stereotype.

Implicit stereotypes
Implicit stereotypes are those that lay on individuals' subconsciousness, that they
have no control or awareness of.[4]

In social psychology, a stereotype is any thought widely adopted about specific

types of individuals or certain ways of behaving intended to represent the entire
group of those individuals or behaviors as a whole.[5] These thoughts or beliefs
may or may not accurately reflect reality.[6][7] 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.[8]

Etymology
The term stereotype comes from the French adjective stéréotype and derives from the
Greek words στερεός (stereos), "firm, solid"[9] and τύπος (typos), impression,[10]
hence "solid impression on one or more ideas/theories."

The term was first used in the printing trade in 1798 by Firmin Didot, to describe
a printing plate that duplicated any typography. The duplicate printing plate, or
the stereotype, is used for printing instead of the original.

Outside of printing, the first reference to "stereotype" was in 1850, as a noun

that meant image perpetuated without change.[11] However, it was not until 1922
that "stereotype" was first used in the modern psychological sense by American
journalist Walter Lippmann in his work Public Opinion.[12]

Relationship with other types of intergroup attitudes

Stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination[13] are understood as related but
different concepts.[14][15][16][17] Stereotypes are regarded as the most cognitive
component and often occurs without conscious awareness, whereas prejudice is the
affective component of stereotyping and discrimination is one of the behavioral
components of prejudicial reactions.[14][15][18] In this tripartite view of
intergroup attitudes, stereotypes reflect expectations and beliefs about the
characteristics of members of groups perceived as different from one's own,
prejudice represents the emotional response, and discrimination refers to actions.
[14][15]

Although related, the three concepts can exist independently of each other.[15][19]
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.[16]

Possible prejudicial effects of stereotypes[7] 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[20]
Content

Stereotype content model, adapted from Fiske et al. (2002): Four types of
stereotypes resulting from combinations of perceived warmth and competence.
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.[21]

Early theories of stereotype content proposed by social psychologists such as

Gordon Allport assumed that stereotypes of outgroups reflected uniform antipathy.
[22][23] For instance, Katz and Braly argued in their classic 1933 study that
ethnic stereotypes were uniformly negative.[21]

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.[24] 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.[22][25]

Functions
Early studies suggested that stereotypes were only used by rigid, repressed, and
authoritarian people. This idea has been refuted by contemporary studies that
suggest the ubiquity of stereotypes and it was suggested to regard stereotypes as
collective group beliefs, meaning that people who belong to the same social group
share the same set of stereotypes.[19] 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.[26]

Relationship between cognitive and social functions

Stereotyping can serve cognitive functions on an interpersonal level, and social
functions on an intergroup level.[7][19] 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.[19]

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.[27]

Cognitive functions
Stereotypes can help make sense of the world. They are a form of categorization
that helps to simplify and systematize information. Thus, information is more
easily identified, recalled, predicted, and reacted to.[19] Stereotypes are
categories of objects or people. Between stereotypes, objects or people are as
different from each other as possible.[5] Within stereotypes, objects or people are
as similar to each other as possible.[5]

Gordon Allport has suggested possible answers to why people find it easier to
understand categorized information.[28] First, people can consult a category to
identify response patterns. Second, categorized information is more specific than
non-categorized information, as categorization accentuates properties that are
shared by all members of a group. Third, people can readily describe objects in a
category because objects in the same category have distinct characteristics.
Finally, people can take for granted the characteristics of a particular category
because the category itself may be an arbitrary grouping.

A complementary perspective theorizes how stereotypes function as time- and energy-

savers that allow people to act more efficiently.[5] Yet another perspective
suggests that stereotypes are people's biased perceptions of their social contexts.
[5] In this view, people use stereotypes as shortcuts to make sense of their social
contexts, and this makes a person's task of understanding his or her world less
cognitively demanding.[5]

Social functions
Social categorization
In the following situations, the overarching purpose of stereotyping is for people
to put their collective self (their in-group membership) in a positive light:[29]

when stereotypes are used for explaining social events

when stereotypes are used for justifying activities of one's own group (ingroup) to
another group (outgroup)
when stereotypes are used for differentiating the ingroup as positively distinct
from outgroups
Explanation purposes

An anti-semitic 1873 caricature depicting the stereotypical physical features of a

Jewish male.
As mentioned previously, stereotypes can be used to explain social events.[19][29]
Henri Tajfel[19] described his observations of how some people found that the anti-
Semitic fabricated contents of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion only made sense
if Jews have certain characteristics. Therefore, according to Tajfel,[19] Jews were
stereotyped as being evil and yearning for world domination to match the anti-
Semitic "facts" as presented in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Justification purposes
People create stereotypes of an outgroup to justify the actions that their in-group
has committed (or plans to commit) towards that outgroup.[19][28][29] For example,
according to Tajfel,[19] Europeans stereotyped African, Indian, and Chinese people
as being incapable of achieving financial advances without European help. This
stereotype was used to justify European colonialism in Africa, India, and China.

Intergroup differentiation
An assumption is that people want their ingroup to have a positive image relative
to outgroups, and so people want to differentiate their ingroup from relevant
outgroups in a desirable way.[19] If an outgroup does not affect the ingroup's
image, then from an image preservation point of view, there is no point for the
ingroup to be positively distinct from that outgroup.[19]

People can actively create certain images for relevant outgroups by stereotyping.
People do so when they see that their ingroup is no longer as clearly and/or as
positively differentiated from relevant outgroups, and they want to restore the
intergroup differentiation to a state that favours the ingroup.[19][29]

Self-categorization
Stereotypes can emphasize a person's group membership in two steps: Stereotypes
emphasize the person's similarities with ingroup members on relevant dimensions,
and also the person's differences from outgroup members on relevant dimensions.[23]
People change the stereotype of their ingroups and outgroups to suit context.[23]
Once an outgroup treats an ingroup member badly, they are more drawn to the members
of their own group.[30] This can be seen as members within a group are able to
relate to each other though a stereotype because of identical situations. A person
can embrace a stereotype to avoid humiliation such as failing a task and blaming it
on a stereotype.[31]

Social influence and consensus

Stereotypes are an indicator of ingroup consensus.[29] When there are intragroup
disagreements over stereotypes of the ingroup and/or outgroups, ingroup members
take collective action to prevent other ingroup members from diverging from each
other.[29]

John C. Turner proposed in 1987[29] that if ingroup members disagree on an outgroup

stereotype, then one of three possible collective actions follow: First, ingroup
members may negotiate with each other and conclude that they have different
outgroup stereotypes because they are stereotyping different subgroups of an
outgroup (e.g., Russian gymnasts versus Russian boxers). Second, ingroup members
may negotiate with each other, but conclude that they are disagreeing because of
categorical differences amongst themselves. Accordingly, in this context, it is
better to categorise ingroup members under different categories (e.g., Democrats
versus Republican) than under a shared category (e.g., American). Finally, ingroup
members may influence each other to arrive at a common outgroup stereotype.

Formation
Different disciplines give different accounts of how stereotypes develop:
Psychologists may focus on an individual's experience with groups, patterns of
communication about those groups, and intergroup conflict. As for sociologists,
they may focus on the relations among different groups in a social structure. They
suggest that stereotypes are the result of conflict, poor parenting, and inadequate
mental and emotional development. Once stereotypes have formed, there are two main
factors that explain their persistence. First, the cognitive effects of schematic
processing (see schema) make it so that when a member of a group behaves as we
expect, the behavior confirms and even strengthens existing stereotypes. Second,
the affective or emotional aspects of prejudice render logical arguments against
stereotypes ineffective in countering the power of emotional responses.[32]

Correspondence bias
Main article: Correspondence bias
Correspondence bias refers to the tendency to ascribe a person's behavior to
disposition or personality, and to underestimate the extent to which situational
factors elicited the behavior. Correspondence bias can play an important role in
stereotype formation.[33]

For example, in a study by Roguer and Yzerbyt (1999) participants watched a video
showing students who were randomly instructed to find arguments either for or
against euthanasia. The students that argued in favor of euthanasia came from the
same law department or from different departments. Results showed that participants
attributed the students' responses to their attitudes although it had been made
clear in the video that students had no choice about their position. Participants
reported that group membership, i.e., the department that the students belonged to,
affected the students' opinions about euthanasia. Law students were perceived to be
more in favor of euthanasia than students from different departments despite the
fact that a pretest had revealed that subjects had no preexisting expectations
about attitudes toward euthanasia and the department that students belong to. The
attribution error created the new stereotype that law students are more likely to
support euthanasia.[34]

Nier et al. (2012) found that people who tend to draw dispositional inferences from
behavior and ignore situational constraints are more likely to stereotype low-
status groups as incompetent and high-status groups as competent. Participants
listened to descriptions of two fictitious groups of Pacific Islanders, one of
which was described as being higher in status than the other. In a second study,
subjects rated actual groups – the poor and wealthy, women and men – in the United
States in terms of their competence. Subjects who scored high on the measure of
correspondence bias stereotyped the poor, women, and the fictitious lower-status
Pacific Islanders as incompetent whereas they stereotyped the wealthy, men, and the
high-status Pacific Islanders as competent. The correspondence bias was a
significant predictor of stereotyping even after controlling for other measures
that have been linked to beliefs about low status groups, the just-world hypothesis
and social dominance orientation.[35]

Based on the anti-public sector bias,[36] Döring and Willems (2021)[37] found that
employees in the public sector are considered as less professional compared to
employees in the private sector. They build on the assumption that the red-tape and
bureaucratic nature of the public sector spills over in the perception that
citizens have about the employees working in the sector. With an experimental
vignette study, they analyze how citizens process information on employees' sector
affiliation, and integrate non-work role-referencing to test the stereotype
confirmation assumption underlying the representativeness heuristic. The results
show that sector as well as non-work role-referencing influences perceived employee
professionalism but has little effect on the confirmation of particular public
sector stereotypes.[38] Moreover, the results do not confirm a congruity effect of
consistent stereotypical information: non-work role-referencing does not aggravate
the negative effect of sector affiliation on perceived employee professionalism.

Illusory correlation
Main article: Illusory correlation
Research has shown that stereotypes can develop based on a cognitive mechanism
known as illusory correlation – an erroneous inference about the relationship
between two events.[5][39][40] If two statistically infrequent events co-occur,
observers overestimate the frequency of co-occurrence of these events. The
underlying reason is that rare, infrequent events are distinctive and salient and,
when paired, become even more so. The heightened salience results in more attention
and more effective encoding, which strengthens the belief that the events are
correlated.[41][42][43]

In the intergroup context, illusory correlations lead people to misattribute rare

behaviors or traits at higher rates to minority group members than to majority
groups, even when both display the same proportion of the behaviors or traits.
Black people, for instance, are a minority group in the United States and
interaction with blacks is a relatively infrequent event for an average white
American.[44] Similarly, undesirable behavior (e.g. crime) is statistically less
frequent than desirable behavior. Since both events "blackness" and "undesirable
behavior" are distinctive in the sense that they are infrequent, the combination of
the two leads observers to overestimate the rate of co-occurrence.[41] Similarly,
in workplaces where women are underrepresented and negative behaviors such as
errors occur less frequently than positive behaviors, women become more strongly
associated with mistakes than men.[45]

In a landmark study, David Hamilton and Richard Gifford (1976) examined the role of
illusory correlation in stereotype formation. Subjects were instructed to read
descriptions of behaviors performed by members of groups A and B. Negative
behaviors outnumbered positive actions and group B was smaller than group A, making
negative behaviors and membership in group B relatively infrequent and distinctive.
Participants were then asked who had performed a set of actions: a person of group
A or group B. Results showed that subjects overestimated the frequency with which
both distinctive events, membership in group B and negative behavior, co-occurred,
and evaluated group B more negatively. This despite the fact the proportion of
positive to negative behaviors was equivalent for both groups and that there was no
actual correlation between group membership and behaviors.[41] Although Hamilton
and Gifford found a similar effect for positive behaviors as the infrequent events,
a meta-analytic review of studies showed that illusory correlation effects are
stronger when the infrequent, distinctive information is negative.[39]

Hamilton and Gifford's distinctiveness-based explanation of stereotype formation

was subsequently extended.[42] A 1994 study by McConnell, Sherman, and Hamilton
found that people formed stereotypes based on information that was not distinctive
at the time of presentation, but was considered distinctive at the time of
judgement.[46] Once a person judges non-distinctive information in memory to be
distinctive, that information is re-encoded and re-represented as if it had been
distinctive when it was first processed.[46]

Common environment
One explanation for why stereotypes are shared is that they are the result of a
common environment that stimulates people to react in the same way.[5]

The problem with the 'common environment' is that explanation in general is that it
does not explain how shared stereotypes can occur without direct stimuli.[5]
Research since the 1930s suggested that people are highly similar with each other
in how they describe different racial and national groups, although those people
have no personal experience with the groups they are describing.[47]

Socialization and upbringing

Another explanation says that people are socialised to adopt the same stereotypes.
[5] Some psychologists believe that although stereotypes can be absorbed at any
age, stereotypes are usually acquired in early childhood under the influence of
parents, teachers, peers, and the media.

If stereotypes are defined by social values, then stereotypes only change as per
changes in social values.[5] The suggestion that stereotype content depends on
social values reflects Walter Lippman's argument in his 1922 publication that
stereotypes are rigid because they cannot be changed at will.[16]

Studies emerging since the 1940s refuted the suggestion that stereotype contents
cannot be changed at will. Those studies suggested that one group's stereotype of
another group would become more or less positive depending on whether their
intergroup relationship had improved or degraded.[16][48][49] Intergroup events
(e.g., World War II, Persian Gulf conflicts) often changed intergroup
relationships. For example, after WWII, Black American students held a more
negative stereotype of people from countries that were the United States's WWII
enemies.[16] If there are no changes to an intergroup relationship, then relevant
stereotypes do not change.[17]

Intergroup relations
According to a third explanation, shared stereotypes are neither caused by the
coincidence of common stimuli, nor by socialisation. This explanation posits that
stereotypes are shared because group members are motivated to behave in certain
ways, and stereotypes reflect those behaviours.[5] It is important to note from
this explanation that stereotypes are the consequence, not the cause, of intergroup
relations. This explanation assumes that when it is important for people to
acknowledge both their ingroup and outgroup, they will emphasise their difference
from outgroup members, and their similarity to ingroup members.[5] International
migration creates more opportunities for intergroup relations, but the interactions
do not always disconfirm stereotypes. They are also known to form and maintain
them.[50]

Activation
The dual-process model of cognitive processing of stereotypes asserts that
automatic activation of stereotypes is followed by a controlled processing stage,
during which an individual may choose to disregard or ignore the stereotyped
information that has been brought to mind.[18]

A number of studies have found that stereotypes are activated automatically.

Patricia Devine (1989), for example, suggested that stereotypes are automatically
activated in the presence of a member (or some symbolic equivalent) of a
stereotyped group and that the unintentional activation of the stereotype is
equally strong for high- and low-prejudice persons. Words related to the cultural
stereotype of blacks were presented subliminally. During an ostensibly unrelated
impression-formation task, subjects read a paragraph describing a race-unspecified
target person's behaviors and rated the target person on several trait scales.
Results showed that participants who received a high proportion of racial words
rated the target person in the story as significantly more hostile than
participants who were presented with a lower proportion of words related to the
stereotype. This effect held true for both high- and low-prejudice subjects (as
measured by the Modern Racism Scale). Thus, the racial stereotype was activated
even for low-prejudice individuals who did not personally endorse it.[18][51][52]
Studies using alternative priming methods have shown that the activation of gender
and age stereotypes can also be automatic.[53][54]

Subsequent research suggested that the relation between category activation and
stereotype activation was more complex.[52][55] Lepore and Brown (1997), for
instance, noted that the words used in Devine's study were both neutral category
labels (e.g., "Blacks") and stereotypic attributes (e.g., "lazy"). They argued that
if only the neutral category labels were presented, people high and low in
prejudice would respond differently. In a design similar to Devine's, Lepore and
Brown primed the category of African-Americans using labels such as "blacks" and
"West Indians" and then assessed the differential activation of the associated
stereotype in the subsequent impression-formation task. They found that high-
prejudice participants increased their ratings of the target person on the negative
stereotypic dimensions and decreased them on the positive dimension whereas low-
prejudice subjects tended in the opposite direction. The results suggest that the
level of prejudice and stereotype endorsement affects people's judgements when the
category – and not the stereotype per se – is primed.[56]

Research has shown that people can be trained to activate counterstereotypic

information and thereby reduce the automatic activation of negative stereotypes. In
a study by Kawakami et al. (2000), for example, participants were presented with a
category label and taught to respond "No" to stereotypic traits and "Yes" to
nonstereotypic traits. After this training period, subjects showed reduced
stereotype activation.[57][58] This effect is based on the learning of new and more
positive stereotypes rather than the negation of already existing ones.[58]

Automatic behavioral outcomes

Empirical evidence suggests that stereotype activation can automatically influence
social behavior.[59][60][61][62] For example, Bargh, Chen, and Burrows (1996)
activated the stereotype of the elderly among half of their participants by
administering a scrambled-sentence test where participants saw words related to age
stereotypes. Subjects primed with the stereotype walked significantly more slowly
than the control group (although the test did not include any words specifically
referring to slowness), thus acting in a way that the stereotype suggests that
elderly people will act. And the stereotype of the elder will affect the subjective
perception of them through depression.[63] In another experiment, Bargh, Chen, and
Burrows also found that because the stereotype about blacks includes the notion of
aggression, subliminal exposure to black faces increased the likelihood that
randomly selected white college students reacted with more aggression and hostility
than participants who subconsciously viewed a white face.[64] Similarly, Correll et
al. (2002) showed that activated stereotypes about blacks can influence people's
behavior. In a series of experiments, black and white participants played a video
game, in which a black or white person was shown holding a gun or a harmless object
(e.g., a mobile phone). Participants had to decide as quickly as possible whether
to shoot the target. When the target person was armed, both black and white
participants were faster in deciding to shoot the target when he was black than
when he was white. When the target was unarmed, the participants avoided shooting
him more quickly when he was white. Time pressure made the shooter bias even more
pronounced.[65]

Accuracy

A magazine feature from Beauty Parade from March 1952 stereotyping women drivers.
It features Bettie Page as the model.
Stereotypes can be efficient shortcuts and sense-making tools. They can, however,
keep people from processing new or unexpected information about each individual,
thus biasing the impression formation process.[5] Early researchers believed that
stereotypes were inaccurate representations of reality.[47] A series of pioneering
studies in the 1930s found no empirical support for widely held racial stereotypes.
[16] By the mid-1950s, Gordon Allport wrote that, "It is possible for a stereotype
to grow in defiance of all evidence."[28]

Research on the role of illusory correlations in the formation of stereotypes

suggests that stereotypes can develop because of incorrect inferences about the
relationship between two events (e.g., membership in a social group and bad or good
attributes). This means that at least some stereotypes are inaccurate.[39][41][43]
[46]

Empirical social science research shows that stereotypes are often accurate.[66]
[67] Jussim et al. reviewed four studies of racial stereotypes, and seven studies
of gender stereotypes regarding demographic characteristics, academic achievement,
personality and behavior. Based on that, the authors argued that some aspects of
ethnic and gender stereotypes are accurate while stereotypes concerning political
affiliation and nationality are much less accurate.[68] A study by Terracciano et
al. also found that stereotypic beliefs about nationality do not reflect the actual
personality traits of people from different cultures.[69]

Marlene MacKie argues that while stereotypes are inaccurate, this is a definition
rather than empirical claim – stereotypes were simply defined as inaccurate, even
though the supposed inaccuracy of stereotypes was treated as though it was an
empirical discovery.[70]

Effects
Attributional ambiguity
Main article: Attributional ambiguity
Attributive ambiguity refers to the uncertainty that members of stereotyped groups
experience in interpreting the causes of others' behavior toward them. Stereotyped
individuals who receive negative feedback can attribute it either to personal
shortcomings, such as lack of ability or poor effort, or the evaluator's
stereotypes and prejudice toward their social group. Alternatively, positive
feedback can either be attributed to personal merit or discounted as a form of
sympathy or pity.[71][72][73]

Crocker et al. (1991) showed that when black participants were evaluated by a white
person who was aware of their race, black subjects mistrusted the feedback,
attributing negative feedback to the evaluator's stereotypes and positive feedback
to the evaluator's desire to appear unbiased. When the black participants' race was
unknown to the evaluator, they were more accepting of the feedback.[74]

Attributional ambiguity has been shown to affect a person's self-esteem. When they
receive positive evaluations, stereotyped individuals are uncertain of whether they
really deserved their success and, consequently, they find it difficult to take
credit for their achievements. In the case of negative feedback, ambiguity has been
shown to have a protective effect on self-esteem as it allows people to assign
blame to external causes. Some studies, however, have found that this effect only
holds when stereotyped individuals can be absolutely certain that their negative
outcomes are due to the evaluators's prejudice. If any room for uncertainty
remains, stereotyped individuals tend to blame themselves.[72]

Attributional ambiguity can also make it difficult to assess one's skills because
performance-related evaluations are mistrusted or discounted. Moreover, it can lead
to the belief that one's efforts are not directly linked to the outcomes, thereby
depressing one's motivation to succeed.[71]

Stereotype threat

The effect of stereotype threat (ST) on math test scores for girls and boys. Data
from Osborne (2007).[75]
Main article: Stereotype threat
Stereotype threat occurs when people are aware of a negative stereotype about their
social group and experience anxiety or concern that they might confirm the
stereotype.[76] Stereotype threat has been shown to undermine performance in a
variety of domains.[77][78]

Claude M. Steele and Joshua Aronson conducted the first experiments showing that
stereotype threat can depress intellectual performance on standardized tests. In
one study, they found that black college students performed worse than white
students on a verbal test when the task was framed as a measure of intelligence.
When it was not presented in that manner, the performance gap narrowed. Subsequent
experiments showed that framing the test as diagnostic of intellectual ability made
black students more aware of negative stereotypes about their group, which in turn
impaired their performance.[79] Stereotype threat effects have been demonstrated
for an array of social groups in many different arenas, including not only
academics but also sports,[80] chess[81] and business.[82]

Not only has stereotype threat been widely criticized by on a theoretical basis,
[83][84] but has failed several attempts to replicate its experimental evidence.
[84][85][86][87] The findings in support of the concept have been suggested by
multiple methodological reviews to be the product of publication bias.[87][88]

Self-fulfilling prophecy
Main article: Self-fulfilling prophecy
Stereotypes lead people to expect certain actions from members of social groups.
These stereotype-based expectations may lead to self-fulfilling prophecies, in
which one's inaccurate expectations about a person's behavior, through social
interaction, prompt that person to act in stereotype-consistent ways, thus
confirming one's erroneous expectations and validating the stereotype.[89][90][91]

Word, Zanna, and Cooper (1974) demonstrated the effects of stereotypes in the
context of a job interview. White participants interviewed black and white subjects
who, prior to the experiments, had been trained to act in a standardized manner.
Analysis of the videotaped interviews showed that black job applicants were treated
differently: They received shorter amounts of interview time and less eye contact;
interviewers made more speech errors (e.g., stutters, sentence incompletions,
incoherent sounds) and physically distanced themselves from black applicants. In a
second experiment, trained interviewers were instructed to treat applicants, all of
whom were white, like the whites or blacks had been treated in the first
experiment. As a result, applicants treated like the blacks of the first experiment
behaved in a more nervous manner and received more negative performance ratings
than interviewees receiving the treatment previously afforded to whites.[92]

A 1977 study by Snyder, Tanke, and Berscheid found a similar pattern in social
interactions between men and women. Male undergraduate students were asked to talk
to female undergraduates, whom they believed to be physically attractive or
unattractive, on the phone. The conversations were taped and analysis showed that
men who thought that they were talking to an attractive woman communicated in a
more positive and friendlier manner than men who believed that they were talking to
unattractive women. This altered the women's behavior: Female subjects who,
unknowingly to them, were perceived to be physically attractive behaved in a
friendly, likeable, and sociable manner in comparison with subjects who were
regarded as unattractive.[93]

A 2005 study by J. Thomas Kellow and Brett D. Jones looked at the effects of self-
fulfilling prophecy on African American and Caucasian high school freshman
students. Both white and black students were informed that their test performance
would be predictive of their performance on a statewide, high stakes standardized
test. They were also told that historically, white students had outperformed black
students on the test. This knowledge created a self-fulfilling prophecy in both the
white and black students, where the white students scored statistically
significantly higher than the African American students on the test. The stereotype
threat of underperforming on standardized tests affected the African American
students in this study.[94]

In accountancy, there is a popular stereotype which represents members of the

profession as being humorless, introspective beancounters.[95][96] It has been
suggested that this stereotype influences those attracted to the profession, with
many new entrants underestimating the importance of communication skills and
overestimating the importance of numeracy, thus contributing to the perpetuation of
the stereotype.[97]

Discrimination and prejudice

Because stereotypes simplify and justify social reality, they have potentially
powerful effects on how people perceive and treat one another.[98] As a result,
stereotypes can lead to discrimination in labor markets and other domains.[99] For
example, Tilcsik (2011) has found that employers who seek job applicants with
stereotypically male heterosexual traits are particularly likely to engage in
discrimination against gay men, suggesting that discrimination on the basis of
sexual orientation is partly rooted in specific stereotypes and that these
stereotypes loom large in many labor markets.[20] Agerström and Rooth (2011) showed
that automatic obesity stereotypes captured by the Implicit Association Test can
predict real hiring discrimination against the obese.[100] Similarly, experiments
suggest that gender stereotypes play an important role in judgments that affect
hiring decisions.[101][102]
Stereotypes can cause racist prejudice. For example, scientists and activists have
warned that the use of the stereotype "Nigerian Prince" for referring to Advance-
fee scammers is racist, i.e. "reducing Nigeria to a nation of scammers and
fraudulent princes, as some people still do online, is a stereotype that needs to
be called out".[103]

Self-stereotyping
Main article: Self-stereotyping
Stereotypes can affect self-evaluations and lead to self-stereotyping.[7][104] For
instance, Correll (2001, 2004) found that specific stereotypes (e.g., the
stereotype that women have lower mathematical ability) affect women's and men's
evaluations of their abilities (e.g., in math and science), such that men assess
their own task ability higher than women performing at the same level.[105][106]
Similarly, a study by Sinclair et al. (2006) has shown that Asian American women
rated their math ability more favorably when their ethnicity and the relevant
stereotype that Asian Americans excel in math was made salient. In contrast, they
rated their math ability less favorably when their gender and the corresponding
stereotype of women's inferior math skills was made salient. Sinclair et al. found,
however, that the effect of stereotypes on self-evaluations is mediated by the
degree to which close people in someone's life endorse these stereotypes. People's
self-stereotyping can increase or decrease depending on whether close others view
them in stereotype-consistent or inconsistent manner.[107]

Stereotyping can also play a central role in depression, when people have negative
self-stereotypes about themselves, according to Cox, Abramson, Devine, and Hollon
(2012).[7] This depression that is caused by prejudice (i.e., "deprejudice") can be
related to group membership (e.g., Me–Gay–Bad) or not (e.g., Me–Bad). If someone
holds prejudicial beliefs about a stigmatized group and then becomes a member of
that group, they may internalize their prejudice and develop depression. People may
also show prejudice internalization through self-stereotyping because of negative
childhood experiences such as verbal and physical abuse.[108]

Substitute for observations

Stereotypes are traditional and familiar symbol clusters, expressing a more or less
complex idea in a convenient way. They are often simplistic pronouncements about
gender, racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds and they can become a source of
misinformation and delusion. For example, in a school when students are confronted
with the task of writing a theme, they think in terms of literary associations,
often using stereotypes picked up from books, films, and magazines that they have
read or viewed.

The danger in stereotyping lies not in its existence, but in the fact that it can
become a substitute for observation and a misinterpretation of a cultural identity.
[109] Promoting information literacy is a pedagogical approach that can effectively
combat the entrenchment of stereotypes. The necessity for using information
literacy to separate multicultural "fact from fiction" is well illustrated with
examples from literature and media.[110]

Role in art and culture

American political cartoon titled The Usual Irish Way of Doing Things, depicting a
drunken Irishman lighting a powder keg and swinging a bottle. Published in Harper's
Weekly, 1871.
Stereotypes are common in various cultural media, where they take the form of
dramatic stock characters. The instantly recognizable nature of stereotypes mean
that they are effective in advertising and situation comedy.[111] Alexander Fedorov
(2015) proposed a concept of media stereotypes analysis. This concept refers to
identification and analysis of stereotypical images of people, ideas, events,
stories, themes, etc. in media context.[112]
The characters that do appear in movies greatly affect how people worldwide
perceive gender relations, race, and cultural communities. Because approximately
85% of worldwide ticket sales are directed toward Hollywood movies, the American
movie industry has been greatly responsible for portraying characters of different
cultures and diversity to fit into stereotypical categories.[113] This has led to
the spread and persistence of gender, racial, ethnic, and cultural stereotypes seen
in the movies.[89]

For example, Russians are usually portrayed as ruthless agents, brutal mobsters and
villains in Hollywood movies.[114][115][116] According to Russian American
professor Nina L. Khrushcheva, "You can’t even turn the TV on and go to the movies
without reference to Russians as horrible."[117] The portrayals of Latin Americans
in film and print media are restricted to a narrow set of characters. Latin
Americans are largely depicted as sexualized figures such as the Latino macho or
the Latina vixen, gang members, (illegal) immigrants, or entertainers. By
comparison, they are rarely portrayed as working professionals, business leaders or
politicians.[101]

In Hollywood films, there are several Latin American stereotypes that have
historically been used. Some examples are El Bandido, the Halfbreed Harlot, The
Male Buffoon, The Female Clown, The Latin Lover, The Dark Lady, The Wise Old Man,
and The Poor Peon. Many Hispanic characters in Hollywood films consists of one or
more of these basic stereotypes, but it has been rare to view Latin American actors
representing characters outside of this stereotypical criteria.[118]

Media stereotypes of women first emerged in the early 20th century. Various
stereotypic depictions or "types" of women appeared in magazines, including
Victorian ideals of femininity, the New Woman, the Gibson Girl, the Femme fatale,
and the Flapper.[88][119]

Stereotypes are also common in video games, with women being portrayed as
stereotypes such as the "damsel in distress" or as sexual objects (see Gender
representation in video games).[120] Studies show that minorities are portrayed
most often in stereotypical roles such as athletes and gangsters (see Racial
representations in video games).[121]

In literature and art, stereotypes are clichéd or predictable characters or

situations. Throughout history, storytellers have drawn from stereotypical
characters and situations to immediately connect the audience with new tales.[122]