Page 164 - The Social Animal

146 The Social Animal

prominent character traits. For example, subjects read statements
such as “Tom, the salesman, is talkative and boring” or “Bill, the ac-
countant, is timid and courteous.” Occasionally, by chance, the trait
words happened to be consistent with the common stereotype most
people have of that occupation; that is, the salesman was occasion-
ally described as enthusiastic and talkative or the accountant as per-
fectionist and timid. The data clearly showed that subjects
overestimated the frequency with which stereotypic words were used
to describe each occupation. In other words, they succeeded in cre-
ating an illusory correlation between trait and occupation.
The illusory correlation shows up quite often in social judg-
ments. Consider these two examples: In informal surveys, people
consistently overestimate the extent to which lesbians are likely to
48
contract the AIDS virus. In fact, lesbians have a lower rate of HIV
infection than male homosexuals and male and female heterosexuals.
However, the knowledge that male homosexuals have high rates of
HIV infection coupled with the categorization of a woman as homo-
sexual leads to the mistaken judgment that lesbians are likely to have
AIDS. In clinical judgments, categorizing an individual into a cer-
tain diagnostic category (such as schizophrenic or manic-depressive)
can lead to the perception of a relationship (even when none exists)
between the individual and behavior consistent with that diagnosis. 49
Regardless of the setting, the illusory correlation does much to con-
firm our original stereotypes; our stereotype leads us to see a relation-
ship that then seems to provide evidence that the original stereotype
is true.

Ingroup/Outgroup Effects One of the most common ways of
categorizing people is to divide them into two groups: those in “my”
group and those in the outgroup. For example, we often divide the
world into us versus them,my school versus yours,my sports team ver-
sus the opponent, Americans versus foreigners, my ethnic group ver-
sus yours, or those who sit at my lunch table versus the rest of you.
When we divide the world into two such realities,two important con-
sequences occur: the homogeneity effect and ingroup favoritism.
The homogeneity effect refers to the fact that we tend to see
members of outgroups as more similar to one another than to the
members of our own group—the ingroup. It is not uncommon for
us to imagine that members of the outgroup all look alike, think