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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1616 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 11, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Most of your claims seem to be stereotypes

Stereotype accuracy is one of the strongest results in social science. The word stereotype is not a synonym for 'myth'.

women aren't actually better at rapid task switching

Looks like they might be

Stereotype accuracy is one of the strongest results in social science. The word stereotype is not a synonym for 'myth'.

I'm curious as to how good stereotypes are in terms of magnitude of belief (compared to...directionality/descriptive accuracy?). I suspect it is still somewhat accurate, but less so than the qualitative aspect of stereotypes.

Testing that would run into general statistical illiteracy among the population, I think. if we asked the average person to say how much taller and heavier men are than women, I'm sure you'd get some zany answers, even though people intuitively know how large the difference is from constant observation.

If I remember correctly, magnitude is actually half of reality, not more than reality. (its been at least 15 years since I read the abstracts of the research from the 60s? 70s?).

For example, if the average person guesses that a black man is twice as likely to go to jail as a white man (stereotype), the reality would be that he was 4 times as likely. The gist was that we actually understereotype, that a pattern has to be really obvious to become a stereotype. But this research became taboo a long time ago and I haven't seen anything recent.

I would've figured that stereotypes relating to rare traits are overestimated, in the same way that progressives overestimate the number of black/indigenous/etc deaths in custody by orders of magnitude. Though I also kind of figured that our stereotypes would just kind of vaguely gesture in a direction and the level of accuracy regarding the magnitude of the trait would kind of be accurate but imprecise.

For example, if the average person guesses that a black man is twice as likely to go to jail as a white man (stereotype), the reality would be that he was 4 times as likely. The gist was that we actually understereotype, that a pattern has to be really obvious to become a stereotype. But this research became taboo a long time ago and I haven't seen anything recent.

So which stereotypes are accurate and which are inaccurate?

Are Jews cheating me twice as much as I think they are when writing a contract?

Do LAPD officers hate black guys twice as much as black people think they do?

Are the Swiss twice as humourless as I think they are?

What about outdated stereotypes? Are the French a martial race as in the 18th and 19th centuries, or cheese eating surrender monkeys as in the 20th? Are the Japanese incapable of making high quality products and only make cheap imitations, or are they single mindedly obsessed with perfection and making only the highest quality artisanal goods?

I'm genuinely curious, I tried to take out the gotcha examples!

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