Stereotypes: Effects of Stereotyping (HL IB Psychology)

Stereotypes: Effects of Stereotyping

What is a stereotype?

• A stereotype comprises a set of characteristics, traits, behaviours and attitudes attributed to social and cultural groups based on broad, often biased information about that group

• Our social world is very complex and contains a huge amount of information; one way of avoiding information overload is to use stereotypes to understand the world and those living in it because they save energy and can easily be applied to people (an example of people as cognitive misers)

• The main drawback of categorising people into broad groups is that stereotyping can lead to associations between groups and characteristics that are often negative and may give rise to prejudice and discrimination

• One theory of how stereotypes form is Illusory Correlation (which can also be studied as part of the Cognitive Approach – Reliability of Cognitive Processes)

What is Stereotype Threat?

• Stereotype Threat (ST) occurs when an individual’s performance on a task is impaired when they feel that pre-existing stereotypes will be used to judge them on their performance

• ST may arise in an example such as the following: a woman is parallel-parking her car and is aware that a group of men are nearby – she is aware that women are stereotyped for bad parking so even if she is good at parking this may trigger ST and she then parks her car badly

• ST is not the same as actively being stereotyped by others it is when the individual knows that the stereotype already exists and feels that others are already judging them on this basis – even if this is not true (i.e. in the above example the group of men may have been completely unaware of the woman parking her car)

• ST is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy i.e. People look down on me because of my accent, they think I’m stupid so I’m not even going to bother applying for that job, I won’t get it

• ST can be negative even when it appears to be positive e.g. overweight people are so jolly;

  • Asian students do so well at school;

  • Women are so caring because these stereotypes still limit variety and individual differences within a social group i.e. what if I’m a woman who is uncaring?

  • What if I’m an Asian student who hates school and fails their classes?

Seemingly positive stereotypes are still part of stereotype threat.

Which research studies investigate the effects of stereotyping?

• Spencer et al. (1999) – stereotype threat may trigger gender differences in Maths 

Spencer et al. (1999) is available as a separate Key Study – just navigate the Individual & the Group section of this topic to find it (Two Key Studies of Stereotypes)