Though it must be especially frustrating for those unusual people who buck a stereotype hard to still be routinely—and understandably—mistaken for fitting it at first glance. Luckily I’m a perfect match with my stereotype, greasing the wheels of nearly all my interactions.
Aren’t heuristics just some of the simplest mental decision making models? As the models become more sophisticated and complex, we just start calling them something else.
I agree completely. Stereotypes are heuristics, and based on probability you'll be right more often than you'll be wrong, should you rely on them. Important to guard against the fallacies and biases mentioned, of course.
Heuristics are more amenable to change than beliefs, this is why encountering people who defy certain stereotypes can be so very helpful in reevaluating a stereotype. This would be more difficult in the case of beliefs, which would likely be more tightly held.
Stereotypes are not terrible in and of themselves. Subscribing to them does not make someone terrible. If someone holds onto a heuristic in the face of contradictory evidence (i.e., the heuristic will lead them to be wrong more often than not), then they're entitled to do that. They're entitled to be wrong more often. We can't force people to be open to new information, but we also shouldn't force people to pretend on-average differences don't exist.
The problem with your list of bad stereotypes (other than Ned Flanders, which I believe is meant to be a joke rather than a stereotype, but maybe not): some stereotypes either make too much of a difference between groups when they have widely overlapping distributions (either centers too close to one another or high variance), and others make assumptions that are too forceful to be left to population statistics.
1. "Travelers running away from something", "Jews are greedy", "Men will have sex with any woman who is willing": all these predictions are too powerful to leave to stereotypes, because it makes you a jerk if you run with them, though they may have some backing.
2. "Women are poor drivers" suffers from overlapping distributions. This may be true (although only in the sense of frequency crashing, since men crash worse), but 32y/o male me is going to get trounced by the female distribution by something as commonplace as the baby keeping me up last night.
I think there can be problems with stereotyped decision making in general (not just in rare cases of people who outright refuse to believe people can differ from stereotypes) Have you ever heard of the US air forces attempt in the 50s to use the average measurements of service members to design their cockpits? It seemed like a good idea - take the measurements of everyone across hundreds of metrics, and design the cockpits so it could fit everyone in the 90th percentile. They found that though lots of people are indeed in that category for each metric, when pilots used it, they found not a single pilot that could fit the cockpit. It turns out that almost everyone is exceptional in some sense or another. With a single stereotype, across a narrow sample, they're broadly accurate. That's why they form in the first place, I imagine. But when you combine all of them on a single person (this person is a young, white, girl who comes from the city, listens to rock n roll, voted democrat, isn't particularly in shape, studies chemistry) you're bound to find that an entire mental model suggested by such a combination in fact fits very few people.
Most 'beliefs' are not beliefs. 'Beliefs' are an example of sterotypical (as in over-extension) intentional stances, with conventional, traditional, or identitarian attitudes towards such matters of intention.
In other words: stereotypes get over-extended past their heuristical shortcut-ing-ness because we are lazy, overwrought, under-done, or when we actively enjoy over-extending them deliberately, when we want to troll for effect (this includes calls to social action for said conventional, traditional, or identitarian life-projects).
Criticising stereotypical thinking often stereotypes the stereotyper: by mashing laziness, tiredness, uneducated together with troll-like behaviour when they suddenly shout at as as we cross over a bridge.
Transitional spaces like bridge are dangerous so we respond in kind (over-extend). (As tit-for-tat game theory says should work, but really?)
I agree.
Though it must be especially frustrating for those unusual people who buck a stereotype hard to still be routinely—and understandably—mistaken for fitting it at first glance. Luckily I’m a perfect match with my stereotype, greasing the wheels of nearly all my interactions.
Aren’t heuristics just some of the simplest mental decision making models? As the models become more sophisticated and complex, we just start calling them something else.
I agree completely. Stereotypes are heuristics, and based on probability you'll be right more often than you'll be wrong, should you rely on them. Important to guard against the fallacies and biases mentioned, of course.
Heuristics are more amenable to change than beliefs, this is why encountering people who defy certain stereotypes can be so very helpful in reevaluating a stereotype. This would be more difficult in the case of beliefs, which would likely be more tightly held.
Stereotypes are not terrible in and of themselves. Subscribing to them does not make someone terrible. If someone holds onto a heuristic in the face of contradictory evidence (i.e., the heuristic will lead them to be wrong more often than not), then they're entitled to do that. They're entitled to be wrong more often. We can't force people to be open to new information, but we also shouldn't force people to pretend on-average differences don't exist.
The problem with your list of bad stereotypes (other than Ned Flanders, which I believe is meant to be a joke rather than a stereotype, but maybe not): some stereotypes either make too much of a difference between groups when they have widely overlapping distributions (either centers too close to one another or high variance), and others make assumptions that are too forceful to be left to population statistics.
1. "Travelers running away from something", "Jews are greedy", "Men will have sex with any woman who is willing": all these predictions are too powerful to leave to stereotypes, because it makes you a jerk if you run with them, though they may have some backing.
2. "Women are poor drivers" suffers from overlapping distributions. This may be true (although only in the sense of frequency crashing, since men crash worse), but 32y/o male me is going to get trounced by the female distribution by something as commonplace as the baby keeping me up last night.
I think there can be problems with stereotyped decision making in general (not just in rare cases of people who outright refuse to believe people can differ from stereotypes) Have you ever heard of the US air forces attempt in the 50s to use the average measurements of service members to design their cockpits? It seemed like a good idea - take the measurements of everyone across hundreds of metrics, and design the cockpits so it could fit everyone in the 90th percentile. They found that though lots of people are indeed in that category for each metric, when pilots used it, they found not a single pilot that could fit the cockpit. It turns out that almost everyone is exceptional in some sense or another. With a single stereotype, across a narrow sample, they're broadly accurate. That's why they form in the first place, I imagine. But when you combine all of them on a single person (this person is a young, white, girl who comes from the city, listens to rock n roll, voted democrat, isn't particularly in shape, studies chemistry) you're bound to find that an entire mental model suggested by such a combination in fact fits very few people.
" I don’t think stereotypes are beliefs at all."
Most 'beliefs' are not beliefs. 'Beliefs' are an example of sterotypical (as in over-extension) intentional stances, with conventional, traditional, or identitarian attitudes towards such matters of intention.
In other words: stereotypes get over-extended past their heuristical shortcut-ing-ness because we are lazy, overwrought, under-done, or when we actively enjoy over-extending them deliberately, when we want to troll for effect (this includes calls to social action for said conventional, traditional, or identitarian life-projects).
Criticising stereotypical thinking often stereotypes the stereotyper: by mashing laziness, tiredness, uneducated together with troll-like behaviour when they suddenly shout at as as we cross over a bridge.
Transitional spaces like bridge are dangerous so we respond in kind (over-extend). (As tit-for-tat game theory says should work, but really?)