Stereotyping and Attribution Errors

Organizational Behavior

Submitted BY : Afshan Jamil BBC-08-

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Stereotyping:

Stereotypes are as old as human culture itself. They reflect ideas that groups of people hold about

others who are different from them.

Stereotypes can be defined in many ways:

Judgments about others

Ethnic group membership (first used in 1922 by Walter Lippmann) Any group membership (more broadly used)

Oversimplified generalization About an entire group of people Without regarding to their individual differences

Categorize (or label) people/ events/ objects Beliefs Observations

By another definition, to stereotype is to attribute to a person some characteristics which are seen

to be shared by all or most of his fellow group members. Stereotypes can be embedded in our

culture, reproduced through socialization and exposure, and are fairly consistent over time, with

the same adjectives being seen as typical of a specific group over time.

Although often seen in a negative light, stereotypes also typically derive from some aspect of

social reality or grain of truth. This can be from over-representation of different groups in

socially prescribed roles, and people are often more sensitive to noticing things once they have

an existing bias, so they manage to confirm the "validity" of the stereotype through false means.

In this sense, stereotypes are a tentative hypothesis, and then people seek out more information.

Stereotypes are often activated in times when it will free up cognitive resources for other tasks.

When it is easy to attribute something to a stereotype, then that is something that is done. For

example, when explaining social events, negative behaviors by out group members are seen as

internally caused, but for in group members, they are externally caused. There is no evidence to

show this, but with the out group that has an attached stereotype, it is cognitively easier to

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attribute behavior to that stereotype. This has been shown in experiments that test the degree to

which stereotypes are used when participants have been trying to remember a list of numbers, or

are upset or anxious.

One problem with stereotypes is that they are often self-fulfilling prophesies, which perpetuates

their existence. For example, children randomly pegged as "bright" to teachers in 1st and 2nd

grade ended up increasing their IQ more than the rest of the students over the course of the year,

even though they were equal in ability to the control group. It is assumed that this comes about

because the teachers subconsciously treated them differently, and that those differences actually

helped the children's academic abilities to grow.

It is easier to create stereotypes when there is a clearly visible and consistent attribute that can

easily be recognized. This is why people of color, police and women are so easily stereotyped.

People from stereotyped groups can find this very disturbing as they experience an apprehension

(stereotype threat) of being treated unfairly.

We change our stereotypes infrequently. Even in the face of disconfirming evidence, we often

cling to our obviously-wrong beliefs. When we do change the stereotypes, we do so in one of

three ways:

Bookkeeping model: As we learn new contradictory information, we incrementally adjust

the stereotype to adapt to the new information. We usually need quite a lot of repeated

information for each incremental change. Individual evidence is taken as the exception

that proves the rule.

Conversion model: We throw away the old stereotype and start again. This is often used

when there is significant disconfirming evidence.

Sub typing model: We create a new stereotype that is a sub-classification of the existing

stereotype, particularly when we can draw a boundary around the sub-class. Thus if we

have a stereotype for Americans, a visit to New York may result in us having a ‘New

Yorkers are different’ sub-type.

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Stereotyping can go around in circles. Men stereotype women and women stereotype men. In

certain societies this is intensified as the stereotyping of women pushes them together more and

they create men as more of an out-group. The same thing happens with different racial groups,

such as 'white/black' (an artificial system of opposites, which in origin seems to be more like

'European/non-European').

Stereotyping can be subconscious, where it subtly biases our decisions and actions, even

in people who consciously do not want to be biased.

Stereotyping often happens not so much because of aggressive or unkind thoughts. It is

more often a simplification to speed conversation on what is not considered to be an

important topic.

Attribution Process:

Internal attribution

Perception that outcomes are due to motivation/ability rather than situation or fate

External attribution

Perception that outcomes are due to situation or fate rather than the person

Attribution Errors:

There are two types of attribution errors.

1. Fundamental errors

Attributing behavior of other people to internal factors (their motivation/ability).

The fundamental attribution error is a common type of cognitive bias in social

psychology. Essentially, the fundamental attribution error involves placing a heavy

emphasis on internal personality characteristics to explain someone's behavior in a given

situation, rather than thinking about external situational factors. Even though the

observers were told that the readers were assigned to the groups entirely randomly,

watching them read the essays caused them to attribute greater probabilities that those

reading the pro-Castro essays were in fact pro-Castro and those reading the anti-Castro

essays were in fact anti-Castro. This is an example of the so-called fundamental

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attribution error, where people overemphasize dispositional (personality-based)

explanations for behavior over situational explanations.

2. Self serving bias

Attributing our successes to internal factor and our failures to external factors.

A self serving bias is a cognitive bias which tends to enhance the ego and self confidence

of an individual, through a variety of processes. Many people demonstrate self serving

bias on some level or another, since most people have a desire to be successful, strong

individuals. Being aware of the processes behind a self serving bias can help you to

evaluate your performance and progress more critically, and it will allow you to use

things like failures as learning experiences.

The most classic example of a self serving bias is the tendency of people to attribute

success to their personalities, and failure to external factors. In this way, people credit

themselves for doing well, which enhances their self esteem, and they plead out of

responsibility for failures. For example, if you pass your driving test on the first try, you

might say that this was due to the fact you studied hard and you are a good driver. If you

fail the test, you might blame the examiner, the car, or the weather, rather than admitting

that you did not demonstrate safe and effective driving skills.

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