Verified by 
If you have not already done so, please read this before proceeding:
Disclaimer: Political Bias Is About Science
Liberals have been combating prejudice and oppression for many decades. Prejudice and oppression are bad things, so I am all on board with this project. Declaring stereotypes to be inaccurate has been part of that project for two reasons. First, it casts the person so declaring as part of the solution rather than part of the problem; second, it makes the point that many groups, especially stigmatized groups, do not deserve what social scientists believe to be their reputations. Stereotypes, in this view, are little more than false cultural myths that have the effect of keeping the downtrodden down.
But accuracy and inaccuracy are empirical questions. If I say, “It is going to rain tomorrow” how would you know if I was right or wrong? The only thing to do would be to see whether it actually rains tomorrow. You cannot simply declare me to be inaccurate, because you believe I am a bad meteorologist, or I have a pro-rain bias, etc. You need data. This is so obvious that it goes without saying, right?
The Empirical Black Hole at the Bottom of Declarations of Stereotype Inaccuracy
In science, claims need to be supported with evidence in a new study, or by citing existing evidence in prior research. This is obvious to anyone with experience in scientific research. Often, however, scientific articles have declared stereotypes to be inaccurate either without a single citation, or by citing an article that declares stereotype inaccuracy without itself actually citing empirical evidence. I call this “the black hole at the bottom of many declarations of stereotype inaccuracy” and give some examples next.
"... stereotypes are maladaptive forms of categories because their content does not correspond to what is going on in the environment" (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999, p. 467, American Psychologist).” Bargh & Chartrand provided no citation to support this claim. Black hole.
“"The term stereotype refers to those interpersonal beliefs and expectancies that are both widely shared and generally invalid (Ashmore & Del Boca, 1981)." (Miller & Turnbull, 1986, p. 233, Annual Review of Psychology).
There is a citation here – to Ashmore and Del Boca (1981), who did review how prior researchers defined stereotypes, but did not review or provide empirical evidence that addressed the accuracy of stereotypes. Thus, the Miller and Turnbull (1986) quote ends in an empirical black hole.
Even the American Psychological Association (APA, 1991), in its official pronouncements appearing in American Psychologist and submitted to the Supreme Court as part of an anti-discrimination brief, has not avoided the inexorable pull of this empirical black hole (p. 1064):
“The problem is that stereotypes about groups of people often are overgeneralizations and are either inaccurate or do not apply to the individual group member in question." Sex Bias in Work Settings, supra note 11, at 21” (emphasis in original).
The APA does include a reference. Sex Bias in Work Settings is an article by Heilman (1983), which reviews evidence of bias and discrimination. It does declare stereotypes to be inaccurate, but it neither provides nor reviews empirical evidence of stereotype accuracy. Thus, another declaration of stereotype inaccuracy ends in the black hole. (Bias and accuracy often coexist, Jussim, 2012).
My point is not to condemn these particular researchers. They were simply following a widespread practice in social psychology. But that, gentle reader, is the problem — that this is a widespread and general practice, which, therefore, reflects widespread and general scientific dysfunction and perhaps even a widespread failure of scientific integrity.
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Mark Twain
On the “Creation” of a Scientific Consensus that “Stereotypes are Inaccurate” in the Absence of Evidence
And so, lots of articles and chapters state that stereotypes are inaccurate. It then becomes easy for subsequent researchers not only to similarly declare stereotypes inaccurate but to cite other articles making this declaration (themselves ending in The Black Hole – i.e., without citations to evidence, or by citing an article that itself reports no evidence of inaccuracy).
Why, then, would hundreds of scientists over nearly a century commit the same error, over and over and over and over (and over and over and over and over)? To be clear, it IS an error – there is abundant scientific evidence that many stereotypes are at least reasonably, and sometimes highly, accurate (see the long list of references at the end of this entry). Two reasons. First, There is no data demonstrating widespread stereotype inaccuracy, So if one wishes to declare stereotypes inaccurate, one cannot cite very much (and if one cited the few studies demonstrating inaccuracy, one would be compelled to also grapple with the abundant evidence of accuracy -- and who wants to do that, if the idea is to simply declare stereotypes to be inaccurate?).
Second, why would a psychological scientist want to declare stereotypes inaccurate without data? Do I really have to ask?
One has every right to oppose prejudice and oppression. One has no right, however, to make up one’s own facts, especially in science.
References for this Blog
American Psychological Association. (1991). In the Supreme Court of the United States: Price Waterhouse v. Ann B. Hopkins (Amicus curiae brief). American Psychologists, 46, 1061-1070.
Ashmore, R. D., & Del Boca, F. K. (1981). Conceptual approaches to stereotypes and stereotyping. In D. L. Hamilton (Ed.), Cognitive processes in stereotyping and intergroup behavior (pp.1-35). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Bargh, J. A., & Chartrand, T. L. (1999). The unbearable automaticity of being. American Psychologist, 54, 462-479.
Heilman, M. E. (1983). Sex bias in work settings. Research in Organizational Behavior, 5, 269-298.
Jussim, L. (2012). Social perception and social reality: Why accuracy dominates bias and self-fulfilling prophecy. New York: Oxford University Press.
Miller, D. T. & Turnbull, W. (1986). Expectancies and interpersonal processes. Annual Review of Psychology, 37, 233-56
I will eventually put up a blog entry that reviews and summarizes the evidence of overwhelming stereotype accuracy, along with the few pockets of clearly demonstrated inaccuracy. For now, if you are interested, here are some original sources for
Empirical Articles Demonstrating High Levels of Stereotype Accuracy
Chan, W., McCrae, R. R., De Fruyt, F., Jussim, L., et al. (2012). Stereotypes of age differences in personality traits: Universal and accurate? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103, 1050-1066.
Lockenhoff, C. E., Chan, W., McCrae, R. R., De Fruyt, F., Jussim, L. et al. (2014). Gender stereotypes of personality: Universal and accurate? Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 45, 675-694.
McCauley, C. R. (1995). Are stereotypes exaggerated? A sampling of racial, gender, academic, occupational, and political stereotypes. In In Lee, Y. T., Jussim, L., & McCauley, C. R. (Eds.), Stereotype accuracy: Toward appreciating group differences (pp. 215-243). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
Ryan, C. S. (1996). Accuracy of Black and White college students’ in-group and out-group stereotypes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22, 1114-1127.
Swim, J. K. (1994). Perceived versus meta-analytic effect sizes: An assessment of the accuracy of gender stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 21-36.
Reviews of the Overwhelming Evidence of Stereotype Accuracy
(These reviews cover far more material than listed above)
Jussim, L., Crawford, J. T., Anglin, S. M., Chambers, J. R., Stevens, S. T., Cohen, F. (2014). Stereotype accuracy: One of the largest and most replicable effects in all of social psychology. Draft chapter prepared for T. Nelson (ed.), Handbook of Prejudice, Stereotyping, and Discrimination, Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Jussim, L. (2012). Social perception and social reality: Why accuracy dominates bias and self-fulfilling prophecy. New York: Oxford University Press.
Jussim, L., Cain, T., Crawford, J., Harber, K., & Cohen, F. (2009). The unbearable accuracy of stereotypes. In T. Nelson (Ed.), Handbook of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination (pp.199-227).Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Ryan, C. S. (2002). Stereotype accuracy. European Review of Social Psychology, 13, 75-109.
Best Evidence of Stereotype Inaccuracy is for National Stereotypes of Personality When Assessed Against Big Five Personality Measures as Criteria
McCrae, R. R., Chan, W., Jussim, L., et al. (2013). The inaccuracy of national character stereotypes. Journal of Research in Personality, 47, 831-842.
Terracciano, A., Abdel-Khalek, A. M., Adam, N., et al. (2005). National character does not reflect mean personality trait levels in 49 cultures. Science, 310, 96-100.
