Stereotypes - Harvard University

1 StereotypesPedro Bordalo, Katherine Coffman, Nicola Gennaioli, Andrei Shleifer First draft, November 2013. This version, May present a model of Stereotypes in which a decision maker assessing a group recallsonly that group s most representative or distinctive types. Stereotypes highlight differencesbetween groups, and are especially inaccurate (consisting of unlikely, extreme types) whengroups are similar. Stereotypical thinking implies overreaction to information that generatesor confirms a stereotype, and underreaction to information that contradicts it. Stereotypescan change if new information changes the group s most distinctive trait.

2 We present exper-imental evidence on the role of representativeness in shaping subjects mental representationof groups. Royal Holloway University of London, Ohio State University , Universit Bocconi and IGIER, HarvardUniversity. We are grateful to Nick Barberis, Roland B nabou, Dan Benjamin, Tom Cunningham, MatthewGentzkow, Emir Kamenica, Larry Katz, David Laibson, Sendhil Mullainathan, Josh Schwartzstein, JesseShapiro, Alp Simsek and Neil Thakral for extremely helpful comments. We thank the Initiative on Founda-tions of Human Behavior for support of this IntroductionThe Oxford English Dictionary defines a stereotype as a widely held but fixed and oversim-plified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing.

3 Stereotypes are other things, they cover racial groups ( Asians are good at math ), political groups( Republicans are rich ), genders ( Women are bad at math ), demographic groups ( Floridaresidents are elderly ), and activities ( flying is dangerous ). As these and other examplesillustrate, some Stereotypes are roughly accurate ( the Dutch are tall ), while others muchless so ( Irish are red-headed ; only 10% are). Moreover, Stereotypes change: in the US, Jewswere stereotyped as religious and uneducated at the beginning of the 20th century, and ashigh achievers at the beginning of the 21st (Madon et.)

4 Al., 2001).Social science has produced three broad approaches to Stereotypes . The economic ap-proach of Phelps (1972) and Arrow (1973) sees Stereotypes as a manifestation of statisticaldiscrimination: rational formation of beliefs about a group member in terms of the aggregatebeliefs about that group. Statistical discrimination may impact actual group characteristicsin equilibrium (Arrow 1973). For example, if employers hold adverse beliefs about the skillsof black workers, blacks would underinvest in education, thereby fulfilling the adverse priorbeliefs. However, because in this theory Stereotypes are based on rational expectations, itdoes not address a central problem that Stereotypes are often inaccurate.

5 The vast majorityof Florida residents are not elderly, the vast majority of the Irish are not red-headed, andflying is really pretty sociological approach to stereotyping pertains only to social groups. It views stereo-types as fundamentally incorrect and derogatory generalizations of group traits, reflective ofthe stereotyper s underlying prejudices (Adorno et al. 1950) or other internal motivations(Schneider 2004). Social groups that have been historically mistreated, such as racial andethnic minorities, continue to suffer through bad stereotyping, perhaps because the groupsin power want to perpetuate false beliefs about them (Steele 2010, Glaeser 2005).

6 Thestereotypes against blacks are thus rooted in the history of slavery and continuing discrim-ination. This approach might be relevant in some important instances, but it leaves a lotout. While some Stereotypes are inaccurate, many are quite fair ( Dutch are tall, Swedes1are blond. ) Moreover, many Stereotypes are flattering to the group in question rather thanpejorative ( Asians are good at math ). Finally, Stereotypes change, so they are at least inpart responsive to reality rather than entirely rooted in the past (Madon et. al., 2001)The third approach to Stereotypes and the one we follow is the social cognitionapproach , rooted in social psychology (Schneider 2004).

7 This approach gained ground inthe 1980s and views social Stereotypes as special cases of cognitive schemas or theories(Schneider, Hastorf, and Ellsworth 1979). These theories are intuitive generalizations thatindividuals routinely use in their everyday life, and entail savings on cognitive and Hippel (1996) stress that Stereotypes are mental representations of real differencesbetween groups [.. ] allowing easier and more efficient processing of information. Stereotypesare selective, however, in that they are localized around group features that are the mostdistinctive, that provide the greatest differentiation between groups, and that show the leastwithin-group variation.

8 A related kernel-of-truth hypothesis holds that Stereotypes arebased on some empirical reality; as such, they are useful, but may entail exaggerations(Judd and Park 1993).To us, this approach to Stereotypes seems intimately related to another idea from psy-chology: the use of heuristics in probability judgments (Kahneman and Tversky 1972). Justas heuristics simplify the assessment of complex probabilistic hypotheses, they also simplifythe representation of heterogeneous groups. In this way, heuristics enable a quick and oftenreliable assessment of complex situations, but sometimes cause biases in judgments.

9 Considerin particular the representativeness heurstic. Kahneman and Tversky (1972) write that anattribute is representative of a class if it is very diagnostic; that is, the relative frequency ofthis attribute is much higher in that class than in the relevant reference class. Representa-tiveness suggests that the reason people stereotype the Irish as red-headed is that red hair ismore common among the Irish than among other groups, even though it is not that commonin absolute terms. The reason people stereotype Republicans as wealthy is that the wealthy1In the words of Lippmann (1922, ), an early precursor of this approach: There is economyin this.

10 For the attempt to see all things freshly and in detail, rather than as types and generalities, isexhausting, and among busy affairs practically out of the question[.. ]. But modern life is hurried andmultifarious, above all physical distance separates men who are often in vital contact with each other, suchas employer and employee, official and voter. There is neither time nor opportunity for intimate we notice a trait which marks a well-known type, and fill in the rest of the picture by means of thestereotypes we carry about in our heads. 2are more common among Republicans than both cases, the representationentails judgment errors: people overestimate the proportion of red-haired among the Irish, orof the wealthy among the Republicans.