
Truth in stereotypes - treigerm
https://aeon.co/essays/truth-lies-and-stereotypes-when-scientists-ignore-evidence
======
RcouF1uZ4gsC
I think that this article highlights the left's version of climate change
deniers. The climate change deniers on the right perceive that if climate
change were true it would require significant government intervention in the
economy (carbon tax, cap and trade, subsidies for clean energy, etc). Because
that outcome is something they do not want, they try to deny the truth of
climate change.

On the left, because they perceive these stereotype validating social studies
as supporting racists, deny that stereotypes have any truth in them often
against overwhelming evidence.

One side is not more rational than the other. For both, truth has become a
casualty to goals. This is a very bad place to be in for the following
reasons:

1) If instead of truth standing on its own, you are willing to suppress it to
support an agenda (even if it is good), you remove your ability to morally
object when someone with a different agenda suppresses a truth you would
rather not see suppressed. You are in essence guilty of doing the same thing
as the church did to Galileo.

2) It is ultimately counterproductive to your goal. Your suppression of the
truth will be used against you by your opponents to good effect. People hate
being treated like children with facts suppressed to support an agenda. Once,
people realize what is going on, they have a natural urge to support the
opposite of the agenda. Think about how atheists use the history of the church
suppressing Galileo to persuade people of the danger of religion.

So, if the evidence supports that many stereotypes are generally true, let us
accept that what the evidence says. However, that does not mean that we are
automatically racists, sexists, etc. As the article says "In situations where
one has abundant, vividly clear information about an individual, the
stereotype becomes completely irrelevant". By getting to know people as
individuals and not just as exemplars of a group can we truly overcome
injustice. In addition, by acknowledging the truth in stereotypes we can then
work to remedy underlying causes for some of the negative stereotypes.

~~~
js8
I am leftist and I agree with the last paragraph, and I think many leftists
would. And that's the point - the stereotypes are useless in policy and
decision making, and studying them is unscientific. They are factoids perhaps
good for cocktail parties.

I don't think that existence of correct stereotypes poses a great risk for
ideology of the left, unlike global warming, which actually is a risk for
completely free market ideology, because there is no way free markets can deal
with externalities. It's only if you accept naturalistic fallacy (that
stereotyping is natural, therefore ethical) you get these problems.

I think left has ideological problem (and thus bias), but somewhere else. Left
cannot very well deal with people who perceive risk differently. Which is
actually kinda connected to the existence of stereotypes.

~~~
mr_overalls
Let's say that you're forecasting budget requirements for a police department
in a city whose demographics are changing.

Research indicates that in the United States, the correlation between violent
crime rates and percentages of US state populations that are Black and
Hispanic is 0.81. Controlling for poverty, education, and unemployment only
reduces this to 0.78. [1]

Wouldn't this unusually high correlation be useful in making your budgeting
decision?

[1]
[http://www.colorofcrime.com/colorofcrime2005.html](http://www.colorofcrime.com/colorofcrime2005.html)

~~~
js8
No. Forecast based on the crime rate trend would be more precise than using
race as a proxy.

------
douche
Is this surprising? I've always thought, logically, that for a stereotype to
become popular and remain so, it's got to be a better quick rule of thumb
assessment than an alternative stereotype, ergo there must be some small
kernel of truth or statistical disposition underlying it.

I remember it was an opinion that got me reamed out once by a rather terrible,
but idealistic middle-school teacher.

~~~
sevenless
Let me quote Daniel Kahneman in "Thinking, Fast and Slow"

"The social norm against stereotyping, including the opposition to profiling,
has been highly beneficial in creating a more civilized and more equal
society. It is useful to remember, however, that neglecting valid stereotypes
inevitably results in suboptimal judgments. Resistance to stereotyping is a
laudable moral position, but the simplistic idea that the resistance is
costless is wrong. The costs are worth paying to achieve a better society, but
denying that the costs exist, while satisfying to the soul and politically
correct, is not scientifically defensible. Reliance on the affect heuristic is
common in politically charged arguments. The positions we favor have no cost
and those we oppose have no benefits. We should be able to do better."

–Daniel Kahneman, Nobel laureate, in Thinking, Fast and Slow, chapter 16

~~~
0134340
>neglecting valid stereotypes

That's where the problem arises. Some stereotypes aren't based on truth but of
individuals or groups fearing what they don't know. As I mentioned before in
the thread, many stereotypes, especially those perceived as supernatural and
being shunned or killed because of real medical issues, were outright false
and started and perpetuated because man fears what it doesn't know. Epileptics
were stereotyped as possessed, people who floated after death were stereotyped
as witches, those with large canines stereotyped as vampires, albino Africans
stereotyped also as witches and so on. Some stereotypes are started because of
bias, not truths. The main issue with stereotyping is not because of benign
stereotypes you keep to yourself or inner circle but when you act upon false
stereotypes or mention your stereotype in a large public forum as the internet
and it turns out to be untrue for those individuals. When you hear people say
that it's impolite to use stereotypes, this is typically what they're talking
about. Most people know enough to know that it's rude to use general
stereotypes in a general (public) forum.

~~~
junko
Yep. Stereotypes are almost always being debunked too, either by a new
generation with a new culture/outlook, or someone belonging to a stereotyped
group steps out with unique enough traits that conflict with the stereotype
itself - but of course those with the stereotype would fling their hands in
the air and proclaim _" Of course I don't mean to say that about all of
them."_ Damage's done though.

We all inevitably stereotype, even the most liberal can't claim otherwise. But
history has never shown anything less bleak and painful when one stereotype is
carried loudly and by a growing mass of hysteria. It's not worth it, imo, to
debate so much of the validity of a stereotype, particularly when it involves
lots of lives as you risk dehumanisation.

~~~
T2_t2
I think this is exactly what the article set out to disprove.

> particularly when it involves lots of lives as you risk dehumanisation.

The article stated:

> If people relied on their stereotypes more or less rationally, they would
> rely on them to inform judgments when they had little or no definitive
> information, but ignore them when they had definitive information. And it
> turns out this is just what most people do.

The idea that stereotyping is dehumanising, or used is some way to deny
others, or put them in a box is specifically what the article says people
don't do.

Instead, the article claims, people use stereotypes to improve the odds when
there is no other information. To call that dehumanising is a pretty long bow
to draw IMHO.

------
adrianN
The accuracy or inaccuracy of stereotypes reminds me of the regulations and
ethical debates regarding the use of machine learning for example for
creditworthiness. The algorithms often turn out to become "racist", because
from the data they have, race is a good predictor.

I'm still somewhat ambivalent on that, because I'm not convinced that
statistics can be racist. But people pointed out to me that the way these
statistics are collected might not be free of bias. Also, for example race
being a good predictor of creditworthiness might in itself be just an effect
of racism (eg. because black people aren't hired at well paying jobs) and
using that statistics exacerbates the problem. Those are pretty good points,
but I still find it weird that we forbid businesses to use all the information
they have available to make business decisions.

~~~
pyrale
> Those are pretty good points, but I still find it weird that we forbid
> businesses to use all the information they have available to make business
> decisions.

Every rule in society can be formulated as a constraint on businesses.
Typically, minimum wage prevents companies from making business decisions that
would otherwise be profitable. Banning script money as a payment for wages
also prevents them from making these decisions. This stems from the fact that
the society view the common good as more important than the business interest
of some of its members.

In that sense, making decisions based on data is an action like any other, and
is subject to common scrutiny.

~~~
gwright
The notion that 'common good' is a sufficient reason to restrict individual
freedom is debatable. Mainly because it isn't really a definable concept and
so 'common good' ends up being a magic phrase to justify almost any
restriction small or large.

Your point about minimum wages is a bit misleading. These laws are almost
always framed as restrictions on employers but it is worthwhile thinking about
them as prohibitions on individuals also. They prohibit individuals from
taking jobs that they otherwise would be happy to take. For low-skilled
workers (including teenagers) the value of a job isn't just the hourly wage,
although $7/hour is better than $0/hour also.

------
jomamaxx
Wow. Amazing that someone would dare publish this in today's PC world.

That said, when stereotypes are wrong - they are very wrong, right from the
article:

"2\. Older people are generally more __________ and less __________ than
adolescents. A. Conscientious; open to new experiences B. Neurotic; agreeable"

Old people are WAY more 'conscientious' than young people.

Old people vote, they plan, they don't overspend, they're rarely loud and
unruly, their finances are predictable, their homes are often more clean and
orderly, they usually are responsible for caring for others - kids and
grandkids.

Young people are 'virtue signallers' and ostensibly have 'big hearts' and
'thumbs up' upworthy rubbish - but old people are far more tangibly
conscientious. My elderly uncles and aunts are boring and a little curmudgeon,
but the spend several weeks a year in Guatemala helping to build homes for
poor people. The don't post it on social media. A young person who did this
once would put that on their resume forever.

You know how deals with reality: 'insurers'. They have the real data. And it's
the reason if you're under 25 it's sometimes impossible to rent a car.

~~~
Sohakes
But the "right" answer is A, indeed.

~~~
jomamaxx
Yeah, I misread that. My bad. Dam.

The prejudice is correct :)

------
panglott
Stereotypes are a form of information, just so low-grade that it more
resembles misinformation.

Most Americans don't have stereotypes about, say, Mongolians, because most
Americans have had zero contact with Mongolians. Maybe something about Genghis
Khan? But go to, say, Beijing, and people there will probably have all kinds
of stereotypes about Mongolians.

Stereotypes may or may not have a basis in reality: they can simply be a
unsubstantiated prejudice (group A says goup B is dangerous and criminal;
group B is actually very friendly to outsiders). They are frequently rooted in
a history of social conflict (slavery, colonialism, &c). They lie within a
specific social context/relationship (group A sees group B as lazy, group B
sees group A as arrogant and overbearing). They are about social categories
that don't have analytical basis outside the social context (national or
racial groups).

The bigger problem is that they form an ecological fallacy—the assumption that
something that may be true about the group is true about the individual.

------
CM30
I suspect much of this unease about stereotypes and researching them comes
from the scientific community not wanting their work to be used to justify
extremism or far right/far left political parties.

After what happened with both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union
misrepresenting scientific research to 'support' their policies, I suspect a
lot of researchers want to avoid their own work being used for the same
purposes.

~~~
charlesism
On a more pedestrian level, it's just courteous to not generalize.

All you need to do is ask an expat Canadian how much they enjoy repeatedly
being asked "What part of the States are you from?". After a few dozen people
make the same assumption about you, it can become aggravating. Never the less,
it's a reasonable question to ask. 90% of people who sound like Americans
(roughly speaking) come from the USA.

The more common a stereotype is, the more infuriating it is to be an outlier.
So it's considerate to bear that in mind, even if the stereotype is valid.

------
nxc18
He picked a very inclusive definition of 'stereotype'. I wouldn't consider the
idea that Jews don't celebrate Christmas (a Christian holiday) - its a matter
of faith so feels more like a fact. The rest were demographics with a clear
statistics basis - most of them well known and well understood not to be
generalizations applying to the whole group. Saying that 80% of African
Americans voted for democrats in 2012 would necessarily imply that 20% didn't.
The ratio necessitates individual variation, something that a more common
stereotype (black people like watermelon [side note: who the heck doesn't?])
doesn't allow. That's not to mention that the behavior in question is clearly
in line with their best interest (GOP has been tilting right for years to
appeal to an aging, racist, white base), implying that they like people of all
races are assumed to be rational.

~~~
nxc18
Which isn't to imply that the author is wrong about anything, just that most
of what he's talking about doesn't fit the common definition of stereotypes,
but demographics.

------
whack
Considering the great amount of statistical research the author has done, it's
surprising that he's drawn some dreadful conclusions. He seems to be saying
that in the face of incomplete/ambiguous information, people _should_ form
judgements on other people on the basis of racial/gender/physical stereotypes.

The problem with stereotypes isn't that they have no basis in reality. The
problem with stereotypes is that they are just as inaccurate as they are
accurate. The problem with stereotypes is that they stunt the potential of
tens/hundreds of millions of people.

Do we really want to live in a world where women are denied
managerial/executive jobs, because of stereotypes that they can't control
their emotions?

One where African Americans are rejected from job applications, because of
whatever derogatory stereotypes people hold against them?

One where Jews are routinely judged as being immoral and obsessed with money?

One where Southerners are socially shunned for being uncultured racist bigots?

One where women refuse to date engineers because they're socially incompetent
boring dorks?

One that bans Gays from being teachers because they're likely to be child
molesters?

If you're someone who thinks that making life-changing judgements about
individuals on the basis of stereotypes is perfectly fine, the early/mid 1900s
are right up your alley. Thankfully, most of us have come to recognize how
damaging and morally repugnant such a system is. I would hate to be judged and
discriminated against on the basis of stereotypes, and hence, I refrain from
doing the same to others. Ultimately, that's the courtesy that we as a society
have decided we should extend to one another.

~~~
sevenless
But you're cherry-picking stereotypes that are mostly incorrect (and look
outright archaic). Whereas Lee Jussim (for example) has found that most
stereotypes are _mostly_ accurate.

[http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~jussim/unbearable%20accuracy%20o...](http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~jussim/unbearable%20accuracy%20of%20stereotypes.pdf)

Interestingly, stereotypes based on political party membership are
consistently inaccurate.

As the Kahneman quote I posted elsewhere shows, the reality is that resistance
to reasoning using certain valid stereotypes is an ethical position, based on
a desire to build a better society. It has costs in terms of sub-optimal
decision making. In a democratic society, we should acknowledge this, rather
than falsely and naively claiming that stereotypes are false.

> I would hate to be judged and discriminated against on the basis of
> stereotypes, and hence, I refrain from doing the same to others.

Other people are not obliged to make bad decisions because of your feelings.
They should make the ethical decisions they feel are right.

Statistical models are quantitative reasoning based on stereotypes. Every time
you get a credit report or an insurance policy, that's based on nothing but
stereotypes: just legally permissible ones, built into mathematical models. 25
year old men who buy red cars have a certain accident rate, therefore you're
going to be charged for that rate.

~~~
whack
> But you're cherry-picking stereotypes that are mostly incorrect (and look
> outright archaic). Whereas Lee Jussim (for example) has found that most
> stereotypes are mostly accurate.

So your position is that if the stereotypes about
Women/Blacks/Jews/Southerners/Gays were mostly accurate, it would be ok to
discriminate against those groups on the basis of those stereotypes?

In my previous post, I never claimed that stereotypes were false. I stated
that discrimination on the basis of stereotypes were damaging to society, and
morally repugnant.

My feelings are not relevant, but the fact that you seem to be in favor of
stereotypes, because you belong to a group that won't be strongly affected by
it, is not relevant either. In order to form a defensible moral position, you
have to look at it from the perspective of someone who doesn't know which
group he will belong to
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance)).
And it's hard to imagine any external rational person forming the conclusion
that he would like to live in a society that I described earlier.

~~~
ysavir
> the fact that you seem to be in favor of stereotypes, because you belong to
> a group that won't be strongly affected by it, is not relevant either

Either I missed where the poster listed their group, or you're stereotyping
people that don't consider stereotyping abhorrent as people who aren't
affected by stereotyping.

------
vivekd
I agree with the conclusion, that there is truth in stereotypes. I think the
bigger issue is what we do with the information we gather from stereotypes.

I have a strong desire for a world in which people are judged on their merits
and character and not on their race, religion, age or any other superficial
trait. I don't want a person's superficial traits to color their perception of
them.

It does seem absurd to try and force the public to close their eyes to the
truth of stereotypes and pretend they don't exist. However it seems equally
absurd to label and draw conclusions about an individual based on their
membership in a group.

I don't mind stereotypes being acknowledged and even being researched and
analyzed . . . so long as it done with the understanding that not all
individuals will display the characteristics associated with their group and
each individual is given an opportunity to be judged on their merits as an
individual rather than prejudged based on their membership in a particular
group.

~~~
T2_t2
From the article:

> If people relied on their stereotypes more or less rationally, they would
> rely on them to inform judgments when they had little or no definitive
> information, but ignore them when they had definitive information. And it
> turns out this is just what most people do.

So what we do with stereotypes is help us get to a better answer sans any
other information, then disregard it completely when more information comes to
hand. That seems like the perfect use for imperfect information.

------
qf303rjr3
Does the author define what they mean for a stereotype to be "accurate"?

For example, it is a stereotype that in the US, white people vote Republican.
Is this an accurate stereotype?

On one level, it is - in recent elections around 55-60% of white voters voted
Republican, so it is certainly true to say that most white people vote
Republican.

On another level, given a random white voter from the US, there is only a
55-60% chance that they voted Republican, which is not much better than
guessing. So it's not particularly accurate to say that white people vote
Republican.

I expect that most stereotypes fall into this class - they are accurate in
aggregate, but not particularly informative when dealing with individuals. And
surely this is the problem with stereotypes? We take a characteristic which is
true in aggregate for a group (white people vote Republican, black people
listen to hip hop, old people are less open to new experiences) and assume
that those characteristics are true of individual members of that group.

------
pif
Stereotypes do surely contain a grain of truth, but it's very important not to
use any of them when judging individual people.

~~~
sevenless
Why? Accurate stereotypes are simply group-level information about people. You
could call a stereotype a weakly informative prior.

~~~
lomnakkus
There's usually _much_ more variation between individuals within a group (say,
all white people) than between groups (say, white vs. asian people), nevermind
individuals from different groups. Judging individuals based on aggregate
statistics about their group would be foolish in the extreme. (Not to mention
morally dubious, at best.)

Or course it depends on the size of the group, and you can construct
artificial groupings to make the above false, but let's just say that all the
'standard' groups are covered: ethnicity, skin colour, gender, sexuality, etc.
etc.

~~~
sevenless
> There's usually much more variation between individuals within a group (say,
> all white people) than between groups (say, white vs. asian people),
> nevermind individuals from different groups.

This is statistically illiterate. Let's say you have two sets of random
variables X and Y, both from Normal distributions with standard deviation 2,
where the mean of X is 0 and the mean of Y is 1. Knowing whether a measurement
comes from X or Y will still allow you to make more accurate predictions, even
though the within-group variance is larger than the between-group variance.
For very large groups, this applies much more so. If you have high-dimensional
multivariate data, it is possible to assign individuals to clusters very
accurately even if all individual measurements overlap substantially.

See for example
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12879450](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12879450)

> Not to mention morally dubious, at best.

This is the real issue: the use of _certain_ stereotypes is a political and
ethical debate, and those against using stereotypes should stop pretending
there are no costs in terms of sub-optimal decision making. There are
defensible ethical reasons for being against some types of discrimination
based on valid stereotypes.

------
norea-armozel
I think stereotypes still need to taken with a grain of salt since many seem
to be derived from n-hand sources which could've been distorted over
successive retellings. It's not to say some stereotypes aren't true, but that
people shouldn't put stock in them when making a moral judgment about an
individual. I treat stereotypes as you would gossip where there's some grain
of truth but it's next to impossible to distinguish between that truth and the
bunk layered on top of it.

~~~
hrnnnnnn
> people shouldn't put stock in them when making a moral judgment about an
> individual

This is exactly what the article suggests people do, and finds that they do in
real life.

"If people relied on their stereotypes more or less rationally, they would
rely on them to inform judgments when they had little or no definitive
information, but ignore them when they had definitive information. And it
turns out this is just what most people do."

------
emodendroket
I see a lot of comments basically regurgitating insights shared in the
original piece.

------
jccalhoun
I find it very strange that the author spends a couple paragraphs talking
about definitions and yet does not offer a definition of "stereotype" because
I consider a lot of his stereotypes to actually be generalizations.

Of course this raises the question of the difference between stereotypes and
generalizations. I did some searching but didn't find anything I would call
authoritative and I don't think I could define them myself in any meaningful
terms.

