What goes on in stereotyping?

were not nonsense at all and that they remindedrespondents of various real outgroups ("Yurasians" = Eurasians?). Respondents in fact most of all seem to have concluded that the nameswere names of various primitive tribes. What this highlights is thesubtlety of the cues that human beings use in dealing with their world. It is a great human strength that we can make great use of even thetiniest amounts of information. We use every aid we can to reduce theuncertainty in our world and hence to enhance our control over it. Toput it plainly, people will stereotype at the drop of a hat (Read,1983). In fact, Hamill, Wilson & Nisbett (1980) found that people willgeneralize from a single instance even when they are specifically toldin advance that the instance concerned is an a-typical one. Doing so,however, does not mean that some rigid mental structure has beenadopted. Quite to the contrary, stereotypes are approximations. Theyare continually modified as information comes in and may be abandonedentirely as the situation to be dealt with becomes more highlyspecified. Thus Locksley and her colleagues (See Locksley, Hepburn &Ortiz, 1982) have done a series of studies which show that when atarget person is being evaluated by Ss, the provision of caseinformation about that individual target person will substantiallyreduce the role of stereotypes in the evaluation made of the targetperson by the Ss. Similarly, Galper & Weiss (1975) found thatstereotyping was not used where the situation was more fully specifiedand Braithwaite, Gibson & Holman (1985-86) found that stereotypingdiminishes as the experimental situation becomes more realistic. Further Forgas (1983) showed that information consistent with culturalstereotypes is more readily processed than information not soconsistent. The overall picture, then, is clearly one of stereotypesbeing useful and accurate up to a point. Beyond the point where betterinformation than what is contained in the stereotype becomes available,however, the stereotype is steadily abandoned as a guide to action. Where stereotypes persist, however, are those situations where specificinformation will seldom be adequate or available soon enough. Forinstance, when confronted by an unfamiliar black, a white does notconclude that he has no information to guide him in the interaction. He instead uses his stereotypes (generalizations from past experience,both personal and vicarious) to guide his initial responses. Ifcontinued interaction shows those generalizations not to apply to thegiven black, the behaviour ceases to be guided by the generalizationsconcerned. Thus a white who encounters a large black coming towardshim on a dark street late at night will not normally approach theencounter with an empty mind. He may have a stereotype (founded insome reality) that blacks are often muggers and accordingly keep a verywary eye on the approaching black. If, however, the black simply says"Nice day" when he passes, the stereotype will no longer have any rolein the interaction and some pleasantry in reply may be uttered. Racialantagonism does exist but blaming it on stereotyping is not at alljustified. Stereotyping is simply what we all resort to when we haveinadequate information to go on. Since most of us probably structureour world to reduce uncertainty and unpredictability whereverreasonably possible, such situations are probably rare for most of usin most of our lives and stereotyping should therefore have a minimalrole for most of us for most of the time. Other studies which supportthis general view of the typical stereotyping process are not hard tofind but perhaps special mention should be given to papers by Stein,Hardyck & Smith (1965), McCauley, Stitt & Segal (1980) and Bond (1986). Perhaps the earliest research study supporting a view of stereotypingsimilar to that advocated in the present paper was by Bayton, McAlister& Hamer (1956). These authors described a person to students simply as"black" and got the usual stereotypes back: "dirty", "lazy" etc. Theythen modified the description to "educated black" and instantly gotgreatly changed responses. The educated black was in fact described interms very similar to an educated white. So we see that, far frombeing rigidly held beliefs that stand in the way of recognition ofindividual variation, stereotypes are in fact supremely flexible andresponsive to new information. Stereotypes, generalizations and categorizationIt may have been observed that the above discussion of stereotypeshas attempted no distinction between stereotypes and validgeneralizations. Valid generalizations must surely exist. The generalview has seemed to be that stereotypes are invalid generalizations sohow can we know on any given occasion what sort of generalization weare dealing with? The reason this problem was not raised earlier isthat it seems generally to be slighted in the literature. The word"stereotype" seems on many past occasions to have been used as asynonym for any generalization about any group. The implication isthat all generalizations in such fields are dangerous. This is,however, a thoroughly unscientific orientation. What is psychology ifit is not an attempt to make generalizations about classes of humanbehaviour? To reject the possibility of generalization orcategorization is to reject the possibility of science (and even oflanguage). As it happens, however, this confusion over what is or is not avalid generalization is rendered unimportant by the account ofstereotyping given so far in this paper. It has been seen that it nota question of "either or". Rather, stereotyping is a process ofsuccessive approximation towards accurate judgments. The stereotypemay start out containing very little in the way of accurate informationbut as knowledge of and experience with the particular class of personaccumulates, the information will become progressively more accurate. Even an accurate generalization, however, can surely only ever be apreliminary guide to any interaction with a particular person so onewould hope that use of the stereotype would soon fade away as theinteraction progresses and as information about the specific personaccumulates. The evidence indicates that this is exactly what happens(Locksley et al, 1982; Galper & Weiss, 1975; Braithwaite et al, 1985-86; McCauley et al, 1980; Stein, Hardyck & Smith, 1965). Stereotypesare temporarily useful tools, not mental straitjackets.