I think that this article highlights the left's version of climate change deniers. The climate change deniers on the right perceive that if climate change were true it would require significant government intervention in the economy (carbon tax, cap and trade, subsidies for clean energy, etc). Because that outcome is something they do not want, they try to deny the truth of climate change.
On the left, because they perceive these stereotype validating social studies as supporting racists, deny that stereotypes have any truth in them often against overwhelming evidence.
One side is not more rational than the other. For both, truth has become a casualty to goals. This is a very bad place to be in for the following reasons:
1) If instead of truth standing on its own, you are willing to suppress it to support an agenda (even if it is good), you remove your ability to morally object when someone with a different agenda suppresses a truth you would rather not see suppressed. You are in essence guilty of doing the same thing as the church did to Galileo.
2) It is ultimately counterproductive to your goal. Your suppression of the truth will be used against you by your opponents to good effect. People hate being treated like children with facts suppressed to support an agenda. Once, people realize what is going on, they have a natural urge to support the opposite of the agenda. Think about how atheists use the history of the church suppressing Galileo to persuade people of the danger of religion.
So, if the evidence supports that many stereotypes are generally true, let us accept that what the evidence says. However, that does not mean that we are automatically racists, sexists, etc. As the article says "In situations where one has abundant, vividly clear information about an individual, the stereotype becomes completely irrelevant". By getting to know people as individuals and not just as exemplars of a group can we truly overcome injustice. In addition, by acknowledging the truth in stereotypes we can then work to remedy underlying causes for some of the negative stereotypes.
I agree with your comment, but I have to pick on one thing in the interest of accuracy.
> guilty of doing the same thing as the church did to Galileo
The Church didn't oppress Galileo because of his work in astronomy. He got that for being an ass to the Pope (and a part of a political problem). Also, Galileo was only somewhat right, but for the wrong reasons (i.e. data supporting his statements wasn't there for many years).
Very few people have lost their job for being skeptical of anthropogenic climate change.
"Racist" has been a career-ender and guarantee of social ostracism since the 1980s, at least. It is perhaps the most powerful meme that has ever been invented.
I am leftist and I agree with the last paragraph, and I think many leftists would. And that's the point - the stereotypes are useless in policy and decision making, and studying them is unscientific. They are factoids perhaps good for cocktail parties.
I don't think that existence of correct stereotypes poses a great risk for ideology of the left, unlike global warming, which actually is a risk for completely free market ideology, because there is no way free markets can deal with externalities. It's only if you accept naturalistic fallacy (that stereotyping is natural, therefore ethical) you get these problems.
I think left has ideological problem (and thus bias), but somewhere else. Left cannot very well deal with people who perceive risk differently. Which is actually kinda connected to the existence of stereotypes.
Is this surprising? I've always thought, logically, that for a stereotype to become popular and remain so, it's got to be a better quick rule of thumb assessment than an alternative stereotype, ergo there must be some small kernel of truth or statistical disposition underlying it.
I remember it was an opinion that got me reamed out once by a rather terrible, but idealistic middle-school teacher.
Let me quote Daniel Kahneman in "Thinking, Fast and Slow"
"The social norm against stereotyping, including the opposition to profiling, has been highly beneficial in creating a more civilized and more equal society. It is useful to remember, however, that neglecting valid stereotypes inevitably results in suboptimal judgments. Resistance to stereotyping is a laudable moral position, but the simplistic idea that the resistance is costless is wrong. The costs are worth paying to achieve a better society, but denying that the costs exist, while satisfying to the soul and politically correct, is not scientifically defensible. Reliance on the affect heuristic is common in politically charged arguments. The positions we favor have no cost and those we oppose have no benefits. We should be able to do better."
–Daniel Kahneman, Nobel laureate, in Thinking, Fast and Slow, chapter 16
The accuracy or inaccuracy of stereotypes reminds me of the regulations and ethical debates regarding the use of machine learning for example for creditworthiness. The algorithms often turn out to become "racist", because from the data they have, race is a good predictor.
I'm still somewhat ambivalent on that, because I'm not convinced that statistics can be racist. But people pointed out to me that the way these statistics are collected might not be free of bias. Also, for example race being a good predictor of creditworthiness might in itself be just an effect of racism (eg. because black people aren't hired at well paying jobs) and using that statistics exacerbates the problem. Those are pretty good points, but I still find it weird that we forbid businesses to use all the information they have available to make business decisions.
> Those are pretty good points, but I still find it weird that we forbid businesses to use all the information they have available to make business decisions.
Every rule in society can be formulated as a constraint on businesses. Typically, minimum wage prevents companies from making business decisions that would otherwise be profitable. Banning script money as a payment for wages also prevents them from making these decisions. This stems from the fact that the society view the common good as more important than the business interest of some of its members.
In that sense, making decisions based on data is an action like any other, and is subject to common scrutiny.
The fact that African Americans, on average, might be significantly less likely to be creditworthy - is not racist per-sey, it's just a fact.
But denying someone credit on the basis of their race is probably racist.
Why? Because having 'black skin' does not make you less credit worthy. It's a correlating factor.
In fact - the 'dangers of stereotypes' are exactly that: making prejudiced decisions based on race etc..
Creditworthiness should be established on the basis of your job, job type, income, education, history of making payments etc..
There's no way on earth it's moral or fair to deny credit because someone is black - in the same way it's ruthlessly unfair to convict someone of a crime because they are black and 'theoretically more likely to have committed crime'.
I'd argue that this is the basis for the systematic racism that exists in the system, and that we have to get over.
And I'm not a pro-PC guy - by far. I'm not even very cool with affirmative action. But we need to treat people as individuals, not stereotypes.
This really depends on whether you view racism as a moral failing, in which case the answer is "obviously not" or as a type of bug in a social (or social/technical) system, in which case the answer is "of course".
Statistics don't exist in a vacuum, nor are they a part of nature. Every piece of statistics is the result of a person or a group of people grabbing a subset of some data, applying a collection of mathematical transformations to that data and interpreting the results. Every step of the process, from what data you chose to look and how you chose to collect that data, to what transformations you choose to apply, to how you choose to interpret the numbers that come out of those transformations is a choice a person has to make and as such is very much subject to conscious and subconscious biases.
Why do you think black people aren't hired at well paying jobs? Isn't racism also in a way based on stereotypes that are often true? A business owner has no legal obligation to interview every applicant.
In a way, it's a somewhat underhanded move - since it's too politically hard to directly help those communities and fix those inputs at the source, we'll create a hidden tax on a bunch of businesses and individuals to do it for us.
On the other hand, if the alternative is no help at all, I can't blame the proponents of those measures.
Wow. Amazing that someone would dare publish this in today's PC world.
That said, when stereotypes are wrong - they are very wrong, right from the article:
"2. Older people are generally more __________ and less __________ than adolescents.
A. Conscientious; open to new experiences
B. Neurotic; agreeable"
Old people are WAY more 'conscientious' than young people.
Old people vote, they plan, they don't overspend, they're rarely loud and unruly, their finances are predictable, their homes are often more clean and orderly, they usually are responsible for caring for others - kids and grandkids.
Young people are 'virtue signallers' and ostensibly have 'big hearts' and 'thumbs up' upworthy rubbish - but old people are far more tangibly conscientious. My elderly uncles and aunts are boring and a little curmudgeon, but the spend several weeks a year in Guatemala helping to build homes for poor people. The don't post it on social media. A young person who did this once would put that on their resume forever.
You know how deals with reality: 'insurers'. They have the real data. And it's the reason if you're under 25 it's sometimes impossible to rent a car.
Stereotypes are a form of information, just so low-grade that it more resembles misinformation.
Most Americans don't have stereotypes about, say, Mongolians, because most Americans have had zero contact with Mongolians. Maybe something about Genghis Khan? But go to, say, Beijing, and people there will probably have all kinds of stereotypes about Mongolians.
Stereotypes may or may not have a basis in reality: they can simply be a unsubstantiated prejudice (group A says goup B is dangerous and criminal; group B is actually very friendly to outsiders). They are frequently rooted in a history of social conflict (slavery, colonialism, &c). They lie within a specific social context/relationship (group A sees group B as lazy, group B sees group A as arrogant and overbearing). They are about social categories that don't have analytical basis outside the social context (national or racial groups).
The bigger problem is that they form an ecological fallacy—the assumption that something that may be true about the group is true about the individual.
I suspect much of this unease about stereotypes and researching them comes from the scientific community not wanting their work to be used to justify extremism or far right/far left political parties.
After what happened with both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union misrepresenting scientific research to 'support' their policies, I suspect a lot of researchers want to avoid their own work being used for the same purposes.
On a more pedestrian level, it's just courteous to not generalize.
All you need to do is ask an expat Canadian how much they enjoy repeatedly being asked "What part of the States are you from?". After a few dozen people make the same assumption about you, it can become aggravating. Never the less, it's a reasonable question to ask. 90% of people who sound like Americans (roughly speaking) come from the USA.
The more common a stereotype is, the more infuriating it is to be an outlier. So it's considerate to bear that in mind, even if the stereotype is valid.
How much of it is genuine fear of their research being misused, vs fear of the repercussions from a very reactive public that's been conditioned to think stereotypes are bad or evil by default?
> After what happened with both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union misrepresenting scientific research to 'support' their policies, I suspect a lot of researchers want to avoid their own work being used for the same purposes.
But we have the same effect, anyway. Take a look at the underlying scientific research regarding some politically-charged issues and you'll realise that many of the things all right-thinking people know are poorly-supported, or aren't supported, or simply aren't true at all.
Most people don't want truth: they want to feel good.
He picked a very inclusive definition of 'stereotype'. I wouldn't consider the idea that Jews don't celebrate Christmas (a Christian holiday) - its a matter of faith so feels more like a fact. The rest were demographics with a clear statistics basis - most of them well known and well understood not to be generalizations applying to the whole group. Saying that 80% of African Americans voted for democrats in 2012 would necessarily imply that 20% didn't. The ratio necessitates individual variation, something that a more common stereotype (black people like watermelon [side note: who the heck doesn't?]) doesn't allow. That's not to mention that the behavior in question is clearly in line with their best interest (GOP has been tilting right for years to appeal to an aging, racist, white base), implying that they like people of all races are assumed to be rational.
Which isn't to imply that the author is wrong about anything, just that most of what he's talking about doesn't fit the common definition of stereotypes, but demographics.
I don't like watermelon, but this is the result of aversion therapy when I was 5. My family helped our neighbours pick watermelons and in return they gave us a huge number of watermelons. My brother and I at nothing but watermelon for months and even to this day I still don't like it.
Considering the great amount of statistical research the author has done, it's surprising that he's drawn some dreadful conclusions. He seems to be saying that in the face of incomplete/ambiguous information, people should form judgements on other people on the basis of racial/gender/physical stereotypes.
The problem with stereotypes isn't that they have no basis in reality. The problem with stereotypes is that they are just as inaccurate as they are accurate. The problem with stereotypes is that they stunt the potential of tens/hundreds of millions of people.
Do we really want to live in a world where women are denied managerial/executive jobs, because of stereotypes that they can't control their emotions?
One where African Americans are rejected from job applications, because of whatever derogatory stereotypes people hold against them?
One where Jews are routinely judged as being immoral and obsessed with money?
One where Southerners are socially shunned for being uncultured racist bigots?
One where women refuse to date engineers because they're socially incompetent boring dorks?
One that bans Gays from being teachers because they're likely to be child molesters?
If you're someone who thinks that making life-changing judgements about individuals on the basis of stereotypes is perfectly fine, the early/mid 1900s are right up your alley. Thankfully, most of us have come to recognize how damaging and morally repugnant such a system is. I would hate to be judged and discriminated against on the basis of stereotypes, and hence, I refrain from doing the same to others. Ultimately, that's the courtesy that we as a society have decided we should extend to one another.
But you're cherry-picking stereotypes that are mostly incorrect (and look outright archaic). Whereas Lee Jussim (for example) has found that most stereotypes are mostly accurate.
Interestingly, stereotypes based on political party membership are consistently inaccurate.
As the Kahneman quote I posted elsewhere shows, the reality is that resistance to reasoning using certain valid stereotypes is an ethical position, based on a desire to build a better society. It has costs in terms of sub-optimal decision making. In a democratic society, we should acknowledge this, rather than falsely and naively claiming that stereotypes are false.
> I would hate to be judged and discriminated against on the basis of stereotypes, and hence, I refrain from doing the same to others.
Other people are not obliged to make bad decisions because of your feelings. They should make the ethical decisions they feel are right.
Statistical models are quantitative reasoning based on stereotypes. Every time you get a credit report or an insurance policy, that's based on nothing but stereotypes: just legally permissible ones, built into mathematical models. 25 year old men who buy red cars have a certain accident rate, therefore you're going to be charged for that rate.
If you had to bet on if a random Asian or a random black person would get the highest SAT score, what would you do? You would of course bet on the Asian because the odds are so much better. This is not discrimination. Discrimination would be if you still bet that the Asian would get a higher score even after I informed you that both of them got exactly the same score last time they took the test. That would mean that you somehow think that the Asian guy is better even if I already proved that they are equal.
>He seems to be saying that in the face of incomplete/ambiguous information, people should form judgements on other people on the basis of racial/gender/physical stereotypes.
It looks like "He seems...people should..." is overlaying a prescription that Lee Jussim didn't write anywhere in the essay.
Instead, he explicitly wrote the opposite: "Nothing in this essay should dissuade anyone from continuing efforts to combat discrimination."
I agree with the conclusion, that there is truth in stereotypes. I think the bigger issue is what we do with the information we gather from stereotypes.
I have a strong desire for a world in which people are judged on their merits and character and not on their race, religion, age or any other superficial trait. I don't want a person's superficial traits to color their perception of them.
It does seem absurd to try and force the public to close their eyes to the truth of stereotypes and pretend they don't exist. However it seems equally absurd to label and draw conclusions about an individual based on their membership in a group.
I don't mind stereotypes being acknowledged and even being researched and analyzed . . . so long as it done with the understanding that not all individuals will display the characteristics associated with their group and each individual is given an opportunity to be judged on their merits as an individual rather than prejudged based on their membership in a particular group.
> If people relied on their stereotypes more or less rationally, they would rely on them to inform judgments when they had little or no definitive information, but ignore them when they had definitive information. And it turns out this is just what most people do.
So what we do with stereotypes is help us get to a better answer sans any other information, then disregard it completely when more information comes to hand. That seems like the perfect use for imperfect information.
Does the author define what they mean for a stereotype to be "accurate"?
For example, it is a stereotype that in the US, white people vote Republican. Is this an accurate stereotype?
On one level, it is - in recent elections around 55-60% of white voters voted Republican, so it is certainly true to say that most white people vote Republican.
On another level, given a random white voter from the US, there is only a 55-60% chance that they voted Republican, which is not much better than guessing. So it's not particularly accurate to say that white people vote Republican.
I expect that most stereotypes fall into this class - they are accurate in aggregate, but not particularly informative when dealing with individuals. And surely this is the problem with stereotypes? We take a characteristic which is true in aggregate for a group (white people vote Republican, black people listen to hip hop, old people are less open to new experiences) and assume that those characteristics are true of individual members of that group.
I think stereotypes still need to taken with a grain of salt since many seem to be derived from n-hand sources which could've been distorted over successive retellings. It's not to say some stereotypes aren't true, but that people shouldn't put stock in them when making a moral judgment about an individual. I treat stereotypes as you would gossip where there's some grain of truth but it's next to impossible to distinguish between that truth and the bunk layered on top of it.
> people shouldn't put stock in them when making a moral judgment about an individual
This is exactly what the article suggests people do, and finds that they do in real life.
"If people relied on their stereotypes more or less rationally, they would rely on them to inform judgments when they had little or no definitive information, but ignore them when they had definitive information. And it turns out this is just what most people do."
I find it very strange that the author spends a couple paragraphs talking about definitions and yet does not offer a definition of "stereotype" because I consider a lot of his stereotypes to actually be generalizations.
Of course this raises the question of the difference between stereotypes and generalizations. I did some searching but didn't find anything I would call authoritative and I don't think I could define them myself in any meaningful terms.
[+] [-] RcouF1uZ4gsC|9 years ago|reply
On the left, because they perceive these stereotype validating social studies as supporting racists, deny that stereotypes have any truth in them often against overwhelming evidence.
One side is not more rational than the other. For both, truth has become a casualty to goals. This is a very bad place to be in for the following reasons:
1) If instead of truth standing on its own, you are willing to suppress it to support an agenda (even if it is good), you remove your ability to morally object when someone with a different agenda suppresses a truth you would rather not see suppressed. You are in essence guilty of doing the same thing as the church did to Galileo.
2) It is ultimately counterproductive to your goal. Your suppression of the truth will be used against you by your opponents to good effect. People hate being treated like children with facts suppressed to support an agenda. Once, people realize what is going on, they have a natural urge to support the opposite of the agenda. Think about how atheists use the history of the church suppressing Galileo to persuade people of the danger of religion.
So, if the evidence supports that many stereotypes are generally true, let us accept that what the evidence says. However, that does not mean that we are automatically racists, sexists, etc. As the article says "In situations where one has abundant, vividly clear information about an individual, the stereotype becomes completely irrelevant". By getting to know people as individuals and not just as exemplars of a group can we truly overcome injustice. In addition, by acknowledging the truth in stereotypes we can then work to remedy underlying causes for some of the negative stereotypes.
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|9 years ago|reply
> guilty of doing the same thing as the church did to Galileo
The Church didn't oppress Galileo because of his work in astronomy. He got that for being an ass to the Pope (and a part of a political problem). Also, Galileo was only somewhat right, but for the wrong reasons (i.e. data supporting his statements wasn't there for many years).
http://lesswrong.com/lw/lq6/the_galileo_affair_who_was_on_th...
[+] [-] carsongross|9 years ago|reply
"Racist" has been a career-ender and guarantee of social ostracism since the 1980s, at least. It is perhaps the most powerful meme that has ever been invented.
[+] [-] js8|9 years ago|reply
I don't think that existence of correct stereotypes poses a great risk for ideology of the left, unlike global warming, which actually is a risk for completely free market ideology, because there is no way free markets can deal with externalities. It's only if you accept naturalistic fallacy (that stereotyping is natural, therefore ethical) you get these problems.
I think left has ideological problem (and thus bias), but somewhere else. Left cannot very well deal with people who perceive risk differently. Which is actually kinda connected to the existence of stereotypes.
[+] [-] douche|9 years ago|reply
I remember it was an opinion that got me reamed out once by a rather terrible, but idealistic middle-school teacher.
[+] [-] sevenless|9 years ago|reply
"The social norm against stereotyping, including the opposition to profiling, has been highly beneficial in creating a more civilized and more equal society. It is useful to remember, however, that neglecting valid stereotypes inevitably results in suboptimal judgments. Resistance to stereotyping is a laudable moral position, but the simplistic idea that the resistance is costless is wrong. The costs are worth paying to achieve a better society, but denying that the costs exist, while satisfying to the soul and politically correct, is not scientifically defensible. Reliance on the affect heuristic is common in politically charged arguments. The positions we favor have no cost and those we oppose have no benefits. We should be able to do better."
–Daniel Kahneman, Nobel laureate, in Thinking, Fast and Slow, chapter 16
[+] [-] adrianN|9 years ago|reply
I'm still somewhat ambivalent on that, because I'm not convinced that statistics can be racist. But people pointed out to me that the way these statistics are collected might not be free of bias. Also, for example race being a good predictor of creditworthiness might in itself be just an effect of racism (eg. because black people aren't hired at well paying jobs) and using that statistics exacerbates the problem. Those are pretty good points, but I still find it weird that we forbid businesses to use all the information they have available to make business decisions.
[+] [-] pyrale|9 years ago|reply
Every rule in society can be formulated as a constraint on businesses. Typically, minimum wage prevents companies from making business decisions that would otherwise be profitable. Banning script money as a payment for wages also prevents them from making these decisions. This stems from the fact that the society view the common good as more important than the business interest of some of its members.
In that sense, making decisions based on data is an action like any other, and is subject to common scrutiny.
[+] [-] jomamaxx|9 years ago|reply
But denying someone credit on the basis of their race is probably racist.
Why? Because having 'black skin' does not make you less credit worthy. It's a correlating factor.
In fact - the 'dangers of stereotypes' are exactly that: making prejudiced decisions based on race etc..
Creditworthiness should be established on the basis of your job, job type, income, education, history of making payments etc..
There's no way on earth it's moral or fair to deny credit because someone is black - in the same way it's ruthlessly unfair to convict someone of a crime because they are black and 'theoretically more likely to have committed crime'.
I'd argue that this is the basis for the systematic racism that exists in the system, and that we have to get over.
And I'm not a pro-PC guy - by far. I'm not even very cool with affirmative action. But we need to treat people as individuals, not stereotypes.
[+] [-] afarrell|9 years ago|reply
This really depends on whether you view racism as a moral failing, in which case the answer is "obviously not" or as a type of bug in a social (or social/technical) system, in which case the answer is "of course".
[+] [-] dagw|9 years ago|reply
Statistics don't exist in a vacuum, nor are they a part of nature. Every piece of statistics is the result of a person or a group of people grabbing a subset of some data, applying a collection of mathematical transformations to that data and interpreting the results. Every step of the process, from what data you chose to look and how you chose to collect that data, to what transformations you choose to apply, to how you choose to interpret the numbers that come out of those transformations is a choice a person has to make and as such is very much subject to conscious and subconscious biases.
[+] [-] iopq|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icebraining|9 years ago|reply
On the other hand, if the alternative is no help at all, I can't blame the proponents of those measures.
[+] [-] jomamaxx|9 years ago|reply
That said, when stereotypes are wrong - they are very wrong, right from the article:
"2. Older people are generally more __________ and less __________ than adolescents. A. Conscientious; open to new experiences B. Neurotic; agreeable"
Old people are WAY more 'conscientious' than young people.
Old people vote, they plan, they don't overspend, they're rarely loud and unruly, their finances are predictable, their homes are often more clean and orderly, they usually are responsible for caring for others - kids and grandkids.
Young people are 'virtue signallers' and ostensibly have 'big hearts' and 'thumbs up' upworthy rubbish - but old people are far more tangibly conscientious. My elderly uncles and aunts are boring and a little curmudgeon, but the spend several weeks a year in Guatemala helping to build homes for poor people. The don't post it on social media. A young person who did this once would put that on their resume forever.
You know how deals with reality: 'insurers'. They have the real data. And it's the reason if you're under 25 it's sometimes impossible to rent a car.
[+] [-] Sohakes|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] panglott|9 years ago|reply
Most Americans don't have stereotypes about, say, Mongolians, because most Americans have had zero contact with Mongolians. Maybe something about Genghis Khan? But go to, say, Beijing, and people there will probably have all kinds of stereotypes about Mongolians.
Stereotypes may or may not have a basis in reality: they can simply be a unsubstantiated prejudice (group A says goup B is dangerous and criminal; group B is actually very friendly to outsiders). They are frequently rooted in a history of social conflict (slavery, colonialism, &c). They lie within a specific social context/relationship (group A sees group B as lazy, group B sees group A as arrogant and overbearing). They are about social categories that don't have analytical basis outside the social context (national or racial groups).
The bigger problem is that they form an ecological fallacy—the assumption that something that may be true about the group is true about the individual.
[+] [-] CM30|9 years ago|reply
After what happened with both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union misrepresenting scientific research to 'support' their policies, I suspect a lot of researchers want to avoid their own work being used for the same purposes.
[+] [-] charlesism|9 years ago|reply
All you need to do is ask an expat Canadian how much they enjoy repeatedly being asked "What part of the States are you from?". After a few dozen people make the same assumption about you, it can become aggravating. Never the less, it's a reasonable question to ask. 90% of people who sound like Americans (roughly speaking) come from the USA.
The more common a stereotype is, the more infuriating it is to be an outlier. So it's considerate to bear that in mind, even if the stereotype is valid.
[+] [-] icebraining|9 years ago|reply
Or in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States#...
[+] [-] zo1|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wtbob|9 years ago|reply
But we have the same effect, anyway. Take a look at the underlying scientific research regarding some politically-charged issues and you'll realise that many of the things all right-thinking people know are poorly-supported, or aren't supported, or simply aren't true at all.
Most people don't want truth: they want to feel good.
[+] [-] nxc18|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nxc18|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danieltillett|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whack|9 years ago|reply
The problem with stereotypes isn't that they have no basis in reality. The problem with stereotypes is that they are just as inaccurate as they are accurate. The problem with stereotypes is that they stunt the potential of tens/hundreds of millions of people.
Do we really want to live in a world where women are denied managerial/executive jobs, because of stereotypes that they can't control their emotions?
One where African Americans are rejected from job applications, because of whatever derogatory stereotypes people hold against them?
One where Jews are routinely judged as being immoral and obsessed with money?
One where Southerners are socially shunned for being uncultured racist bigots?
One where women refuse to date engineers because they're socially incompetent boring dorks?
One that bans Gays from being teachers because they're likely to be child molesters?
If you're someone who thinks that making life-changing judgements about individuals on the basis of stereotypes is perfectly fine, the early/mid 1900s are right up your alley. Thankfully, most of us have come to recognize how damaging and morally repugnant such a system is. I would hate to be judged and discriminated against on the basis of stereotypes, and hence, I refrain from doing the same to others. Ultimately, that's the courtesy that we as a society have decided we should extend to one another.
[+] [-] sevenless|9 years ago|reply
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~jussim/unbearable%20accuracy%20o...
Interestingly, stereotypes based on political party membership are consistently inaccurate.
As the Kahneman quote I posted elsewhere shows, the reality is that resistance to reasoning using certain valid stereotypes is an ethical position, based on a desire to build a better society. It has costs in terms of sub-optimal decision making. In a democratic society, we should acknowledge this, rather than falsely and naively claiming that stereotypes are false.
> I would hate to be judged and discriminated against on the basis of stereotypes, and hence, I refrain from doing the same to others.
Other people are not obliged to make bad decisions because of your feelings. They should make the ethical decisions they feel are right.
Statistical models are quantitative reasoning based on stereotypes. Every time you get a credit report or an insurance policy, that's based on nothing but stereotypes: just legally permissible ones, built into mathematical models. 25 year old men who buy red cars have a certain accident rate, therefore you're going to be charged for that rate.
[+] [-] Klockan|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jasode|9 years ago|reply
It looks like "He seems...people should..." is overlaying a prescription that Lee Jussim didn't write anywhere in the essay.
Instead, he explicitly wrote the opposite: "Nothing in this essay should dissuade anyone from continuing efforts to combat discrimination."
[+] [-] steanne|9 years ago|reply
...one where women and engineers are considered to be two separate categories?
[+] [-] Paul_S|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vivekd|9 years ago|reply
I have a strong desire for a world in which people are judged on their merits and character and not on their race, religion, age or any other superficial trait. I don't want a person's superficial traits to color their perception of them.
It does seem absurd to try and force the public to close their eyes to the truth of stereotypes and pretend they don't exist. However it seems equally absurd to label and draw conclusions about an individual based on their membership in a group.
I don't mind stereotypes being acknowledged and even being researched and analyzed . . . so long as it done with the understanding that not all individuals will display the characteristics associated with their group and each individual is given an opportunity to be judged on their merits as an individual rather than prejudged based on their membership in a particular group.
[+] [-] T2_t2|9 years ago|reply
> If people relied on their stereotypes more or less rationally, they would rely on them to inform judgments when they had little or no definitive information, but ignore them when they had definitive information. And it turns out this is just what most people do.
So what we do with stereotypes is help us get to a better answer sans any other information, then disregard it completely when more information comes to hand. That seems like the perfect use for imperfect information.
[+] [-] qf303rjr3|9 years ago|reply
For example, it is a stereotype that in the US, white people vote Republican. Is this an accurate stereotype?
On one level, it is - in recent elections around 55-60% of white voters voted Republican, so it is certainly true to say that most white people vote Republican.
On another level, given a random white voter from the US, there is only a 55-60% chance that they voted Republican, which is not much better than guessing. So it's not particularly accurate to say that white people vote Republican.
I expect that most stereotypes fall into this class - they are accurate in aggregate, but not particularly informative when dealing with individuals. And surely this is the problem with stereotypes? We take a characteristic which is true in aggregate for a group (white people vote Republican, black people listen to hip hop, old people are less open to new experiences) and assume that those characteristics are true of individual members of that group.
[+] [-] pif|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sevenless|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iopq|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] norea-armozel|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hrnnnnnn|9 years ago|reply
This is exactly what the article suggests people do, and finds that they do in real life.
"If people relied on their stereotypes more or less rationally, they would rely on them to inform judgments when they had little or no definitive information, but ignore them when they had definitive information. And it turns out this is just what most people do."
[+] [-] emodendroket|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jccalhoun|9 years ago|reply
Of course this raises the question of the difference between stereotypes and generalizations. I did some searching but didn't find anything I would call authoritative and I don't think I could define them myself in any meaningful terms.