Stereotypes

Bordalo, Pedro, Coffman, Katherine, Gennaioli, Nicola and Shleifer, Andrei (2016) Stereotypes. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 131 (4). pp. 1753-1794.

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Abstract

We present a model of stereotypes based on Kahneman and Tversky’s representative-ness heuristic. A decision maker assesses a target group by overweighting its representativetypes, defined as the types that occur more frequently in that group than in a baseline ref-erence group. Stereotypes formed in this way contain a “kernel of truth”: they are rooted intrue differences between groups. Because stereotypes focus on differences, they cause beliefdistortions, particularly when groups are similar. Stereotypes are also context dependent:beliefs about a group depend on the characteristics of the reference group. In line with ourpredictions, beliefs in the lab about abstract groups and beliefs in the field about politicalgroups are context dependent and distorted in the direction of representative types

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