Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination

Stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination sound like synonyms in everyday speech, but the MCAT treats them as three distinct things: a stereotype is a belief, prejudice is an attitude, and discrimination is a behavior. This article covers how stereotypes form and function, the Stereotype Content Model, the self-fulfilling prophecy, stereotype threat, prejudice and propaganda, the roles of power, prestige, and class, ethnocentrism, in-group and out-group dynamics, cultural relativism, and the difference between individual and institutional discrimination.

Key Takeaways

• A stereotype is a category-based belief that serves a necessary cognitive function (simplifying a complex world) but becomes harmful when it fuels prejudice or discrimination.

• The Stereotype Content Model (Fiske and colleagues) classifies stereotypes along two dimensions: warmth (based on competition for resources) and competence (based on societal status).

• A self-fulfilling prophecy (Merton) is an expectation that creates the conditions for its own confirmation.

• Stereotype threat (Steele and Aronson) is the anxiety about confirming a negative stereotype, which can itself reduce performance, encourage self-handicapping, and lower personal investment.

• Prejudice is an irrational attitude formed prior to experience, often shaped by propaganda, and influenced by social factors like power, prestige, and class.

• Ethnocentrism (Sumner) judges other cultures by one's own culture's standards; cultural relativism recognizes other cultures' values as valid within their own context, without ranking cultures.

• The in-group/out-group distinction (Sumner) shows that negative feelings toward an out-group often reflect in-group favoritism rather than genuine dislike of the out-group.

• Discrimination is a behavior (unlike prejudice, which is an attitude), and it splits into individual discrimination (conscious, obvious, removable) and institutional discrimination (structural, subtle, maintained by the status quo).

Stereotypes

A stereotype carries a negative connotation, but stereotypes are fundamentally necessary for everyday life. Their psychological purpose is to make sense of a complex world by categorizing and systematizing information, which helps people identify items, predict behavior, and react accordingly. Stereotypes are useful for defining categories and determining what does or doesn't fit into a given category. The negative connotation comes from what happens when stereotypes get used to develop prejudices toward others and to discriminate against them.

In sociology, a stereotype occurs when attitudes and impressions are based on limited and superficial information about a person or a group. The contents of a stereotype are the specific attributes that people believe define and characterize that group.

Stereotype Content Model

The Stereotype Content Model, developed by psychologist Susan Fiske and colleagues Amy Cuddy, Peter Glick, and Jun Xu in a 2002 paper, attempts to classify stereotypes relative to a hypothetical in-group using two dimensions: warmth and competence.

• Warm groups are groups that are not in direct competition with the in-group for resources.

• Competent groups are groups that hold high status within society.

These two dimensions combine into four possible pairings — high warmth with high competence, high warmth with low competence, low warmth with high competence, and low warmth with low competence — giving the model its name as a way to classify the content of a stereotype rather than just its overall positive or negative valence.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

A self-fulfilling prophecy, a term coined by sociologist Robert Merton in a 1948 paper, describes how the expectations created by a stereotype can create conditions that lead to the confirmation of those very expectations. In other words, believing something about a person or group can change behavior toward them in ways that end up producing the expected outcome — turning the original belief, however unfounded, into a reality.

Stereotype Threat

Stereotype threat, a term coined by psychologists Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson in a 1995 study on the intellectual test performance of African Americans, refers to people being concerned or anxious about confirming a negative stereotype about their own group. This anxiety can cause reduced performance, encourage self-handicapping strategies, and lower a person's personal investment in an activity.

Common examples include white men in sports, women driving, and homosexual couples providing childcare — situations where a negative stereotype exists about a group's ability to perform a task. Simply being aware of these stereotypes may cause the stereotyped individuals to perform worse, or to avoid the performance altogether rather than risk confirming the stereotype.

MCAT Callout — Self-fulfilling prophecy vs. stereotype threat: these two mechanisms are related but distinct. A self-fulfilling prophecy is the broader idea that an expectation — including but not limited to a stereotype — can shape behavior enough to make the expectation come true. Stereotype threat is a narrower, specific case: the anxiety a stereotyped individual feels about confirming a negative stereotype, which itself can impair performance. If a vignette describes someone's expectation changing how they treat another person, think self-fulfilling prophecy; if it describes a person's own anxiety about confirming a stereotype undermining their own performance, think stereotype threat.

Prejudice

Prejudice is an irrational positive or negative attitude toward a person, group, or thing, formed prior to an actual experience with that entity. Prejudice can form as a result of dissimilarities among groups, races, ethnicities, or environments, and it may be kept internally by an individual or run throughout an entire large community.

Propaganda is a common way in which large organizations attempt to create prejudices in others. Propaganda posters often invoke fear and rely on exaggerated negative depictions of the target group to shape attitudes before any direct experience with that group occurs.

Power, Prestige, and Class

Many social factors affect prejudice, including power, prestige, and class:

• Power — the ability of people or groups to achieve their goals and their ability to control resources.

• Prestige — the level of respect shown to a person by others.

• Class — a person's socioeconomic status.

Social inequalities in power, prestige, and class can result in a society sorting into "haves" and "have-nots," and this division can aid the development of social prejudices between the two groups.

Ethnocentrism

Ethnocentrism, a term coined by sociologist William Graham Sumner in his 1906 book Folkways, is the practice of making judgments about other cultures based on the values and beliefs of one's own culture. Ethnocentrism can range widely in severity — from relatively benign displays of ethnic pride all the way to violent supremacy groups.

In-Group and Out-Group

Sumner's Folkways also introduced the distinction between the in-group and the out-group:

• In-group — the social group in which a person feels a sense of belonging or identifies as a member.

• Out-group — a social group with which the individual does not identify.

Negative feelings toward an out-group are often not actually based on a sense of dislike toward that group's different characteristics. Instead, those feelings can often be attributed to favoritism for the in-group's own characteristics — people rate their own group more positively, and the out-group looks worse only by comparison.

Cultural Relativism

Cultural relativism is the perception of another culture as different from one's own, paired with a recognition that a culture's values, mores, and rules fit into that culture itself. In other words: although differences exist between one culture and another, one culture's rules are not perceived as being superior to the other's — the two cultures are simply different from each other.

MCAT Callout — Ethnocentrism vs. cultural relativism: these two concepts describe opposite orientations toward the same act of comparing cultures. Ethnocentrism judges another culture against the standards of one's own culture, implicitly ranking cultures. Cultural relativism recognizes that another culture's values fit within that culture on its own terms, without ranking either culture as superior. A vignette describing someone dismissing a foreign custom as "wrong" because it doesn't match their own culture's norms is testing ethnocentrism; one describing someone recognizing a foreign custom as appropriate within its own cultural context is testing cultural relativism.

Discrimination

Discrimination occurs when prejudicial attitudes cause individuals of a particular group to be treated differently from others. Discrimination is a behavior, while prejudice is an attitude — both are usually negative, but they are not the same thing, and prejudice does not always result in discrimination. The same unequal distribution of power, prestige, and class that influences prejudice also influences discrimination.

MCAT Callout — Stereotype vs. prejudice vs. discrimination: these three terms sit along a cognition-to-behavior spectrum, and MCAT vignettes frequently test whether you can sort a scenario into the right one. A stereotype is a belief or category-based assumption about a group. Prejudice is an attitude — a positive or negative feeling toward a person or group formed before direct experience with them. Discrimination is a behavior — actually treating members of a group differently as a result of that attitude. Holding a stereotype doesn't necessarily mean holding a prejudice about it, and holding a prejudice doesn't necessarily mean acting on it through discrimination.

Individual vs. Institutional Discrimination

Discrimination itself splits into two types:

• Individual discrimination — one person discriminating against a particular person or group. This type is considered to be conscious and obvious, and it can be eliminated by removing the person who is displaying the discriminatory behavior.

• Institutional discrimination — discrimination against a particular person or group by an entire institution. Here, discrimination is built into the structure of society itself, which makes it much subtler and harder to eliminate than individual discrimination. Institutional discrimination is perpetuated by the maintenance of the "status quo," since the discriminatory pattern is embedded in ordinary institutional practice rather than any one person's obvious action.

MCAT Callout — Individual vs. institutional discrimination: the key distinction is where the discrimination lives. Individual discrimination lives in one person's conscious behavior and disappears if that person is removed. Institutional discrimination lives in an institution's structure and practices, so it persists even when any single person within the institution changes — it's maintained by the status quo rather than by any one actor's intent.

Why Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination Matter for the MCAT

MCAT questions on this material typically present a vignette and ask you to identify which specific concept — cognitive, attitudinal, or behavioral — is being described:

• Sort every vignette into stereotype, prejudice, or discrimination first. A belief about a group is a stereotype, a feeling about a group is prejudice, and an action taken against a group is discrimination.

• Distinguish the self-fulfilling prophecy from stereotype threat. One is about expectations shaping how someone treats another person; the other is about a person's own anxiety over confirming a stereotype undermining their own performance.

• Don't confuse ethnocentrism with cultural relativism. One ranks cultures against one's own; the other recognizes cultural differences without ranking them.

• Track whether discrimination is individual or institutional. Institutional discrimination is subtler and structural, not the product of one obvious actor.

• Remember that out-group negativity is often in-group favoritism in disguise — the underlying driver is frequently a positive bias toward one's own group rather than genuine dislike of the out-group's traits.

Common MCAT Mistakes

• Treating stereotype, prejudice, and discrimination as interchangeable. They sit on a cognition-to-behavior spectrum: stereotype is a belief, prejudice is an attitude, discrimination is a behavior. A vignette describing only a belief about a group is not automatically testing discrimination.

• Confusing self-fulfilling prophecy with stereotype threat. Self-fulfilling prophecy is about an expectation shaping how someone treats another person; stereotype threat is about a person's own anxiety over confirming a stereotype undermining their own performance. Don't apply one label where the other fits.

• Reversing ethnocentrism and cultural relativism. Ethnocentrism ranks another culture against one's own culture's standards. Cultural relativism recognizes another culture's values as valid within their own context, without ranking either as superior. Mixing these up flips the answer on any cross-cultural judgment question.

• Assuming individual discrimination and institutional discrimination are equally easy to fix. Individual discrimination disappears when the person displaying it is removed. Institutional discrimination is built into an institution's structure and practices, so it persists via the status quo even as individual people within the institution change.

MCAT-Style Concept Check

Question: A hiring manager personally refuses to interview candidates from a particular ethnic group, and is later fired for this behavior. Separately, a company's decades-old promotion criteria — unrelated to job performance — happen to systematically exclude that same ethnic group from leadership roles, even after multiple rounds of staff turnover. Which pair of terms correctly labels these two situations?

• A) Both are examples of institutional discrimination, since both occur within a company.

• B) The hiring manager's behavior is institutional discrimination; the promotion criteria are individual discrimination.

• C) The hiring manager's behavior is individual discrimination; the promotion criteria are institutional discrimination.

• D) Both are examples of prejudice, since no discriminatory behavior actually occurred in either case.

Answer: C

Explanation: The hiring manager's refusal to interview candidates is conscious, obvious behavior by one person — individual discrimination — and it was eliminated by removing that person (being fired). The promotion criteria represent discrimination built into the structure of the company itself, persisting across staff turnover and maintained by the status quo — institutional discrimination. Option A mislabels the individual manager's conscious act as institutional. Option B reverses the two labels. Option D is incorrect because both scenarios describe actual discriminatory behavior (differential treatment), not merely an attitude, so neither is simply prejudice.

FAQ

What's the difference between a stereotype, prejudice, and discrimination?

A stereotype is a belief or category-based assumption about a group. Prejudice is an attitude — a positive or negative feeling toward a group formed before direct experience with it. Discrimination is a behavior — actually treating members of a group differently as a result of that attitude. Holding one doesn't guarantee the next: a stereotype doesn't necessarily produce a prejudice, and a prejudice doesn't necessarily produce discrimination.

How is stereotype threat different from a self-fulfilling prophecy?

A self-fulfilling prophecy is the broader idea that an expectation can shape behavior enough to make the expectation come true — including how one person treats another. Stereotype threat is a narrower case: the anxiety a stereotyped individual feels about confirming a negative stereotype about their own group, which can itself impair their own performance.

What's the difference between ethnocentrism and cultural relativism?

Ethnocentrism judges another culture against the standards of one's own culture, implicitly ranking cultures. Cultural relativism recognizes that another culture's values, mores, and rules fit within that culture on its own terms, without ranking either culture as superior.

Why is institutional discrimination harder to eliminate than individual discrimination?

Individual discrimination is conscious and obvious behavior by one person, and it disappears when that person is removed. Institutional discrimination is built into an institution's structure and ordinary practices, so it persists through staff turnover, maintained by the status quo rather than by any single actor's intent.