Stereotyping and the self-fulfilling prophecy

SIGNIFICANCE: Stereotyping is a mental process in which generalized beliefs about a group are assigned to all members of that group. When people are confronted with society’s stereotyped views of how they are expected to behave, they may actually begin to behave that way; this phenomenon is known as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Stereotyping is a particular form of social typing involving rigidly held beliefs that are frequently based on incomplete or erroneous information. Stereotyping involves generalizing the identifying characteristics of groups (such as Latinos, African Americans, women, LGBTQ people, or obese people) and applying those generalizations to individual members of the group. Common examples of stereotyping include such widespread notions, held at various times, that Italian people are passionate, Irish people fight and drink, women are very emotional, and obese people are jolly.

A central problem with stereotyping is that it involves overgeneralizing: A stereotype is unfairly and rigidly applied to individual members of a group, regardless of whether the individual (or even the group as a whole) actually fits that stereotype.

Schemata

A stereotype can be seen as a form of schema—a mental map or program that helps a person make sense of their environment. Schemata help the brain organize and simplify information about people, things, and situations so that people can recognize them readily. The use of schemata is crucial in mental development; children develop schemata as required to think and become familiar with the world. For example, when a young child sees a bird, a parent will tell the child, “That is a birdie,” and may explain that birdies hop, fly, and go “tweet-tweet.” The child then assumes that all birdies have these characteristics. As the child matures, they learn that not all birds have all these characteristics, so the initial schema is amended to encompass new examples.

The process of schema development usually serves humans well, but sometimes it causes problems when people overgeneralize or erroneously assign specific characteristics to all members of the conceptual group. Often a prototypical schema is developed that contains a single, well-defined model describing all members of a group, even though there is great variability among group members. When this occurs in stereotyping the attributes or behaviors of other human beings, it can cause a number of problems. One problematic aspect of stereotyping is that stereotypes are most likely to develop when people have strong feelings for or against some identifiable group, and particularly when they have a compelling need to view that group as inferior or threatening. Stereotypes, once formed, are often difficult (if not impossible) to change. Stereotypes are frequently drawn from a few people from a larger group, and such a small sample can often be misleading. The choice that one group makes as to what constitutes the defining characteristics of another group is likely to be self-serving more than grounded in objective reality.

Stereotyping and Prejudice

Stereotyping, therefore, is related to prejudice. It involves expectations placed on members of a particular group because of a preconceived, generalized idea of that group. Like other forms of prejudice, it frequently (but not always) serves the function of making one group feel superior to another. Stereotypes permeate societal views in myriad ways. There are gender stereotypes, for example, such as the concept that men are competitive, logical, and ambitious, whereas women are sensitive, quiet, and nurturing. People with mental illnesses are often stereotypically thought of as dangerous to others when this is rarely the case. People with disabilities are often automatically seen as unable to participate fully in society. Everyone has stereotypes embedded in their consciousness. The crucial thing is to be aware that they exist and to attempt not to let them prejudicially influence one’s attitudes and behaviors toward others.

Stereotypes pervade the media, and various “watchdog” groups are quick to protest when members of their group are portrayed as offensive stereotypes. The snack-food company Frito-Lay once used a cartoon character called the Frito Bandito to sell its chips on television until publicized protests from Mexican Americans forced the company to abandon it. Another stereotypical image, seen regularly in television dramas and films in the 1980s, was the “disturbed” Vietnam War veteran. Films and television programs have traditionally presented stereotypical characters precisely because they automatically fit into viewers’ existing stereotype schemata, allowing instant emotional reactions on the part of viewers. The negative side of this is that the tremendous power of film and television is used (intentionally or unintentionally) to reinforce stereotypes.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

All stereotypes contain the essential ingredients for creating self-fulfilling prophecies. The central aspect of the self-fulfilling prophecy is the stereotypical expectations held regarding the members of a particular group; in fact, the word “prophecy” here essentially means expectations. Expectations of a person’s behavior based on their membership in some group (such as an ethnic or gender category) can be either positive or negative. One common gender stereotype is that boys are better at math than girls are. The self-fulfilling prophecy that may occur (and, experts say, has occurred) because of this belief develops because parents and teachers (often unconsciously) encourage boys to excel in math more than they encourage girls. Boys receive more careful instruction and are subtly told that it is appropriate for them to be good at math; therefore, they do indeed begin to excel. In a self-fulfilling prophecy, a stereotypical trait that was originally overgeneralized and invalid becomes “true” because of the expectations and behavior of others toward the person or group at whom the stereotype is directed.

Expectations and Behavior

To a considerable degree, human belief drives human behavior. Any belief about other people (whether correct or erroneous, positive or negative), if strongly held and clearly expressed, can have an effect on the behavior of others. Stereotypes about out-groups have certainly existed since evolution first granted humans the ability to form and express them. The term “stereotype” itself derives from the printing technology of the early nineteenth century; it originally referred to a plate made from a printing surface, and it eventually came to mean any rigidly held or clichéd image or idea.

The scientific study of stereotypes and the effects of expectations (or prophecies of behavior), however, is a phenomenon of the second half of the twentieth century. In the largest sense, it may be seen as an outgrowth of the interest in understanding racism and prejudice that developed after World War II. In the late 1940s, the horrifying realization that the Nazis had systematically put to death more than six million people because of their religion (Jews), ethnicity, or other minority characteristics led social scientists to believe that there was an overwhelming and immediate need to uncover the causes of such hatred and prejudice and to ensure that such an event could never occur again.

A study of teacher expectations by Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson is considered a classic sociological experiment. Their findings, published as Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher Expectation and Pupils’ Intellectual Development (1968), spawned considerable interest in the area of stereotyping and self-fulfilling prophecies. Also in 1968, sociologist Robert K. Merton, in his edited volume Contemporary Social Problems, provided a concise definition of the self-fulfilling prophecy: a “false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the originally false conception sound true.” Considerable research on stereotypes and self-fulfilling prophecies appeared in the 1970s. In 2015, sociology professors Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou published their findings regarding the influence of self-fulfilling prophecies and stereotyping on Asian American academic achievement in the book The Asian American Achievement Paradox. They wanted to further study the effects of racial stereotyping on students' chances for success. After conducting several interviews with Asian American students, they found that, because of the generalized perception that Asian Americans are intelligent and high achieving due to cultural values, even Asian American students who initially did not perform well typically became motivated to succeed. In many cases, this was prompted by teachers' expectations. At the same time, such stereotypes often generated higher levels of stress and pressure to meet these expectations.

If the dominant group in a society believes that a particular out-group is violent or wanting in some way, society may communicate its expectations for the out-group in a number of ways—it may simply deny the group progress and sharing of resources (typically blaming the group for its own dilemma), or it may go so far as to segregate the group socially or confine it physically. Expectations communicated by word or action can eventually lead to tremendous frustration that may erupt in violence. Because the likelihood of altering the expectation-behavior relationship is small, the most reasonable goal for social scientists is to harness the power of human belief and find ways to motivate people to adapt the power for beneficial purposes. This could, ideally, lead to improved child-rearing within the family, improved results from the education system, and better relations between cultures. There is much for society to gain. On the other side of the coin, however, it is unlikely that humankind will ever completely eliminate those conditions that tend to promote prejudice and stereotypical thinking, so intergroup strife is virtually certain to continue.

Bibliography

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