Rehabilitating stereotypes

Abstract

Whereas the conventional social science approach to the study of stereotypes has been both moralizing and psychologizing, the view presented here is that stereotypes are mostly opportunistic guides to action in situations of imperfect information. Stereotypes may sometimes express deep‐seated prejudices, but, for most people most of the time, they merely reflect the necessity to make better‐than‐random decisions at minimum information cost, often under time constraints. Examples are given, such as the apparent association between race and crime in the urban United States.