Assumptions can be wrong
Michael ‘Air’ Jordan, big man, both literally and figuratively, and the mightiest luminary of the NBA stardom. Shaquille O’Neal, the 7″1 centre. Magic Johnson, the great point guard. All great basketball players, but what’s typical in them besides basketball? Height? Build? Position? Nopes, they’re all African-Americans. Studies have shown that blacks generally have a higher proportion of fast-twitch muscle fibers than other ethnicities, as pointed out by Jon Entine in his book ‘Taboo’. So, are all NBA legends black? No, Steve Nash, Pau Gasol and Dirk Nowitzki are exceptional non-blacks in the business. It’s not a rule, it’s a stereotype that effectively wipes out non-blacks in the NBA drafts.
They’re mostly irrational generalisations, bent upon simplifying worldly phenomena into manageable bits, contagions infecting society and challenging the basic principles of individuality, equality and liberalism.
While some stereotypes are indispensible to social control (smokers are revolting and reckless individuals), they result in an unjust society threatening ‘real’ progress. Labelling people leaves a lingering effect on them, even in unrelated situations as per a study conducted by a team at the Toronto University. By observing the upshots of negative pigeonholing on subjects faced with neutral tasks later on, the team concluded that people were more aggressive after facing social bias. As hostility leads to social isolation, this affected relations, decision-making, even diet.
Experiments have also shown that stereotypes can affect performance in most domains, especially academia. Focusing on standardised test performance, they demonstrated impaired intellectual performance on these tests owing to negative stereotypes. In one study, black college students performed worse than their white counterparts on a test framed as an intelligence test. Per contra, the gap narrowed when the same test was not framed as such. Reason? The presentation of the test as diagnostic of intellectual ability made the black students aware of the negative stereotypes regarding their group, lowering performance. This is an example of the ‘stereotype threat’.
Furthermore, stereotyped groups faced uncertainty in interpreting other people’s reactions to them. ‘Attributional ambiguity’ refers to this dilemma e.g., whether to adjudge censure to lack of ability or poor effort, or towards prejudices against their social group. On the contrary, commendation may be interpreted as either personal merit or discounted as sympathy or pity.
Why do stereotypes persist? ‘Self-fulfilling prophecies’ and stereotype threat may be to blame. Erroneous expectations, conveyed through social interaction, prompt individuals to act in a stereotype-consistent manner, thus validating the stereotype e.g., the depiction of paleontologists as tight-jawed cowboys (err. Like Dr Grant) relying on jargon as their principle mode of communication prompts many of them to follow suit regardless of their personality.
Some social commentators focus on the bright side by highlighting the positive stereotypes. However, as per an article by Sam Killerman, perpetuating positive stereotypes (positive assumptions about groups, activities, professions, etc) is equally damaging. They set the criterion unrealistically higher for favoured groups, lowering performance due to stereotype threat. Asians, considered widely as math whizzes, may underperform when aware of the positive stereotypes associated with their math acumen. Such positive stereotypes may also alienate individuals who don’t correspond to them, with the concomitant self-fulfilling prophecy.
More often than not, stereotypes are championed as assets for ensuring security (like: guys running about at night are suspicious, aren’t they?). Consequentially, they are used as precautionary policing tactics at both organisational and individual levels. Right, eh? Ask any Sherlock Holmes fan and he’ll tell you how fallacious that is (simply finding John Neligan at the crime scene doesn’t make him a murderer, Watson!) It’s both inappropriate, illegal and above all, defective. The efficacious tactic? “Keep your eyes open, Watson. One should always look for a possible alternative and provide against it.”
So, stereotypes hurt social justice. Big time. But how do they actually affect society over the long-term? The answer lies in a primitive adaptation of the ‘Theory of Natural Selection’ to society. The feedbacks we receive from various quarters of society act as selective agents applying selection pressures favouring individuals complying to the set criterion i.e., stereotypes. Non-conforming individuals may be discarded as they are not suited to a society muddled in fallacious misconceptions. We shall lose individuality and become mimics of each other. Distinction will become an anomaly. Automatons, partners in progress.
The solution of all this is to see each person as a unit rather than a representative of a group, profession, etc. We have to respect individuality and adopt a holistic approach to judge people, remembering that stereotypes are the offspring of discrimination, a bane paralysing society. So, next time you see a person with hair in a mess, laces undone and speaking gibberish, that person may just be the very next genius in the making.