Stereotype Accuracy: Toward Appreciating Group Differences

Social psychology has been dominated over the past 20 years with a focus on error and bias in social perception. By psychologists and lay people alike, stereotypes are assumed to be bad and inaccurate. The idea that stereotypes may have some degree of accuracy has been seen as anathema, and those raising the question of stereotype accuracy have been viewed as racist, sexist, or worse.

Stereotype Accuracy breaks this taboo by presenting research related to stereotype accuracy, arguing that understanding stereotype accuracy is crucial to both social psychology and to its applications (e.g., to improving intergroup relations). The goals of this volume are to reduce commonplace errors in modern social science by challenging the off-hand and undocumented claims appearing in the scholarly literature that stereotypes are "typically" inaccurate, resistant to change, overgeneralized, exaggerated, and generally destructive.

List of Contributors

Preface

I. Introduction

1. Why Study Stereotype Accuracy and Inaccuracy?
   —Lee J. Jussim, Clark R. McCauley, and Yueh-Ting Lee
2. Accuracy: A Neglected Component of Stereotype Research
   —Victor Ottati and Yueh-Ting Lee

II. Theory, Concepts, and Methodology

3. Accuracy of Stereotypes: What Research on Physical Attractiveness Can Teach Us
   —Richard D. Ashmore and Laura C. Longo
4. The Shifting Standards Model: Implications of Stereotype Accuracy for Social Judgment
   —Monica Biernat
5. An Ecological View of Stereotype Accuracy
   —Reuben M. Baron
6. Stereotypes, Base Rates, and the Fundamental Attribution Mistake: A Content-Based Approach to Judgmental Accuracy
   —David C. Funder
7. Stereotype Accuracy in Multicultural Business
   —Yueh-Ting Lee and Guillermo Duenas

III. Empirical Studies of Accuracy and Inaccuracy in Stereotypes

8. Motivations and the Perceiver's Group Membership: Consequences for Stereotype Accuracy
   —Carey S. Ryan
9. Are Stereotypes Exaggerated? A Sampling of Racial, Gender, Academic, Occupational, and Political Stereotypes
   —Clark R. McCauley
10. Are Teacher Expectations Biased by Students' Gender, Social Class, or Ethnicity?
    —Lee J. Jussim and Jacquelynne Eccles

IV. Conclusion: Opposing Views

11. Content and Application Inaccuracy in Social Stereotyping
    —Charles Stangor
12. Stereotype Accuracy: Toward Appreciating Group Differences
    —Clark R. McCauley, Lee J. Jussim, and Yueh-Ting Lee

Author Index

Subject Index

About the Editors