Science board: stereotype accuracy

950 Views | 9 Replies | Last: 3 yr ago by schmendeler
americathegreat1492
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I've really been going down a rabit hole in the stereotype literature and it's been depressing and shocking. There are a number of empirical questions to ask regarding stereotypes and stereotyping. One of the first to ask is, are stereotypes accurate? Brief glimpse of that literature that is really supporting to me the answer is, largely, yes.

https://www.spsp.org/news-center/blog/stereotype-accuracy-response
Zobel
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AG
I don't get it. What is a stereotype? How do you even define that without injecting bias?
ramblin_ag02
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AG
Right. If the whole problem with stereotypes is bias, then both the defining and studying of these stereotypes are places to insert bias. For example, let's say all surgeons are jerks and all pediatricians are nice. Who defines those categories? What about docs like me that do both surgery and pediatrics? Also, who gets to categorize someone either as nice or a jerk, and what does that methodology look like?
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schmendeler
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AG
does one only need to formulate a stereotype and it becomes accurate? like magic? does it need to be shared with at least one other person for it to manifest?

i mean i can think of lots of them that "seem" true to me, but i can admit probably aren't.
ramblin_ag02
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Quote:

i mean i can think of lots of them that "seem" true to me, but i can admit probably aren't.
The sports ones always jump out to me. Fast people are better at soccer. Tall people are better at basketball. While true on a massive scale, it's just a mental shortcut without utility. You don't see any soccer teams recruiting only the fastest people or basketball teams only hiring the tallest players. They would get destroyed.

Your other point is well taken, too. I imagine most of the people agreeing on stereotypes are of the same group as those validating said stereotypes
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one MEEN Ag
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AG
I think it's easy for people to see how negative stereotypes are 'wrong' therefore people jump to say that stereotypes are inaccurate.

But somewhere down the line, if a group of people identify as a part of a specific culture, whatever distinguishes that culture from others can be brought up as a stereotype. If not, then we've just got one giant monoculture on this earth (which isn't true).

If you want to be more blunt, 'culture' is the phrase used to describe the positives of a community. 'Stereotypes' tend to describe the negatives. Nobody talks about the stereotypes of a cultures food, nor do they talk about the culture of unwed mothers, drunk driving and spousal abuse. (Notice I didn't say anything identifying about a specific group of people- any offense you have at that statement is from your own notions of who fits in those groups).
bmks270
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AG
Stereotype = pattern recognition.

Stereotypes are nothing more than correlated attributes that are more strongly correlated than other attributes. The higher correlation is what gives rise the stereotype through human ability to recognize and recall patterns and associations.

bmks270
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ramblin_ag02 said:

Quote:

i mean i can think of lots of them that "seem" true to me, but i can admit probably aren't.
The sports ones always jump out to me. Fast people are better at soccer. Tall people are better at basketball. While true on a massive scale, it's just a mental shortcut without utility. You don't see any soccer teams recruiting only the fastest people or basketball teams only hiring the tallest players. They would get destroyed.

Your other point is well taken, too. I imagine most of the people agreeing on stereotypes are of the same group as those validating said stereotypes

Yea but there is a strong correlation.

A man 7ft tall has a 1/9 chance of being in the NBA. 6 ft tall is extremely short for the NBA, a huge outlier. I'm only 6'3" and when I got to a concert with thousands of people Im often the tallest person in sight, might see 2 or 3 people taller than me, but on an 11 man basketball roster, I'd often be the shortest. Stereotypes are simply recognition of above average correlations.
ramblin_ag02
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AG
Quote:

Stereotypes are simply recognition of above average correlations.
In some cases that's true. I like the basketball example, because it's a perfect scenario where a stereotype should be useful. Height is an easily defined metric, and basketball value can be deduced from hard numbers like career earnings. Even so, it is still useless. You can't make a team out of the tallest people in the world and expect to win basketball games. Height does almost nothing to help someone evaluate an individual player or build a team. The fact that increasing height correlates with increased basketball earnings on a population scale is not really useful in any context. It's a correlation that exists for the sake of being a trivial statistic. And that's the best case scenario for a stereotype. Useless trivia. When you start trying to expand it into more nebulously defined groups and questionable metrics, it becomes worse than useless and potentially harmful.
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schmendeler
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AG
bmks270 said:

Stereotype = pattern recognition.

Stereotypes are nothing more than correlated attributes that are more strongly correlated than other attributes. The higher correlation is what gives rise the stereotype through human ability to recognize and recall patterns and associations.


yes, but a person's own observations are often given weight that is undue. hence the reason that most learned people are highly skeptical of anecdotal data.

stereotypes are just anecdotal data en masse.
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