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Many women and men who pride themselves on being educated and open-minded beat themselves up over momentarily stereotyping someone. After all, we are discouraged to typecast anyone within our diverse culture and we are told that prejudice is the child of ignorance. But what if this is merely a natural human phenomenon?
This is what psychologist Paul Bloom suggests in his TED talk, in which he states that stereotyping can be “natural, rational and even moral.” He cites as an example, a study conducted by Henri Tajfel, who asked British adolescents a series of questions. Based on their answers, he told them whether they loved the art of Kandinsky or Klee.
What he found was that these categories mattered after the experiment was concluded. When asked about money or donations, each group was more likely to give money within their group. He also found that each group was interested in maintaining group differences.
We use prejudice and stereotypes for quick mental shortcuts and in situations when heuristics are needed more than deeply contemplated rationale. Bloom explains that once we understand this, we would be in a better position to “make sense of them when they go wrong” and determine a course of action when there are harmful consequences.
However, like any method of judgement, stereotyping can go horribly awry. The most common example of this is discrimination based on skin color, which resulted in the system we know as racism.
Judging someone based on how much of a chemical they have in their skin is irrational, yet for thousands of years it created a system of oppression based on social and economic profit. When violent rhetoric is added to irrational prejudice, stereotypes can become justification for cruel treatment.
Victims of stereotypes can become vessels for those in power to control and subjugate other groups of people. Dangerous stereotypes have resulted in some of the greatest atrocities in the world. Bloom cites the Holocaust as an example, explaining it as an extreme aberration of “normal psychological processes” present within all of us.
The harmful effects of stereotypes have been witnessed throughout American history. The stereotype of the black man as savage resulted in thousands of lynchings instigated by false claims of rape or rumored relationships with white women. Stereotypes of the Japanese as shifty and conniving increased support for their collective internment during WWII.
Society has been socialized into a culture in which race and gender are salient, so we unfortunately make judgement based on them. Anyone can fall into the trap of ascribing superiority to ourselves at the expense of others.
The way to combat these detrimental stereotypes?
As Paul Bloom says, the only way we can unlearn these habits is if we admit we are guilty of them.
