Post by Admin on Nov 11, 2023 12:03:17 GMT
Stereotypes might not be as powerful as psychologists assumed
psyche.co/ideas/stereotypes-might-not-be-as-powerful-as-psychologists-assumed
Research on first impressions suggests that people’s behaviour can trump any biased assumptions we might make about them
In a recent TikTok video captioned ‘Just another day in Germany’, a man walks with a scowl on his face and bumps roughly into another person with tattoos and piercings, who is wearing a leather vest. As the first man turns, his expression changes into a bright smile, and he says: ‘Entschuldigung!’ meaning roughly ‘My bad!’ The man who got bumped, and his two tough-looking friends dressed in all black, reply congenially, ‘Alles gut!’ (all is well).
Millions of people liked this video because of the charming contrast between how unfriendly the people appear at first, compared with their actual behaviour. It also inadvertently characterises a tension within the field of psychology about how we make judgments about others. Do we assume what people are like based on what they do (a process that psychologists call ‘the spontaneous trait inference effect’), or based on stereotypes related to their age, gender and so on?
A recent study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology put this question to the test by examining the influence of stereotypes on the ‘spontaneous trait inference effect’. It raises interesting questions about the impressions we form of each other every day and whether the stereotypes we endorse about others (whether explicitly or without realising) are as influential as is often assumed.
If you saw someone helping carry groceries or getting a good grade on a test, it’s likely that you would automatically, and often unconsciously, assume traits about their overall personality: that they are friendly or smart. Or let’s say you saw a person on the street screaming at someone else. ‘You might spontaneously, even without having an intention to judge that person, think that person is aggressive because of that behaviour,’ says Jana Mangels, a psychologist at the University of Hamburg in Germany, and first author of the paper. That would be ‘spontaneous trait inference’ in action.
But when we form impressions of other people, we do so using different, sometimes contradictory, information, Mangels says. People also hold stereotypes about others: assuming that because a person appears to belong to a particular group, they will have certain traits that they associate with that group. Let’s go back to the person screaming on the street and imagine that it was a woman. If an observer believed the stereotype that all women are calm and docile, would they still spontaneously assume this woman was aggressive based on her behaviour? Or would their stereotypical beliefs about women override the spontaneous trait inference effect?
psyche.co/ideas/stereotypes-might-not-be-as-powerful-as-psychologists-assumed
Research on first impressions suggests that people’s behaviour can trump any biased assumptions we might make about them
In a recent TikTok video captioned ‘Just another day in Germany’, a man walks with a scowl on his face and bumps roughly into another person with tattoos and piercings, who is wearing a leather vest. As the first man turns, his expression changes into a bright smile, and he says: ‘Entschuldigung!’ meaning roughly ‘My bad!’ The man who got bumped, and his two tough-looking friends dressed in all black, reply congenially, ‘Alles gut!’ (all is well).
Millions of people liked this video because of the charming contrast between how unfriendly the people appear at first, compared with their actual behaviour. It also inadvertently characterises a tension within the field of psychology about how we make judgments about others. Do we assume what people are like based on what they do (a process that psychologists call ‘the spontaneous trait inference effect’), or based on stereotypes related to their age, gender and so on?
A recent study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology put this question to the test by examining the influence of stereotypes on the ‘spontaneous trait inference effect’. It raises interesting questions about the impressions we form of each other every day and whether the stereotypes we endorse about others (whether explicitly or without realising) are as influential as is often assumed.
If you saw someone helping carry groceries or getting a good grade on a test, it’s likely that you would automatically, and often unconsciously, assume traits about their overall personality: that they are friendly or smart. Or let’s say you saw a person on the street screaming at someone else. ‘You might spontaneously, even without having an intention to judge that person, think that person is aggressive because of that behaviour,’ says Jana Mangels, a psychologist at the University of Hamburg in Germany, and first author of the paper. That would be ‘spontaneous trait inference’ in action.
But when we form impressions of other people, we do so using different, sometimes contradictory, information, Mangels says. People also hold stereotypes about others: assuming that because a person appears to belong to a particular group, they will have certain traits that they associate with that group. Let’s go back to the person screaming on the street and imagine that it was a woman. If an observer believed the stereotype that all women are calm and docile, would they still spontaneously assume this woman was aggressive based on her behaviour? Or would their stereotypical beliefs about women override the spontaneous trait inference effect?