Jussim (Reference Jussim2012) aims to explain why stereotype accuracy offends many people. He rightly notes one reason: The study of stereotype accuracy does nothing to address social injustice. But Jussim overlooks another reason, one that pertains not to social justice but rather to the clash between the objective truth about stereotypes and the subjective construction of individual autonomy.
As scholars in several disciplines have noted, people have a fundamental need for autonomy (for a review, see Smith Reference Smith2015). In the humanities, terms like agency, liberty, and freedom substitute for what psychologists call autonomy, but the differences are minor. In psychological research, empirical support for this need can be found in self-determination theory (SDT). In the SDT framework, autonomy is defined as perceiving oneself as the locus of causality, and deeming that one's actions are the result of one's volition (Ryan & Deci Reference Ryan and Deci2000). Research by self-determination theorists has shown that such autonomy universally predicts well-being (Deci & Ryan Reference Deci, Ryan, Van Lange, Kruglanski and Higgins2012). Psychologists who study the structure of well-being have similarly argued that autonomy is a component of eudaimonic well-being, which pertains to functioning well rather than feeling good (Ryff Reference Ryff1989; Ryff & Keyes Reference Ryff and Keyes1995). In this tradition, autonomy is measured with responses to statements like “My decisions are not usually influenced by what everyone else is doing.” Their findings indicate that autonomy constitutes one sub-factor in a hierarchical model of eudaimonic well-being. Regardless of whether one treats autonomy as a cause or component of well-being, it is evident that autonomy is connected to flourishing.
If rooted in evolution, the need for autonomy may have been adaptive in resisting predators. Among humans, a common form of social predation is enslavement, a practice found across societies for a major portion of human history (Drescher Reference Drescher2009). As the biblical story of Moses shows, escape from enslavement could form the founding myth of a people. In the case of Moses and other liberators, the desire for autonomy was construed in a negative manner: people needed to avoid or escape enslavement. During the Enlightenment, autonomy continued to be a negative concern. Paine (Reference Paine1794) advocated for the removal of religious strictures on the citizenry. More famously, Mill (Reference Mill1867) argued for personal liberty, and in his account, liberty was constituted by the absence of censorship. Indeed, liberty became the first part of the tripartite slogan of the French revolution.
In subsequent centuries, however, the concept of autonomy took a positive turn. Particularly in industrialized nations, people began to regard themselves as autonomous when they could define and re-define their individual selves at will (Smith Reference Smith2003). This post-modernist construction, which surpasses the individualism of the Enlightenment era, comports with the prevailing commercial notion that freedom means having innumerable options (Schwartz Reference Schwartz2004; Thaler & Sunstein Reference Thaler and Sunstein2008).
Stereotype accuracy brushes up against this conception of the autonomous self because it suggests that the targets of a stereotype have fewer choices in self-definition than they think. Stereotype research using vignette studies has corroborated that when people are targeted by stereotypes, even positive ones, they feel depersonalized. The threatening effect of positive stereotypes is mediated by self-construal, such that people with an independent self-construal tend to react negatively, whereas people with an interdependent self-construal tend to have no reaction (Siy & Cheryan Reference Siy and Cheryan2013).
To construe oneself as the product of individual choices, however, one must neglect the fact that historical, sociological, geographical, and political forces do not impinge on individuals one at a time, but rather on whole clusters of people. As a result, these clusters share common attributes. For instance, people who live in Eastern Europe have different attributes from people who live in Western Europe because of the legacy of communism and the effect of post-Communist transition. No one in Eastern Europe could opt out of these effects; no one from Western Europe could opt in. Because of these phenomena, informed generalizations about a cluster's constituents can be accurate.
If such generalizations were untenable, the entire field of sociology would collapse. Canonical works in sociology such as Durkheim's Le Suicide (Reference Durkheim1897) and Marx's Das Capital (Reference Marx1906) compare one cluster of people to another, illustrating how causal forces operate at the super-individual level to differentiate such clusters. Another member of the sociological canon, C. Wright Mills (Reference Mills1959), incited his readers to go beyond the abstract recognition of such forces, and recognize how their apparent choices are quite homogeneous. Stereotype accuracy simply refers to a match between lay generalizations and sociological generalizations about clusters. To push aside stereotype accuracy, one must either dismiss social clustering altogether, or suggest that only professional sociologists have the license to think about people non-individualistically.
Social psychologists must therefore manage this tension. One option is to sidestep it – some people solely deploy the term stereotypes for generalizations that target canonically victimized groups. In this logic, the generalization that whites tend to be racist doesn't qualify as a stereotype. Social justice undergirds this selective focus, which is laudable. Nevertheless, accurate generalizations are accurate generalizations. They are indifferent to their targets and our terminology.
What then can accuracy researchers do to address the perceived infringement of autonomy? First, they can explain the social construction of the self to their audience. The perception of autonomy hinges upon a constructed self, something that scientists cannot model as an exogenous cause. Thus, scientists cannot objectively address whether selves are autonomous or constrained, or whether your personal sense of autonomous operation corresponds to an objective reality. In fact, the constructed nature of the self entails that people have some latitude in how they evaluate their autonomy. They can construe autonomy differently from their individualistic peers. Making such choices involves a meta-cognitive awareness of how norms of individualism are ironically a collective phenomenon that one can react against.
Second, accuracy researchers can explain why stereotypes are accurate. For instance, there is an evolutionary explanation of why women might be more empathetic than men. Women formed communal relationships more frequently throughout much of our species’ history because two female needs, mothering and safety, were more easily accomplished through cooperative work (Campbell Reference Campbell2013). And there is a sociological explanation for why some of the richest lawyers in the United States are Jewish. In the middle of the 20th century, anti-Semitic discrimination kept Jewish lawyers out of major law firms, but such firms stayed out of “undignified” areas like mergers and acquisitions, leaving an area where Jewish lawyers could find work (Wald Reference Wald2008). Later in the century, these “undignified” areas became remarkably profitable.
These explanations show how homogeneity within a social cluster can be the result of adaptation, a pragmatic process. Casting a spotlight on adaptive mechanisms can forestall essentialist explanations, which are circular and suggest that people have enduring characteristics. Stereotype accuracy addresses correspondence between stereotypes and facts at the time of evaluation, but has nothing to say about how long stereotypic attributes endure.
Drawing attention to the social construction of the self and shedding light on the reasons for stereotypes may not ameliorate all concerns about stereotype accuracy research. But these two tactics may help people understand that stereotype accuracy researchers, unlike invidious bigots, can see people as individuals and want to help people feel autonomous. However, accuracy researchers cannot sustain the illusion that every individual is entirely self-defined and altogether unique.
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Jussim (Reference Jussim2012) aims to explain why stereotype accuracy offends many people. He rightly notes one reason: The study of stereotype accuracy does nothing to address social injustice. But Jussim overlooks another reason, one that pertains not to social justice but rather to the clash between the objective truth about stereotypes and the subjective construction of individual autonomy.
As scholars in several disciplines have noted, people have a fundamental need for autonomy (for a review, see Smith Reference Smith2015). In the humanities, terms like agency, liberty, and freedom substitute for what psychologists call autonomy, but the differences are minor. In psychological research, empirical support for this need can be found in self-determination theory (SDT). In the SDT framework, autonomy is defined as perceiving oneself as the locus of causality, and deeming that one's actions are the result of one's volition (Ryan & Deci Reference Ryan and Deci2000). Research by self-determination theorists has shown that such autonomy universally predicts well-being (Deci & Ryan Reference Deci, Ryan, Van Lange, Kruglanski and Higgins2012). Psychologists who study the structure of well-being have similarly argued that autonomy is a component of eudaimonic well-being, which pertains to functioning well rather than feeling good (Ryff Reference Ryff1989; Ryff & Keyes Reference Ryff and Keyes1995). In this tradition, autonomy is measured with responses to statements like “My decisions are not usually influenced by what everyone else is doing.” Their findings indicate that autonomy constitutes one sub-factor in a hierarchical model of eudaimonic well-being. Regardless of whether one treats autonomy as a cause or component of well-being, it is evident that autonomy is connected to flourishing.
If rooted in evolution, the need for autonomy may have been adaptive in resisting predators. Among humans, a common form of social predation is enslavement, a practice found across societies for a major portion of human history (Drescher Reference Drescher2009). As the biblical story of Moses shows, escape from enslavement could form the founding myth of a people. In the case of Moses and other liberators, the desire for autonomy was construed in a negative manner: people needed to avoid or escape enslavement. During the Enlightenment, autonomy continued to be a negative concern. Paine (Reference Paine1794) advocated for the removal of religious strictures on the citizenry. More famously, Mill (Reference Mill1867) argued for personal liberty, and in his account, liberty was constituted by the absence of censorship. Indeed, liberty became the first part of the tripartite slogan of the French revolution.
In subsequent centuries, however, the concept of autonomy took a positive turn. Particularly in industrialized nations, people began to regard themselves as autonomous when they could define and re-define their individual selves at will (Smith Reference Smith2003). This post-modernist construction, which surpasses the individualism of the Enlightenment era, comports with the prevailing commercial notion that freedom means having innumerable options (Schwartz Reference Schwartz2004; Thaler & Sunstein Reference Thaler and Sunstein2008).
Stereotype accuracy brushes up against this conception of the autonomous self because it suggests that the targets of a stereotype have fewer choices in self-definition than they think. Stereotype research using vignette studies has corroborated that when people are targeted by stereotypes, even positive ones, they feel depersonalized. The threatening effect of positive stereotypes is mediated by self-construal, such that people with an independent self-construal tend to react negatively, whereas people with an interdependent self-construal tend to have no reaction (Siy & Cheryan Reference Siy and Cheryan2013).
To construe oneself as the product of individual choices, however, one must neglect the fact that historical, sociological, geographical, and political forces do not impinge on individuals one at a time, but rather on whole clusters of people. As a result, these clusters share common attributes. For instance, people who live in Eastern Europe have different attributes from people who live in Western Europe because of the legacy of communism and the effect of post-Communist transition. No one in Eastern Europe could opt out of these effects; no one from Western Europe could opt in. Because of these phenomena, informed generalizations about a cluster's constituents can be accurate.
If such generalizations were untenable, the entire field of sociology would collapse. Canonical works in sociology such as Durkheim's Le Suicide (Reference Durkheim1897) and Marx's Das Capital (Reference Marx1906) compare one cluster of people to another, illustrating how causal forces operate at the super-individual level to differentiate such clusters. Another member of the sociological canon, C. Wright Mills (Reference Mills1959), incited his readers to go beyond the abstract recognition of such forces, and recognize how their apparent choices are quite homogeneous. Stereotype accuracy simply refers to a match between lay generalizations and sociological generalizations about clusters. To push aside stereotype accuracy, one must either dismiss social clustering altogether, or suggest that only professional sociologists have the license to think about people non-individualistically.
Social psychologists must therefore manage this tension. One option is to sidestep it – some people solely deploy the term stereotypes for generalizations that target canonically victimized groups. In this logic, the generalization that whites tend to be racist doesn't qualify as a stereotype. Social justice undergirds this selective focus, which is laudable. Nevertheless, accurate generalizations are accurate generalizations. They are indifferent to their targets and our terminology.
What then can accuracy researchers do to address the perceived infringement of autonomy? First, they can explain the social construction of the self to their audience. The perception of autonomy hinges upon a constructed self, something that scientists cannot model as an exogenous cause. Thus, scientists cannot objectively address whether selves are autonomous or constrained, or whether your personal sense of autonomous operation corresponds to an objective reality. In fact, the constructed nature of the self entails that people have some latitude in how they evaluate their autonomy. They can construe autonomy differently from their individualistic peers. Making such choices involves a meta-cognitive awareness of how norms of individualism are ironically a collective phenomenon that one can react against.
Second, accuracy researchers can explain why stereotypes are accurate. For instance, there is an evolutionary explanation of why women might be more empathetic than men. Women formed communal relationships more frequently throughout much of our species’ history because two female needs, mothering and safety, were more easily accomplished through cooperative work (Campbell Reference Campbell2013). And there is a sociological explanation for why some of the richest lawyers in the United States are Jewish. In the middle of the 20th century, anti-Semitic discrimination kept Jewish lawyers out of major law firms, but such firms stayed out of “undignified” areas like mergers and acquisitions, leaving an area where Jewish lawyers could find work (Wald Reference Wald2008). Later in the century, these “undignified” areas became remarkably profitable.
These explanations show how homogeneity within a social cluster can be the result of adaptation, a pragmatic process. Casting a spotlight on adaptive mechanisms can forestall essentialist explanations, which are circular and suggest that people have enduring characteristics. Stereotype accuracy addresses correspondence between stereotypes and facts at the time of evaluation, but has nothing to say about how long stereotypic attributes endure.
Drawing attention to the social construction of the self and shedding light on the reasons for stereotypes may not ameliorate all concerns about stereotype accuracy research. But these two tactics may help people understand that stereotype accuracy researchers, unlike invidious bigots, can see people as individuals and want to help people feel autonomous. However, accuracy researchers cannot sustain the illusion that every individual is entirely self-defined and altogether unique.