Speaker 0 00:00:00 A Palestinian colleague reported to me that this professor referred to me as a real oriental woman and God knows what the gossip was. And I did get some echo of that. But ultimately I didn't care because the job got me good money to live on and my life was not at the institute.
Speaker 2 00:00:29 Hello, this is Joseph Shaz and welcome to the Deep Culture Podcast where we explore culture and the science of mind. And I am here with Ishi Greetings, ISTA from Wet and humid Tokyo, where we are now officially in the rainy season. If you hear dripping sounds, that's nature outside my window.
Speaker 3 00:00:49 And hello Joseph from Karta in India where it is another blazing hot summer morning. And if you hear noise in the background, that's just the sound of normal life here in the city.
Speaker 2 00:01:04 So Ishita, the theme of this episode is stereotypes.
Speaker 3 00:01:09 Yes. And we wanted to talk about this because we hear people say stereotypes are wrong or don't stereotype, and it sounds so simple,
Speaker 2 00:01:23 But in reality it is not so simple. And in fact, it's impossible to follow that advice.
Speaker 3 00:01:31 And that's because stereotypes are a natural part of how our minds work,
Speaker 2 00:01:37 Which doesn't mean that stereotypes are good or that we don't have to be careful about them, but the fact is they are unavoidable
Speaker 3 00:01:46 Because if you are face-to-face with someone who's cultural background, you know little about, then the first things that will come to mind will naturally be stereotypes.
Speaker 2 00:01:59 And if they know little about your cultural background, then their mind will be full of stereotypes and they will often treat you in this simplistic way.
Speaker 3 00:02:09 And this is something that happens to cultural bridge people all the time.
Speaker 2 00:02:15 Now some people think of stereotypes, uh, primarily as a kind of moral failure or simply a sign of prejudice, but it's not that simple.
Speaker 3 00:02:26 No, it's not. Stereotypes are a reaction to ignorance. They plug the gaps in our knowledge, they enable quick judgments. They give us this certainty to take action in the face of the unknown.
Speaker 2 00:02:43 And stereotypes are something that cultural bridge people deal with all the time. We are stereotype navigators. And so understanding the cognitive dynamics of stereotypes can help us deal with them.
Speaker 3 00:02:57 And so in this episode, we will dig into the complexity of stereotypes, the cognitive efficiency of stereotypes, and the social functions of stereotypes.
Speaker 2 00:03:09 And we'll hear from podcast team members about how they navigate stereotypes.
Speaker 3 00:03:15 And that brings us to part one, the power of stereotypes. So Joseph, as we often do, let's start with a basic definition and then dig deeper after that.
Speaker 2 00:03:44 Well, the word stereotype has quite interesting origins. It comes from the French St Deep and refers to a printing method using solid plates. So from this we get the idea of a stereotype being a fixed image.
Speaker 3 00:04:02 So a stereotype is a simplified idea about what is typical for a personal group. And these images can be prejudicial.
Speaker 2 00:04:13 And often this is as far as the discussion goes, it's a simplified image. It's prejudicial. That means we have to stop using stereotypes.
Speaker 3 00:04:23 But from the cognitive perspective, that is just not possible.
Speaker 2 00:04:29 And that's because the inescapable fact is that all of us have stereotypical images in our minds that occur to us when we think about a particular group of people. Germans eat sausage, Russians drink vodka. Italians are romantic, Japanese are polite. Californians surf.
Speaker 3 00:04:51 And these images are typically learned from the people around us or from society. Somehow we pick up stereotypes unconsciously.
Speaker 2 00:05:03 And I find it remarkable that people agree so much on stereotypes. You know, it's as though all over the world people have similar mental images about Californians, you know, surfboards at the beach or Hollywood, Beverly Hills. Uh, isn't that true of India too?
Speaker 3 00:05:23 Oh, sure. There are loads of them. Crowded trains, gurus, temples, cows on the road.
Speaker 2 00:05:32 And this is crazy. It's as though we all pick up on the same images. Even when we are talking about our own culture. I hear groups of international students joking about the stereotypes from their own country. Like I'll hear an Italian student say, Hey guys, let's get together at my apartment and I'll make pasta. You know, I am Italian after all,
Speaker 3 00:05:56 And I've, I've heard Indians say, oh, sorry, I'm late. I'm just following Indian standard time.
Speaker 2 00:06:05 And so stereotypes become a kind of shared currency, a set of images that people used to talk about difference. Why do our minds work this way? What evolutionary purpose might they serve?
Speaker 3 00:06:30 And what we find is that there is a certain cognitive efficiency in stereotypes. Our ancestors survived by quickly judging people. Friend enemy, are they nice, mean? We categorized people by quickly accessing salient information.
Speaker 2 00:06:50 And this is efficient in the sense that these images come quickly to mind and allow us to make quick judgements.
Speaker 3 00:06:59 So from the cognitive perspective, stereotypes involve categorization and e centralization. Chinese people in one category, Indians in another category, Swedes in yet another, each with the qualities that define or mark that category.
Speaker 2 00:07:20 So for example, eating bugs is experienced as an essential feature of the category French person,
Speaker 3 00:07:28 Right? And as we saw with your students, if we agree on those categories and aren't offended by the essential qualities, then interaction is very efficient and they may even help us get along.
Speaker 2 00:07:44 Also, it's not simply an intercultural phenomenon, it's an extension of the categorizing we do in everyday life.
Speaker 3 00:07:53 So when I'm at the airport and I see a man wearing a suit and a tie carrying a briefcase, talking on his cell phone, I put him in a category, ah, he's a businessman, maybe talking to a client.
Speaker 2 00:08:09 And then based on that category, we judge and make assumptions, oh, he's probably focused on success. Maybe he's married with kids.
Speaker 3 00:08:18 And cognitively speaking, when we do this, we are differentiating, we are judging what makes this person different from that one. What qualities is this person likely to have? How should I treat them?
Speaker 2 00:08:34 And this is so automatic that we don't notice it, but we are fundamentally social primates who constantly judge the people around us so we can manage our interaction and our relationships.
Speaker 3 00:08:48 So insight number one from the brain and mind perspective is that stereotypes are indeed simplistic judgments. We rely on them all the time in daily life, and they're often enough to get the job done.
Speaker 2 00:09:05 And there can be an element of truth to them. Sausage is a common food in Germany, surfing is popular in California. You do find cows in the road in India
Speaker 3 00:09:17 And they may even capture some important truths like saying that the Japanese are polite or Americans are friendly, or Germans are efficient.
Speaker 2 00:09:29 These are stereotypes, but they hint at cultural patterns that are real. So there they're a kind of shorthand, A quick generalization. Okay, so we've been talking about stereotypes as mental shortcuts that help us deal with diversity that we rely on in everyday life, that they're cognitively efficient, may be even useful. But of course stereotypes can also be weaponized.
Speaker 3 00:10:04 There is a whole category of stereotypes intended to demean, ethnic slurs, racial insults, you find them in all societies, often reserved for groups that are looked down on.
Speaker 2 00:10:19 And there's a distinction here. People who use those slurs recognize that particular images are meant to be insulting.
Speaker 3 00:10:28 And this raises a basic question, how do we tell the innocent stereotypes from the aggressive ones?
Speaker 2 00:10:37 And this is where the cognitive perspective is helpful, because in general, innocent stereotypes involve differentiation. Whereas aggressive stereotypes involve otherizing.
Speaker 3 00:10:50 Differentiation refers to this process of categorizing, defining how people are similar or different. And the more we learn, the more complex our categories are.
Speaker 2 00:11:06 So typically innocent stereotypes are an invitation to learning. People are interested in knowing more about your category, so to speak. So if someone says, oh, you're from California, do you surf? In fact, they're trying to find out more about me,
Speaker 3 00:11:22 Right? And Otherizing on the other hand, refers to stereotyping whose primary purpose is to draw a line between you and me or between different groups to mark you as distinct and perhaps even inferior.
Speaker 2 00:11:42 And of course, ethnic or racial slurs belong to this category.
Speaker 3 00:11:48 So we may think about other rising as simply a, a form of prejudice, but it's more than that. It creates social solidarity. Humans have a tendency to think in terms of us versus them. We love to gossip and complain about the management or the difficult relative.
Speaker 2 00:12:11 So when we say, oh, the management team is a bunch of jerks, we are cultivating solidarity with our colleagues and we're following the same instinct as when we say, oh, IANS are lazy, you can't trust them.
Speaker 3 00:12:26 Houston, in this way stereotypes are psychologically powerful. We all know what those people are like, and we are constantly seeking confirmation about this.
Speaker 2 00:12:40 So let's summarize a bit. We've said that it's not enough to simply declare stereotypes are wrong because stereotypes are everywhere. Our minds are full of them, every society has them and they fulfill powerful social functions.
Speaker 3 00:12:57 And so what's a bridge person to do in this world full of stereotypes?
Speaker 2 00:13:04 And that brings us to part two, navigating stereotypes.
Speaker 3 00:13:31 So when we were preparing this episode with the team, I loved the stories about how everyone handles situations when they are stereotype.
Speaker 2 00:13:42 Well, let's call that navigating the stereotype landscape. And that's something that we've all done.
Speaker 3 00:13:49 And dealing with stereotypes often involves a kind of fork in the road. Stereotypes can be a point of departure for learning more, but they can also be a roadblock.
Speaker 2 00:14:02 It's as though stereotypical thinking puts you in a mental box. And depending on how you react, you can try to get out of that box or you can get locked into that box.
Speaker 3 00:14:13 So as an example, Joseph, you live in Tokyo, but you don't look Japanese. So do people often treat you stereotypically as a quote unquote foreigner?
Speaker 2 00:14:28 You know, sometimes people will hesitate to sit next to me on the train or be surprised that I can speak Japanese, especially if I use honorific language, uh, in a very polite way.
Speaker 3 00:14:42 So they don't expect a foreigner to speak high level Japanese.
Speaker 2 00:14:47 Well, they don't expect a white foreigner to do so. And if, if I were Korean or Chinese, those are different boxes. And what about you, Ishita, when you were living in France?
Speaker 3 00:15:00 Well, I was living in a small town. Many people had probably never met someone from India before. And they were very nice and interested, but people often did react stereotypically.
Speaker 2 00:15:15 So what did they say or or do?
Speaker 3 00:15:18 They were curious asking questions about everything from Bollywood to the cast system, arrange managers.
Speaker 2 00:15:26 So you were kind of exotic to them?
Speaker 3 00:15:29 I think so, yes. People were often surprised, for example, that I could speak French.
Speaker 2 00:15:37 So do you mean that they were thinking like, oh, a brown person speaking French?
Speaker 3 00:15:43 Yes, that's that's exactly it.
Speaker 2 00:15:46 And and how did you feel about that?
Speaker 3 00:15:48 Well, I did appreciate the friendliness and the curiosity, but even with good intentions, they can be tiring or insulting. Like when one of my female colleagues would tell me I had beautiful skin and she would touch my hair,
Speaker 2 00:16:06 Ouch, that's invasive. Um, let's explore that a bit. Someone can try to be friendly, yet still do things that feel insulting or invasive.
Speaker 3 00:16:17 Well, if people have only a simple category to think about you, then in some sense you're being treated like an object. You are not a fully individualized human being.
Speaker 2 00:16:29 And this gap, the fact that someone using stereotypes can be well-intentioned and yet still come across as rude or insulting, that is in some sense at the heart of intercultural communication. So let's get back to the question of how cultural bridge people react to these situations. Do you just trust in people's good intentions? Do you point out stereotypical thinking? Do you get offended?
Speaker 3 00:17:07 So let's hear from some of our podcast team members about this, starting with Daniels who reminds us that dealing with stereotypes can be a playful process.
Speaker 4 00:17:22 When I was a student in China, people would ask me, which country are you from? I would say Switzerland. They would immediately answer, oh, Swiss watches are the best. And then I started to get fed up. So I invented a country named Pingo. This is a wordplay in spoken Chinese. It can mean an apple or a flat country. They looked puzzled. I explained that I had come from Holland, which is a flat country. Sometimes people from Latin America say to me, don't be so Swiss. Usually this happens when I give a serious answer to a stupid questions such as what are the characteristics of a Swiss? Sometimes I make fun of it. And then I say, of course I own a bank, a watch factory, and I eat a lot of chocolate when skiing downhill from our mountains. Making fun of their questions also shows that contrary to their expectations, Swiss people can be somewhat funny.
Speaker 2 00:18:47 And so Daniel is dealing with attitudes about Swiss people when he is in other countries. But sometimes we may have to deal with stereotypes in our own country. As we hear from podcast team member Emory seven,
Speaker 5 00:19:04 I always say surprise from people from different countries because I do not look like the image of a turk in their mind. First of all, my appearance, instead of having a dark, short Jed hair stab beard and mustache and wearing sweat, I have long hair that is light colored. I wear earrings and have a casual style. But beyond my appearance, what sets me apart is my traits and manners. I do speak English and I do not speak any Arabic in my family. We don't have harsh patriarchy. Instead, we always decide anything together with my wife <unk>. So I'm always having to work against the typical image of what it means to be a Turkish man.
Speaker 3 00:20:11 Well, I definitely sympathize with Emory. You are in your home country, but somehow you are seen as different.
Speaker 2 00:20:21 And how is that for you?
Speaker 3 00:20:23 Well, I don't look unusual, but I am untypical in many ways. As a secular professional woman living on my own, I have often been seen as different.
Speaker 2 00:20:36 And so how do people interpret you?
Speaker 3 00:20:40 Well, you know, India has so many social categories, language, region, cast, religion, the list can go on gender, education, economic status, profession. People are interested, for example, to know which sub cast you belong to, which sect of the religion, which city you live in, which neighborhood, what dialect of the local language you speak, what's your accent like everything. And everybody has a place, a position. People are often trying to identify which box to put you in.
Speaker 2 00:21:19 Well that sounds quite difficult. How do you navigate that?
Speaker 3 00:21:24 I actively try and avoid it. For example, I speak Hindi and English with a very neutral accent. Even Indians cannot tell from my English and Hindi which region I come from when talking about my family, I talk about my parents' profession and not the social background. I talk about speaking different languages when I was growing up, instead of talking about my first language or which community I belong to, I do not talk about my religion or cast. I don't use typical phrases that are related to any religion or community.
Speaker 2 00:22:03 So if people are used to putting others in a box or boxes and you make that difficult, then how do people react to that?
Speaker 3 00:22:13 Well, it does become difficult for people to put me in any box and as a result I become a category of my own, which is just quote unquote different. And that's one reason I was so impressed by hearing how our podcast team members often take stereotypes in stride, especially Zena Matar.
Speaker 0 00:22:40 I have a very nonchalant attitude towards being stereotyped. Once a cab driver told me in Munich, you are a typical German woman, which was interesting for me. What is a typical German woman? Based on my physical appearance, I have been called Chi and American Indian, among other descriptions, also Greek, Italian, et cetera. When I'm asked where I come from, I turn the question around and say, what do you think? And this is a music. When I arrived to Germany, a colleague from the institute where I was working told his land lady that I was looking for a flat and she had a flat. When I met her, I had a berry on my head and she wanted me to take it off and show her my hair. It was a bit surprising, but I got the flat.
Speaker 2 00:23:43 I like that she can see stereotypes as amusing even though people may be prejudiced against her because in cases like this, we're not just navigating the stereotype but also unfair treatment.
Speaker 3 00:23:56 But Zena has this ability to keep her eye on her goal and not the stereotypical treatment she was receiving. Zena Zena's stories are also a reminder that stereotypes are much more difficult to deal with when there is a power imbalance. When I rented an apartment in New Delhi, the fact that I was a woman who wasn't living with family or a husband was automatically suspicious. In Zena's case, she got an opportunity to work in Germany under a professor there, but found he had certain assumptions about her.
Speaker 0 00:24:42 The professor I worked for in Frankfurt was an orientalist. And it seems I fit his stereotype of the Arab, the so-called Oriental woman. I honestly do not know what his image of an Arab woman was, but he called me Mi lady. I felt that I was kind of his thing, but he treated me with utmost quaint and sometimes ridiculous respect. I was made to assist his projects even though he didn't really have any. So I was digging into boxes and going through index cards.
Speaker 0 00:25:19 One way I kept the balance of power was through language. At the time, my German language was very basic, so we spoke English and his English was pretty bad. Later he attempted to switch the language of communication to German, but I resisted and succeeded. A Palestinian colleague reported to me that this professor referred to me as a real oriental woman and God knows what the gossip was. And I did get some echo of that. But ultimately I didn't care because the job got me good money to live on and my life was not at the institute. Also, I had no academic ambitions in Germany, so I didn't need to depend too much on that professor.
Speaker 3 00:26:16 I love the matter of fact way that Xena handled all of this, but it's fortunate that she wasn't more dependent on this professor.
Speaker 2 00:26:26 And this is one ugly truth about negative stereotypes. When we are in a weak social position, we often simply must put up with stereotypical attitudes and unfair treatment.
Speaker 3 00:26:39 And sometimes we have to fight back. And regardless of how we handle stereotypes, it's good for us to understand where they come from.
Speaker 2 00:26:49 And that brings us to part three cognitive categories. So let's ask the most basic question from the brain mind perspective. Why are stereotypes so common and what is their evolutionary purpose?
Speaker 3 00:27:15 And there are two ways to answer that question in terms of cognitive function, how our minds work and in terms of social function, how they affect human relations. And we've pointed out that cognitive systems have evolved to make quick judgements. It is key to our survival. This is why we typically dislike ambiguity from the cognitive perspective, stereotypes are our mind's reaction to something foreign about which we only have limited understanding.
Speaker 2 00:27:51 But of course there is an obvious disadvantage when our mind has come to a conclusion, even if it's a sloppy one, it often stops taking in new information.
Speaker 3 00:28:03 And when that happens, we can easily get caught in a confirmation bias. Our mind's natural tendency to seek out information that supports what we already believe.
Speaker 2 00:28:16 And I had an odd experience with this when I was giving a presentation in Germany at the end of the talk, a participant approached me and said, wow, I can really tell that you've been influenced by living in Japan. And I said, well, what do you mean? He said, well, sometimes during your talk you would pause and you'd get a very serene zen-like look on your face.
Speaker 3 00:28:41 Um, zen like, look. What was that about?
Speaker 2 00:28:46 Well, my best guess is that this presentation content was abstract and sometimes I had to search for words. And I suppose I was kind of looking off in the distance. Ah,
Speaker 3 00:28:57 And so this was interpreted as zen-like you were trying to collect your thoughts, but somehow your actions confirmed some preexisting image I guess people had about Asians having some spiritual or mystical quality about them.
Speaker 2 00:29:17 Well, and this is a rather harmless example, but sometimes the confirmation bias reinforces negative stereotypes. And this gives birth to prejudice.
Speaker 3 00:29:28 So if you have grown up hearing that Albanians are lazy and you travel to Albo and see a group of people standing and chatting around the corner, you might say, oh, look at those lazy Ians standing around doing nothing.
Speaker 2 00:29:46 So in this case, stereotypes are really a roadblock to learning and they can reinforce prejudice and discrimination.
Speaker 3 00:29:54 But there's something very odd about how we experience stereotypes. When someone is drawing a conclusion based on a stereotype, they often feel like facts. Hey, look at those lazy Ians.
Speaker 2 00:30:17 And that's because cognitively speaking, there's an inverse relationship between our level of knowledge and the confidence we feel in our judgments.
Speaker 3 00:30:27 In other words, the less we know, the more confidence we have. And this is sometimes called the Dunning Kruger effect. And on the face of it, it's a bit strange. Why would we overestimate our ability when we are ignorant?
Speaker 2 00:30:46 And one possible explanation is that if we have little information, we can't judge how accurate our performance is.
Speaker 3 00:30:55 And let's not forget the fundamental attribution error because this also goes along with stereotypes.
Speaker 2 00:31:04 Indeed. And this refers to our tendency to explain the behavior of others by assuming some essential inner quality, whereas we judge our own behavior relative to the environment.
Speaker 3 00:31:17 So if the person we are supposed to interview for a new job is late, we think, oh, they must be irresponsible. But if I am late, I think about how the heavy traffic may be late.
Speaker 2 00:31:33 So to go back to the Albanian example, if we see Albanians standing around on the corner, we may think, oh, they're standing around because they're lazy, which is a fundamental attribution rather than, oh, maybe they're waiting to be picked up, which is a situational interpretation.
Speaker 3 00:31:53 And finally, stereotypes should be contrasted with implicit bias, which is a negative attitude that we aren't consciously aware of.
Speaker 2 00:32:04 Stereotypes are images that come to mind, whereas implicit bias is a result of having learned negative associations. We have negative feelings about a particular group of people.
Speaker 3 00:32:18 So again, maybe you've grown up hu, people put down Albanians, how they are dishonest, lazy, and pretty soon you simply have a negative feeling about Ians and you probably don't even recognize it.
Speaker 2 00:32:36 But let's circle back to the evolutionary purpose of stereotypes, their social function. And as we said in part one, stereotypes serve the purpose of categorizing people and groups. They're a way to make sense of diversity, dividing the world into desirables and undesirables, friends and enemies. And
Speaker 3 00:32:55 By otherizing the outgroup, we reinforce the ingroup. So if a Bengali comments to another Bengali about Tamil speakers, this reinforces solidarity as Bengalis
Speaker 2 00:33:11 Or men may bond by standing around with other men complaining about their wives
Speaker 3 00:33:16 Or wives complaining about their husbands. All this is getting rather discouraging. But let's summarize a bit. So stereotypes reflect our ignorance. They put up roadblocks to learning. They reinforce prejudice. We often mistake them for facts. They lead to solidarity for the in group, but at the expense of the outcr.
Speaker 2 00:33:43 But on the bright side, we can learn to recognize stereotypes and we can watch for them. Unlike many biases, we can often control our use of stereotypes, which is why many classes in intercultural communication focus on identifying stereotypes.
Speaker 3 00:34:00 And for cultural bridge people stereotypes can be extremely frustrating. People are constantly putting us in boxes. Boxes you have little control over.
Speaker 2 00:34:13 And sometimes you may benefit if they're positive stereotypes and sometimes you suffer from that because of negative stereotypes.
Speaker 3 00:34:21 But in either case it's not under your control. And that can be frustrating and dehumanizing.
Speaker 2 00:34:29 Although as we've seen with Danielle, em and Zena cultural bridge, people often have thick skins. We play with stereotypes or actively try to get around them.
Speaker 3 00:34:41 So in the end, stereotypes occupy this odd place in the lives of cultural bridge people, they are unavoidable, something we are forced to deal with. They exist at the boundary between complex understanding and simple misunderstanding. They are ado to learning, but also a roadblock to deeper relations.
Speaker 2 00:35:06 And I think that's a good place to bring this episode to a close. The Deep Culture Podcast is sponsored by the Japan Intercultural Institute and N P O dedicated to intercultural education and research. I'm the director of GI I. If you're interested in culture and the mind, check out GI i's Brain, mind and Culture Masterclass. It's a blended learning course and online community of cultural bridge people. To find out more, just do a web search for the Japan Intercultural Institute. If you'd like today's episode, please share us on social media and you can reach us at DC
[email protected]. And a special thanks goes out to Daniel Linz, Emory seven and Zena Matar for sharing their stories with us today. And to the rest of the podcast team, Yvonne VanderPol, Robinson, Fritz, Andy Komi, Fritz. And of course, as always, thanks to you Ista for sharing this time with me.
Speaker 3 00:36:05 Thank you, Joseph, as always. I had a lot of fun.
