Sep 14, 2018 04:03 PM
(This post was last modified: Sep 14, 2018 04:28 PM by C C.
Edit Reason: Added "often" in subject line to better reflect original title; removed "still" due to resulting letter count limitations
)
https://quillette.com/2018/09/12/stereot...-accurate/
EXCERPT: . . . First, stereotypes are not bugs in our cultural software but features of our biological hardware. This is because the ability to stereotype is often essential for efficient decision-making, which facilitates survival. As Yale psychologist Paul Bloom has noted, “you don’t ask a toddler for directions, you don’t ask a very old person to help you move a sofa, and that’s because you stereotype.”
Our evolutionary ancestors were often called to act fast, on partial information from a small sample, in novel or risky situations. Under those conditions, the ability to form a better-than-chance prediction is an advantage.
Our brain constructs general categories, from which it derives predictions about category-relevant specific, and novel, situations. That trick has served us well enough to be selected into our brain’s basic repertoire. Wherever humans live, so do stereotypes. The impulse to stereotype is not a cultural innovation, like couture, but a species-wide adaptation, like color vision. Everyone does it. The powerful use stereotypes to enshrine and perpetuate their power, and the powerless use stereotypes just as much when seeking to defend or rebel against the powerful.
[...] Second, contrary to popular sentiment, stereotypes are usually accurate. (Not always to be sure. And some false stereotypes are purposefully promoted in order to cause harm. But this fact should further compel us to study stereotype accuracy well, so that we can distinguish truth from lies in this area). That stereotypes are often accurate should not be surprising to the open and critically minded reader. From an evolutionary perspective, stereotypes had to confer a predictive advantage to be elected into the repertoire, which means that they had to possess a considerable degree of accuracy, not merely a ‘kernel of truth.’
The notion of stereotype accuracy is also consistent with the powerful information-processing paradigm in cognitive science, in which stereotypes are conceptualized as “schemas,” the organized networks of concepts we use to represent external reality. Schemas are only useful if they are by and large (albeit imperfectly) accurate. Your ‘party’ schema may not include all the elements that exist in all parties, but it must include many of the elements that exist in many parties to be of any use to you as you enter a room and decide whether a party is going on and, if so, how you should behave.
Conceptual coherence notwithstanding, the question of stereotype accuracy is at heart an empirical one. In principle, all researchers need to do is ask people for their perceptions of a group trait, then measure the actual group on that trait, and compare the two. Alternately, they may ask people about the difference on a certain trait between two groups and compare that to the actual difference.
Alas, as you might have noticed, life is complex, and measuring stereotype accuracy in the real world is not easy....
MORE: https://quillette.com/2018/09/12/stereot...-accurate/
EXCERPT: . . . First, stereotypes are not bugs in our cultural software but features of our biological hardware. This is because the ability to stereotype is often essential for efficient decision-making, which facilitates survival. As Yale psychologist Paul Bloom has noted, “you don’t ask a toddler for directions, you don’t ask a very old person to help you move a sofa, and that’s because you stereotype.”
Our evolutionary ancestors were often called to act fast, on partial information from a small sample, in novel or risky situations. Under those conditions, the ability to form a better-than-chance prediction is an advantage.
Our brain constructs general categories, from which it derives predictions about category-relevant specific, and novel, situations. That trick has served us well enough to be selected into our brain’s basic repertoire. Wherever humans live, so do stereotypes. The impulse to stereotype is not a cultural innovation, like couture, but a species-wide adaptation, like color vision. Everyone does it. The powerful use stereotypes to enshrine and perpetuate their power, and the powerless use stereotypes just as much when seeking to defend or rebel against the powerful.
[...] Second, contrary to popular sentiment, stereotypes are usually accurate. (Not always to be sure. And some false stereotypes are purposefully promoted in order to cause harm. But this fact should further compel us to study stereotype accuracy well, so that we can distinguish truth from lies in this area). That stereotypes are often accurate should not be surprising to the open and critically minded reader. From an evolutionary perspective, stereotypes had to confer a predictive advantage to be elected into the repertoire, which means that they had to possess a considerable degree of accuracy, not merely a ‘kernel of truth.’
The notion of stereotype accuracy is also consistent with the powerful information-processing paradigm in cognitive science, in which stereotypes are conceptualized as “schemas,” the organized networks of concepts we use to represent external reality. Schemas are only useful if they are by and large (albeit imperfectly) accurate. Your ‘party’ schema may not include all the elements that exist in all parties, but it must include many of the elements that exist in many parties to be of any use to you as you enter a room and decide whether a party is going on and, if so, how you should behave.
Conceptual coherence notwithstanding, the question of stereotype accuracy is at heart an empirical one. In principle, all researchers need to do is ask people for their perceptions of a group trait, then measure the actual group on that trait, and compare the two. Alternately, they may ask people about the difference on a certain trait between two groups and compare that to the actual difference.
Alas, as you might have noticed, life is complex, and measuring stereotype accuracy in the real world is not easy....
MORE: https://quillette.com/2018/09/12/stereot...-accurate/
