To Stereotype is Human

Stereotyping:

categorizing an individual as a member of a certain group,

and inferring that the individual

shares the general characteristics of the group.

Did you ever watch Sesame Street as a kid? The whole "one of these things is not like the others" concept was designed to help young children notice differences and learn to organize.

Babies and young toddlers who are still learning words haven't grasped the finer points of categorizing and organizing yet. They know "cat" and think of "cat" in terms of "fur-covered, four-legged animal." That's it. And adults think it's cute when Babykins points to a cow or a dog and proudly declares, "Cat!" (Oh, come on, it is pretty cute.) And it shows the earliest of this kind of brain development.

If we don't already have a mental category for something, we'll create our own new one. We use our mental pigeon-holes, or schemas, as mental shortcuts when we have to deal with large amounts of information. (If you've been following along with this blog, you'll recall a few posts back when I mentioned that we can only handle about 128 bits of information at a time. A simple bit of small-talk can require as much as a third of that. Obviously "large" is a relative term!) Schemas help us make sense of what's going on so we don't get overwhelmed, but they also help us relate new information to stuff we already know. Doing that helps us remember better and retrieve the information from memory later. So schemas are incredibly handy brain processes.

By definition, stereotypes are schemas in action. Remember how Babykins called a cow a cat? If we don't intentionally interfere with the process, our brains prefer to be accurate (and it's worth a few mistakes to learn more). It's a natural human process.

Don't get the idea that forming schemas is a simple task! Remember that memory formation is affected by emotion. (Which is why aromatherapy can be effective - we form schemas that link certain smells with certain emotions.) This is where things get tricky.

When we're in a good mood, we're not as worried about accuracy, so we're more likely to rely on stereotypes. Mostly that's okay. As it turns out, ANY strong emotion keeps us from spending brain power on rational thought and making us more reliant on our schemas. That's mostly okay, too. In a crisis or a tragedy, there's a lot more to worry about. 

But here's where it gets tricky: if we form schemas about a certain group of people, for example, and along with the relatively small bit of information, we store the emotional context of when we gained that information, then the entire schema is biased from the beginning.

So if a schema is formed with an emotional atmosphere that's hostile or fearful, the schema is going to be negatively biased. On the other hand, if the schema is formed with a proud or joyful emotional atmosphere, the schema will be positively biased. Neither one is especially objectively accurate, both are prejudices. And not to nitpick or be a semantics cop, but prejudice is what's socially unacceptable and offensive, not schemas.