Bernadette Park

Definition and assessment of accuracy in social stereotypes

A perennial issue in the study of social stereotypes concerns their accuracy. Yet, there is no clear concept of the various ways in which stereotypes may be accurate or inaccurate and how one would assess their accuracy. This article is designed to rectify this situation. Three forms of stereotype inaccuracy are identified: stereotypic inaccuracy, valence inaccuracy, and dispersion inaccuracy. The implications of each form are discussed, along with how each can be assessed using a full-accuracy design. Past research that has attempted to examine stereotype accuracy is reviewed, and new data on the issue are presented. Although of perennial interest, the theoretical and methodological difficulties of assessing stereotype accuracy are substantial. The goal in this article is to alert the researcher to these difficulties and point toward their solution.

Across the Thin Blue Line: Police Officers and Racial Bias in the Decision to Shoot

Police officers were compared with community members in terms of the speed and accuracy with which they made simulated decisions to shoot (or not shoot) Black and White targets. Both samples exhibited robust racial bias in response speed. Officers outperformed community members on a number of measures, including overall speed and accuracy. Moreover, although community respondents set the decision criterion lower for Black targets than for White targets (indicating bias), police officers did not. The authors suggest that training may not affect the speed with which stereotype-incongruent targets are processed but that it does affect the ultimate decision (particularly the placement of the decision criterion). Findings from a study in which a college sample received training support this conclusion.

Stereotypes and ethnocentrism: diverging interethnic perceptions of African American and white American youth.

Much recent work on stereotyping has dealt with groups that are either artificially created or that do not have an extensive history of conflict. The authors attempted to overcome this limitation by examining issues of perceived variability and ethnocentrism among samples of White American and African American youth. The goals were both to examine theoretical issues in stereotyping and to describe the current state of ethnic interrelations among young people. Four studies are reported. Throughout, the samples of African Americans demonstrate interethnic judgments that are consistent with existing work on stereotyping and ethnocentrism. White American students, however, reported judgements that replicate neither the out-group homogeneity effect nor ethnocentrism. Alternative explanations for this difference are considered, and the discussion focuses on differing views concerning the role of ethnic identity and diversity in our society.

A Model of the Ingroup as a Social Resource

Drawing on theories of social comparison, realistic group conflict, and social identity, we present an integrative model designed to describe the psychological utility of social groups. We review diverse motivations that group membership may satisy (e.g., the need for acceptance or ideological consensus) and attempt to link these particular needs to a global concern for self-worth. We then examine several factors hypothesized to influence an ingroups utility in the eyes of its members. Attempting to unite our understanding of (a) why groups are needed and (b) what kinds of groups are useful in meeting those needs, a proposed model of the ingroup as a social resource (MISR) suggests that the dimensions of perceived value, entitativity, and identification interact to determine the overall psychological utility of an ingroup. We discuss empirical and theoretical support for this model, as well as its implications for intra-and intergroup attitudes.

Rethinking the Link Between Categorization and Prejudice Within the Social Cognition Perspective

For the past 40 years, social psychological research on stereotyping and prejudice in the United States has been dominated by the social cognition perspective, which has emphasized the important role of basic categorization processes in intergroup dynamics. An inadvertent consequence of this approach has been a disproportionate focus on social categorization as a causal factor in intergroup animosity and, accordingly, an emphasis on approaches that minimize category distinctions as the solution to intergroup conflict. Though recognizing the crucial function of categorization, we question existing support for the hypothesis that the perception of strong group differences necessarily results in greater intergroup bias. Given that it is neither feasible nor ultimately desirable to imagine that social categories can be eliminated, we suggest that a more useful approach is one that promotes intergroup harmony even while recognizing and valuing the distinctions that define our social world.

Accuracy in the Judgment of In-Group and Out-Group Variability

The accuracy of in-group and out-group variability judgments was examined by comparing those judgments with the variability of self-ratings provided by random samples of group members. Following Park and Judd (1990), perceptions of both group dispersion and group stereotypicality were examined. Accuracy was examined both by within-subject sensitivity correlations and by simple discrepancies between perceived and actual variability estimates. In-group-out-group differences in sensitivity were shown, particularly for judgments of stereotypicality. These differences were related to differences in the degree to which out-group variability is underestimated relative to in-group variability (i.e., the out-group homogeneity effect). Out-group stereotypicality judgments were overestimated, supporting the view that out-group stereotypes are overgeneralizations. Whether dispersion judgments were over- or underestimated depended on their measurement.

Role of meaningful subgroups in explaining differences in perceived variability for in-groups and out-groups.

Five aspects of the complexity of the knowledge representation of business and engineering majors were examined to see whether these differed by group membership and whether these differences were related to differences in perceived variability. Significantly more subgroups were generated when describing the in-group than the out-group; this difference predicted the relative tendency to see the in-group as more variable, and when controlled for statistically, out-group homogeneity effects were eliminated. Familiarity, redundancy, number of attributes used to describe the group, and the deviance of the subgroups from the larger group generally showed differences for in-group and out-group but did not show consistent evidence of mediation. In a 2nd study, Ss who were asked to sort group members into meaningful subgroups perceived greater variability relative to those who did not perform the sorting task.

Subtyping versus subgrouping processes in stereotype representation.

Participants were instructed to organize information about group members either by distinguishing stereotype-consistent from stereotype-inconsistent individuals (subtyping instructions), by dividing the individuals into multiple groups on the basis of similarities and differences (subgrouping instructions), or with no explicit organizing instructions. Participants given the subtyping instructions showed greater perceived stereotypicality and homogeneity and perceived a greater difference in how typical the confirming versus disconfirming group members were, relative to subgroup participants. Study 2 demonstrated natural variation among participants in the perceived atypicality of the disconfirming relative to confirming individuals when learning about a gay activist group. Atypicality predicted perceptions of this group, even when prejudice and strength of stereotyping toward gays as a whole were statistically controlled.

Social Categorization and the Representation of Variability Information

We present two models of social category representation, one exemplar-based and one abstraction-based. We examine these with respect to five factors that influence the magnitude of perceived variability: actual level of variability among group members, dependent measures used by experimenters, encoding effects, retrieval effects, and increasing familiarity with group members.

Colorblind and Multicultural Prejudice Reduction Strategies in High-Conflict Situations

We tested colorblind and multicultural prejudice-reduction strategies under conditions of low and high interethnic conflict. Replicating previous work, both strategies reduced prejudice when conflict was low. But when conflict was high, only the colorblind strategy reduced prejudice (Studies 1 and 2). Interestingly, this colorblind response seemed to reflect suppression. When prejudice was assessed more subtly (with implicit measures), colorblind participants demonstrated bias equivalent to multicultural participants (Study 2). And, after a delay, colorblind participants showed a rebound, demonstrating greater prejudice than their multicultural counterparts (Study 3). Similar effects were obtained when ideology was measured rather than manipulated (Study 4). We suggest that conflict challenges the tenets of a colorblind ideology (predicated on the absence of group differences) but not those of a multicultural ideology (which acknowledges difference).