Three traps set by stereotypes

“A father and son have a seri­ous car acci­dent. The father falls into a deep coma. The son is injured and needs emer­gency surgery. He is tak­en to hos­pi­tal. As they enter the oper­at­ing room, the sur­gi­cal intern looks at the child and says: ‘this is too emo­tion­al for me, I can’t oper­ate on him: he’s, my son!’” How can this be? Take a minute to think about the above ques­tion, and before we dis­cov­er the answer, let’s start by explor­ing the com­mon world of stereotypes. 

Shared? Well yes, stereo­types are impres­sions that all mem­bers of a group share about all mem­bers of anoth­er group or about their own group¹. They are build­ing blocks of our men­tal func­tion­ing, just like cog­ni­tive bias­es, heuris­tics, and oth­er short­cuts of thought. They help us to think quick­ly and effort­less­ly, to under­stand the world through sim­pli­fied cat­e­gories, to pre­serve our ego through often advan­ta­geous com­par­isons with oth­ers, and to fos­ter social con­sen­sus. How­ev­er, behind these self-evi­dent facts lie three traps that we should antic­i­pate to main­tain a min­i­mum of free will in our judge­ments and decisions.

Ety­mo­log­i­cal­ly, the term stereo­type comes from the print­ing indus­try and refers to the rigid matrix used to impreg­nate motifs in a repeat­ed and iden­ti­cal man­ner. Trans­posed to psy­chol­o­gy, stereo­types thus cor­re­spond to repet­i­tive and fixed men­tal images – not always con­scious, but always exag­ger­at­ed – which colour our per­cep­tion of oth­ers by sim­pli­fy­ing it. Moti­vat­ed by a mech­a­nism of sim­pli­fi­ca­tion of the world, they con­cern the cat­e­gories of first impres­sion: phys­i­cal appear­ance, ori­gin and geo­graph­i­cal affil­i­a­tion, pro­fes­sions, sex, age range, etc. The most attrac­tive peo­ple are, for exam­ple, attrib­uted skills and psy­cho­log­i­cal bal­ance that they do not nec­es­sar­i­ly pos­sess. As a result, they are lis­tened to more dur­ing a group dis­cus­sion, they are rat­ed bet­ter dur­ing an eval­u­a­tion, they are eas­i­ly per­ceived as hon­est and charis­mat­ic²…

Of course, each per­son will attribute to his or her own group prej­u­dices that are rather favourable: “what is intel­li­gent, thrifty and spon­ta­neous for one’s own group becomes resource­ful­ness, greed and impul­sive­ness for the oth­er group³”. More­over, not all stereo­types are false, and some are even based on well-estab­lished facts. What can be prob­lem­at­ic is their over­gen­er­al­i­sa­tion and often sim­plis­tic nature, as well as their rigid­i­ty and per­sis­tence. Many stereo­types emerge in the absence of any real­i­ty, based on iso­lat­ed cas­es or rumours⁴, con­veyed by the media, opin­ion mul­ti­pli­ers or cer­tain pres­sure groups, and now more eas­i­ly with the Inter­net and social media. 

Research in social psy­chol­o­gy has shown how stereo­types affect our judge­ments inde­pen­dent­ly of our aware­ness, and what is more, often where we do not expect them. There­fore, exper­i­men­tal research meth­ods are an excel­lent way to reveal them to ourselves.

Let’s illus­trate this with an inge­nious study by Madeleine Heil­man and Julie Chen⁵ from 2005. They pro­duced two strict­ly iden­ti­cal pro­fes­sion­al reports, fea­tur­ing Dominique, some­times a man, some­times a woman, in charge of a ser­vice com­pa­ny, five years senior­i­ty, and man­ag­er of four peo­ple. The report presents Dominique’s activ­i­ties dur­ing a typ­i­cal day. Dominique ends the day by being asked by a col­league to do them a small ser­vice relat­ed to a delay in a file. In one ver­sion of the report, Dominique agrees to stay and help the col­league, while in anoth­er ver­sion, Dominique refus­es. Hence, there are four ver­sions of the sto­ry. Four dif­fer­ent groups of human resource pro­fes­sion­als are then exposed to one of the sto­ries and asked to eval­u­ate Dominique on sev­er­al dimen­sions, includ­ing job performance.

If Dominique is a man and agrees to help a col­league, then his job per­for­mance is judged to be supe­ri­or to that of the woman who helps her col­league! Sim­i­lar­ly, if Dominique-male does not help his col­league, then he is not under­val­ued, where­as Dominique-female is. Why is this? Well, because the stereo­type “it is in the nature of women to help oth­ers” implies that if a woman helps a col­league, it is con­sid­ered nor­mal. Where­as if the woman does not show altru­ism, we look for a rea­son, for exam­ple, we con­sid­er that she is not that pro­fes­sion­al… On the oth­er hand, a man who does not help does not pose a prob­lem, since it is not part of social expec­ta­tions. Where­as a man who helps is noticed… to the point of con­sid­er­ing that it is linked to his pro­fes­sion­al skills! This pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive con­t­a­m­i­na­tion is the result of a halo effect, like a wave that irri­gates judge­ments based on a first impres­sion. These phe­nom­e­na are rarely con­scious, which makes them par­tic­u­lar­ly pernicious. 

As we can see, there are real social con­struc­tions behind our judge­ments and deci­sions, which to a cer­tain extent, impose them­selves on our way of think­ing. It is time to return to our orig­i­nal enig­ma: who is the sur­gi­cal intern? The step­fa­ther? The adop­tive father, the adul­ter­er, the father’s spouse? Yes, these are all pos­si­ble, but there’s a sim­pler solu­tion: it’s the child’s moth­er! Did the stereo­typ­i­cal asso­ci­a­tion sur­geon = man work for you?

Stereo­types and their neg­a­tive aspects, prej­u­dices, can be a real threat and psy­cho­log­i­cal bur­den to the peo­ple they tar­get⁶. Bad rep­u­ta­tions⁷ are a stig­ma and a source of self-cen­sor­ship, the effect of which is unfor­tu­nate­ly to con­firm beliefs: we speak of self-ful­fill­ing prophecies.

To illus­trate these phe­nom­e­na, Lau­ra Kray and her col­leagues at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Berke­ley⁸ have car­ried out a very inter­est­ing study on gen­der stereo­types in the abil­i­ty to nego­ti­ate in the busi­ness world. 

We are in an MBA pro­gram, and the stu­dents are doing a case study in which they are giv­en a file on a biotech com­pa­ny whose sale they will have to nego­ti­ate as best they can. The com­pa­ny is val­ued at between $17–26m, they have a com­plete file on its bal­ance sheet and its mar­ket, and they will be faced with a client whose objec­tive is to buy the com­pa­ny as cheap­ly as pos­si­ble. It is up to them to find the argu­ments to sell it for the high­est pos­si­ble price. 

Two groups of stu­dents are formed. For the first group, called “exer­cise”, the case study is pre­sent­ed as fol­lows: “This exer­cise is designed as a way for you to famil­iarise your­self with the basic con­cepts of the nego­ti­a­tion activ­i­ty. This is a prac­tice exer­cise, use it as a learn­ing tool”. For the sec­ond group (referred to as “real life”), the study is pre­sent­ed as fol­lows: “You are tak­ing part in this nego­ti­a­tion exer­cise because it will be a very use­ful test of your nego­ti­a­tion skills, com­pe­tences, and short­com­ings. Accord­ing to our school’s back­ground, this test is a good indi­ca­tor of your nego­ti­a­tion per­for­mance in your pro­fes­sion­al future”. As you can see, in this ver­sion the pres­sure is on, and the chal­lenge is to show what you can do. 

The fol­low­ing graph shows the per­for­mance rate of stu­dents in both groups.

We see in the “exer­cise” assign­ment that men and women per­form equal­ly well. How­ev­er, as soon as the stakes in the sit­u­a­tion become high (“real-life”), men are stim­u­lat­ed, and women are held back. Why is this? The authors analysed this result using the con­cept of stig­ma­ti­sa­tion: nego­ti­a­tion in the busi­ness world requires assertive­ness, com­pe­ti­tion and even aggres­sive­ness, qual­i­ties that are con­sid­ered to be male attrib­ut­es, which have a moti­vat­ing effect on men in the “real life” con­di­tion. The oppo­site is true for women. This process is not con­scious, and this is pre­cise­ly the issue with self-cen­sor­ship due to stereotyping. 

But what hap­pens if we make this explic­it? Will women become aware and rebel? This is what the authors did in the sec­ond stage of the research, with a new class of stu­dents. We still have two groups: the “real-life” group, which has the same instruc­tions as before. And a new group, called “aware­ness”, with the fol­low­ing instruc­tions: “This exer­cise allows you to eval­u­ate your nego­ti­a­tion skills in the busi­ness world. It will allow you to check whether you have the nec­es­sary qual­i­ties: high stan­dards, log­ic, abil­i­ty to express your ideas with­out let­ting your emo­tions show and with­out being too accom­mo­dat­ing. These are qual­i­ties for which large vari­a­tions in per­for­mance have been mea­sured, for exam­ple in the dif­fer­ences between men and women.” The results speak for them­selves: this instruc­tion acts as pos­i­tive stim­u­la­tion for the women!

The result obtained in this sec­ond phase seems promis­ing: it shows that it is pos­si­ble to over­come stereo­types, if we talk about them and expose them. It is a ques­tion of trans­form­ing a risk into an oppor­tu­ni­ty, and to do this, stereo­types must not be allowed to oper­ate in the back­ground: they are process­es that oper­ate in the shad­ows, and their impact is all the greater if they are not brought to light. Mak­ing them vis­i­ble, mak­ing them explic­it and denounc­ing them is an excel­lent oppor­tu­ni­ty to shake them up! But is it enough?

Is the fact of hav­ing under­stood the above and agree­ing with what is being said a guar­an­tee of con­trol over one’s own stereo­types? Cer­tain­ly not! Para­dox­i­cal­ly, research shows that there is a rebound effect⁹: by ask­ing peo­ple to dis­re­gard their stereo­types too much, they end up devel­op­ing an illu­sion of con­trol which weak­ens the reg­u­la­tion of their own stereo­types. Mod­esty must there­fore remain the guid­ing prin­ci­ple of an assumed reg­u­la­tion of stereo­types: even if we con­sid­er our­selves to be non-racist, non-misog­y­nist, non-homo­pho­bic, etc., we must keep in mind that we all have stereo­types and that we must not lapse into an inef­fec­tive moral­is­ing vision. To think that hav­ing stereo­types would make us an out­cast is absurd: stereo­types are embed­ded in our “social DNA¹⁰”, cul­ture shapes our minds, even in its most car­i­ca­tured form. 

For this rea­son, a good way of main­tain­ing our vig­i­lance regard­ing our own behav­iour is to mea­sure our own implic­it stereo­types using pro­ce­dures that are now well val­i­dat­ed, such as the “Implic­it Asso­ci­a­tion Tests » (IATs)¹¹, for which there are online tools that will serve as a use­ful fol­low-up to this arti­cle. This type of exer­cise allows us, with­out moral­is­ing, to be con­front­ed with our own non-con­scious judge­men­tal bias­es, and to be moti­vat­ed to cor­rect them: as a last resort, it is the process of psy­cho­log­i­cal inhi­bi­tion that is ben­e­fi­cial in learn­ing to resist a part of our­selves¹².

You can take Implic­it Asso­ci­a­tion Tests here : 

https://​implic​it​.har​vard​.edu/​i​m​p​l​i​c​i​t​/​c​a​n​a​d​a​f​r​/​s​e​l​e​c​t​a​t​e​s​t.jsp