Title: What are the consequences of stereotypes? - Getting Race Right
Headings: What are the consequences of stereotypes?
What are the consequences of stereotypes?
It’s so easy to see in an experiment
And so difficult to see in real life
Stereotypes influence how we think about other people
Stereotypes influence how we behave toward other people
Stereotypes perpetuate inequality and place a significant burden on those affected
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Content: I don’t expect that of people like you.” It’s insulting, of course, to hold people of color to lower standards, complimenting them for levels of performance that would not elicit compliments if they were White. It also provides them with false feedback about their strengths and weaknesses. Just one more point here: Unless we are highly prejudiced, we don’t usually stereotype people in the complete absence of supporting information. We wait, we interact, and we draw judgments on the basis of what we learn about that person. However—and here’s the kicker—we don’t require much evidence before we come to a stereotypical conclusion, and we require quite a bit of evidence before coming to a non-stereotypical conclusion. In one study ( Biernat and Ma, 2005 ), Black people who believed that White people tend to be “phony” or “sheltered” didn’t describe specific White people in that way in the complete absence of corroborating data. However, it didn’t take much—just a comment or two—for them to decide that a specific White person did, in fact, fit their stereotype. Similarly, Whites in this study did not always decide that a Black person was “athletic” or “streetwise,” but it didn’t take much evidence for them to come to that conclusion, either.