Psychology’s Schneider compiles 40 years of studying stereotypes in his new book

Psychology’s Schneider compiles 40 years of studying stereotypes in his new book

BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News staff

“Stereotypes are the common colds of social interaction — ubiquitous, infectious, irritating and hard to get rid of,” David Schneider writes in his new book, “The Psychology of Stereotyping.”

Yet his first firsthand experience with stereotypes didn’t occur until he went to graduate school at Stanford University in the 1960s.

A male Caucasian, Schneider wasn’t a member of a group that had been stereotyped. Having been raised in a rural area outside Indianapolis, he had met only a couple of African-Americans, was unaware gays existed and didn’t know a Jew until graduate school.

“It was a real learning experience — that people are different,” he recalled about his years at Stanford. “Until then, I didn’t think about the attitudes I had about stereotypes because everyone around me shared them.”

Engulfed in the radical ’60s, Schneider became involved in racial protests, antiwar demonstrations and other social movements that opened his eyes and mind to the stereotypes of various religions, ethnicities, races, sexual orientations, genders and other categories used to pigeonhole people. Those personal interests paralleled his professional ones as a social psychologist.

More than 40 years later, the Rice professor of psychology has compiled just about everything he’s learned about stereotypes in a 700-page book.

Fifteen years in the making, “The Psychology of Stereotyping” has more than 3,500 entries in the bibliography. The bibliography was condensed from Schneider’s working list of more than 10,000 references — an indication of the exhaustive research he conducted to present a thorough summary of how views of stereotypes have changed since journalist Walter Lippmann first used the term in his 1922 book “Public Opinion” to refer to characteristics applied to others on the basis of their national, ethnic or gender groups.

“In the early days, there was essentially universal agreement that stereotypes were rotten generalizations that smelled up the mental household,” Schneider wrote. “They were inaccurate, largely produced by prejudiced minds or shoveled into ignorant minds by prejudiced culture. They were negative, rigidly held and impervious to disconfirming evidence. Unfortunately, most of this is wrong. Some stereotypes are like that, but most are not — not usually, not inevitably.”

The word “stereotype” comes from two Greek words meaning “solid” and “a model,” and this “solid model” initially referred to a metal plate used to print pages. That led to the connotation of rigidity and duplication or sameness. The traditional view is that stereotypes are rigid, and they stamp all whom they apply to with the same characteristics.

Using the basic definition that stereotypes are “qualities perceived to be associated with particular groups or categories of people,” Schneider acknowledges that stereotypes are often negative, untrue and unfair. But he argues that stereotypes are essentially generalizations and can be useful. “To give up our capacity to form stereotypes, we would probably have to give up our capacity to generalize, and that is a trade none of us should be willing to make,” he said.

Stereotypes don’t have to be negative. As an example, Schneider cites the belief that Asian students are good at math.

Nowadays not many social psychologists would endorse stereotypes as “inaccurate generalizations, maintained through ignorance, prejudice and cultural realities,” Schneider wrote. “We now recognize that stereotypes cannot be easily divorced from more ‘normal’ ways of thinking about people. Stereotypes are simply generalizations about groups of people, and as such they are similar to generalizations about dogs, computers, Anne Rice novels, city buses or Beethoven piano sonatas.”

But he noted ways in which stereotypes such as “fat people are lazy” and “gay men are effeminate” differ from generalizations like “red, ripe apples taste good” and “Honda makes reliable cars.”

Most people are more complex than objects and animals, as evidenced by humans’ tendency to be less consistent in behavior over time and situation. “Apples never taste rotten on Tuesday and then good on Wednesday,” Schneider said, whereas people might have a bad day on which they are not as nice as they tend to be on other days.

Most categories for people have more important features than most objects do. Whereas the size and taste of apples might be the only features worth caring about, people might rightfully object to being singled out for only one or two features. “So when I say that Asians are good at math, not only do I run the risk of seeing [a certain student] as better at statistics than she turns out to be, but, even if I am correct, I have highlighted only one of the many things that go into her identity and make her the person she is,” Schneider said. “Apples are indifferent to whether taste or color is paramount.”

Generalizations about people tend to be more deeply embedded in humans’ mental lives and cultures than are other generalizations. “Our theories about computers and particular makes of cars tend not to be especially elaborate, nor do they have many links with our other beliefs, attitudes and values,” Schneider said.

Stereotypes are complex because they’re often rooted in beliefs that reflect a combination of experience and culture. Most stereotypes have both positive and negative features that can vary in terms of how tenaciously they are held and how likely they are to be deployed for a given target, Schneider said. Likewise, prejudice and discrimination are not “simple, unidimensional constructs,” he added, noting that stereotypes and prejudice exist at several levels of consciousness.

“What we think we believe does not always capture all we do believe,” he said. “It is vitally important to document implicit beliefs and attitudes, and to make people aware that they may not be fully conscious of their stereotypes, their prejudices and the ways they discriminate.”

Schneider has observed that behaviors related to stereotypes and prejudice are not as “one-dimensional” as most people assume. “Discrimination can be subtle as well as direct, and it can reflect situational and institutional pressures and also be caused in a straight-line fashion by prejudice,” he said.

He concedes that on one level, stereotyping is inevitable behavior. “We can no more stop generalizing about people than about cars or animals,” he explained. “What is not inevitable, however, is that such generalizations have the force in our interpersonal lives that they presently do.”

Schneider suggests several ways to disarm stereotypes.

The first is to emphasize that people in almost all groups are diverse in regard to most features. “Almost no stereotypes apply to all, or in most cases to even a majority of, the people in the relevant category. One size does not fit all, and many people just don’t squeeze into their groups’ stereotypes the way they’re supposed to,” Schneider said. “The generalizations that should be important in our lives are not just the ones that discriminate one group from another, but rather those that have a high probability of applying to a given person.”

In his book, he uses the example of black males being more likely to be violent than white males. “The vast majority of black males I (and most of you) are likely to encounter are no more violent than white males. If I want to avoid being punched, stabbed or shot, I can improve my odds much better by using generalizations about time of day, location and situation than race or even gender.”

Another way to disarm stereotypes is to search for deeper explanations for group differences that evolve into stereotypes. “We need to continually remind ourselves and educate others that human behavior is complex and that group membership is generally a poor explanation for most behavior,” he said.

Although some people claim they don’t have a prejudiced bone in their bodies, their behavior often proves otherwise. “Hypocrisy and self-delusion aside, all of us, some of the time, behave in ways that belie our best conscious intentions,” Schneider said. People need to increase their awareness about the complexity of their own attitudes and behaviors. “It’s hard to imagine that we can make much progress in eliminating prejudice and discrimination so long as people maintain righteous beliefs about the purity of their hearts and their inability to behave in discriminatory ways.”

Schneider does not advocate that stereotypes be eliminated; instead, he hopes people will work toward a better understanding of the complexity and subtlety of stereotypes and their effect on behavior. “Then perhaps we can use that knowledge to treat our fellow human beings with the dignity they deserve,” Schneider said.