Crying Foul
We all make generalizations about other people based upon the group or groups that they belong to. It may be as simple as assuming that they would agree with us and like our choices or disagree with us and dislike our choices. Most animals have the same tendency to make generalizations about other animals of other species, groups of animals of their own species, and even groups of people. My dog, for instance, has shown a dislike for men in any kind of uniform. In sports or times of war we use uniforms to tell our friends from our foes. In a more primitive time of warring families or tribes, the ability to make quick judgments about others may have meant the difference between life and death. If stereotypes served a useful purpose in our survival then most of us would have inherited a natural tendency to make generalizations about people, in what could be our Achilles heel, or primary vulnerability, as a society. We may perpetuate stereotypes at such an instinctive level, and in so many ways, that “crying foul” when we notice them, along with maintaining constant vigilance against efforts to foster them or to saturate our environment with them, may be imperative for the very survival of our society.
Humans put others into “us” or “them” groups in what makes stereotyping appear to be an instinctive or at least basic behavior. Deer exhibit fear when confronted by even the scent of predatory species indicating that they have an image of what members of that group are like, assume that those members share certain characteristics, and those inspire fear. Cats and dogs are classic examples of animals that often stereotype except when raised together indicating that while the natural inclinations may be instinctive, learned behavior may overcome them. Gender stereotypes may serve less purpose in modern society than in the wild, but remain pervasive in humans. Human infants, for example, are born with an instinctive preference for human faces1 , and may learn lin the womb to prefer female voices over male ones2. Like apples and oranges, our minds may naturally group people with others like them even if we are unaware of it or try not to do it. In a time or situation where survival may have depended on the ability to make quick judgments about others, those families or groups that shared this trait to a higher degree, and passed it on to their offspring, would have been more likely to survive, making it likely to be a dominant trait among humans today.
Stereotypes are such an essential part of the way that we think that we probably perpetuate them in many ways, some intentional, but mostly just by being who we are as humans. The ability to group things together, and to tell them apart from one another, is the basis of all intelligence as we know it, making it a part of nearly everything that we and other animals do. New berries identical to last year’s berries would naturally be regarded as food, while berries that are not identical should be viewed with suspicion as they could be poisonous. If simpler species lacking complex communication skills ensure their survival by teaching these things to their young it seems likely that humans would do the same, only more extensively. Every subject that we learn in school involves grouping and differentiating between groups in one way or another. For example, we teach our children to identify all of those things in a group by a single word or name. Language groups everything inside and outside of our environments from grass to chairs to types of actions, feelings, expressions and all kinds of abstract concepts. In a simple example, if you try to tell someone who is afraid of snakes, spiders or dogs that a particular one is friendly you may find out quickly that it is not always an easy task to overcome stereotypes, even with a sound, logical argument and evidence. The words that we choose to use can evoke different responses to the same thing as evidenced by the New York Times/CBS News poll7 that showed public support for openly gay men and women who serve in the military, but significantly less support for those who were openly homosexual to serve. Stereotypes are so embedded that the mere effort to combat them is sometimes met with what could be described as a reflexive defensive posture that defies logic in that the person may behave as though their very survival is dependant on the belief that they espouse. It is possible that the need to establish and embrace stereotypes was so critically essential to our survival at some point or throughout our evolution that much or all intelligence as we know it has evolved from that need, along with our misguided prejudices against one another.
Stereotyping is a word that we generally reserve for an undesirable kind of generalizing, but it is also used for the purpose of marketing products, services and ideas in a practice that, when noticed, often causes consumers to “cry foul”. Demographics, market analyses and other studies are impartial third party observations of common behaviors and beliefs that companies can then use to their advantage in designing products, packaging, advertisements and entire marketing strategies. Some stereotypes have remained so widely accepted that companies may literally depend upon their perpetuation for continued sales and survival. The traditional vanity and modesty of women were certainly losses to lingerie manufacturers that produced garters and corsets. Advertisers who may merely want capitalize on the existence of a stereotype, may inadvertently reinforce it by exploiting it with their marketing efforts. This year’s Super Bowl advertisements for everything from candy bars to cars that promised to protect men from the loss of their “manliness” were a classic example of this type of opportunistic marketing that inadvertently reinforced male gender stereotypes for both male and female viewers. In contrast, an entirely different sector has made the attack, exaggeration and ridicule of certain “male” characteristics a part of our nation’s daily media diet. As has been done before with prime-time television, it is up to the audience to “cry foul” when races or genders are portrayed in ways that foster negative stereotypes, whether during the Super Bowl, around the water cooler at work, at a backyard barbecue, on the radio or from religious or political leaders who should, due to their influence, be held to the highest standard.
Stereotypes are also perpetuated openly and routinely as part of many religious traditions. The older negative stereotypes associated with fundamentalist religious traditions are the easiest to identify, such as those that compare women unfavorably to men, disallow female participation in certain roles3, encourage polygamy, tolerate female slavery or foster the oppression of females in general4. However, efforts to educate and enforce international human rights laws have not eliminated the negative gender stereotypes that contribute to violence against women in this country, let along elsewhere. Worldwide violence against women is recognized by the United Nations as one of the world’s worst human rights crises6. Recent studies have also found that the more religious people are the more likely they are to be fearful or suspicious of the characteristics that they assume are common to a specific ethnic group, and are therefore more likely to be racists. The further implication that members of a faith and subsequently a congregation have an even more narrowly defined “us” group, and a more broadly defined “them” group would suggest that religions are right in there with all of the product and service, philosophical, cause and political forces vying for “us” positions in our psyches, while striving to have us place their competition in “them” positions. This competition is so widespread and harsh that atheists have been found to be the single most hated and distrusted minority in the U.S. This is especially unfortunate because it is virtually impossible to function as a scientist in any field without first acknowledging that, while there is no scientific evidence to prove that there is no God, there is considerable scientific evidence to disprove the content of the texts upon which the most popular religions are based. As a result of stereotypes and mistrust fostered by mainstream religions, the greatest minds upon whom we have come to depend for the future of our society are also often the most despised.
In the worst cases, stereotypes have been fostered, encouraged and perpetuated intentionally through hate speech and print and electronic media, making our constant vigilance against their potential as tools of aggression essential to the preservation of our society. An example from political history was the use of these same techniques by the Nazis in Europe to breed the fear and hatred of Jews and other minorities that resulted in the Holocaust. The rulers of Imperial China used similar stereotypes and fears to fuel the uprising against foreigners in what later became known as The Boxer Rebellion only to have the same technique turned against the wealthy and ruling class a few years later in what resulted in a communist China. Since 9/11 Arabs, even Arab-Americans, and any Americans who happen to look like them, have been portrayed as terrorist stereotypes, just as African-Americans, Irish-Americans, Native Americans and Japanese Americans have been targeted in previous “campaigns” intended to perpetuate slavery and segregation, fight labor unions, or promote the fear that facilitates war and defense actions.
Like the animals that we share this world with, not all of our thought processes are language based, and even this capacity for free association is targeted through the use of metaphors, imagery and more in the visual and verbal rhetoric used in certain political and marketing campaigns. This practice is certainly not new. Few of us have not seen depictions of scary witches at Halloween that look very much like the 16th century caricatures printed by the Catholic Church during the expulsion of Jews, Ethnic Roma Gypsies, and Muslims from Europe in the early 1500’s. It was used similarly by the Nazis in more recent times. The modern version of this practice is sometimes referenced as cognitive politics11. It is more sophistocated, more subtle, and well suited to venues like the internet where viewers may be continuously bombarded with visual, written and auditory stimuli from multiple sources on the same window. This allows advertisers and others to affect us at multiple levels at the same time, including the direct conscious level and the one where our minds freely associate images or words with old memories, popular images or sayings to produce positive or negative associations. That capacity and subtlety makes cognitive politics more than just another way that stereotypes and fear can be born, bred, directed and perpetuated, but a way by which entire populations can be influenced intentionally or unintentionally. The most notable intentional uses in recent years in the U.S. have been by right wing extremists8, the tea party anti-tax movement10, and the Republican Party9 to promote their own agendas while demonizing other groups and views. In the most radical negative example cognitive politics has been used to disguise blind fear, hatred and a highly suspect political agenda as Christian conservative patriotism8. Hopefully history will look back on this chapter as one in which we evolved beyond the use of this, the most insidious method by which stereotypes are thrust upon our collective psyche and perpetuated in order to achieve some social, political or financial goal that we, as participants, may be unwittingly complicit in.
The techniques which play on our instincts to fear another group have been used so extensively by religious, political, and marketing interests that some people may have reached a saturation point as they find themselves feeling threatened by too many groups. The consequences to the mental health of an individual, let alone a huge segment of the population subjected to marketing techniques that play upon their instincts to make these generalizations may be unknown, but with enemies being contrived by marketing and media faster than we can digest them widespread paranoia would not seem an unlikely outcome. While some motives are obvious like those of war-dependent industries to make us fear the Middle East, or of insurers to make us fear health care reform, those of corporate advertisers may be intentionally hidden. The result of a large number of marketing campaigns with hidden motives for manipulating popular opinion could contribute to a feeling of being surrounded or cornered by potential threats, which are certainly no less triggers for a primal fight or flight stance than real ones. Flight reactions were evident in the individuals and countries that ignored the Nazi use of these techniques, as well as their subsequent Holocaust “solution” to the “them” groups that they had demonized in the collective psyche. It was also a flight reaction that brought about widespread suicides, and murder suicides among Japanese civilians and military who had been taught to fear falling captive to the blue-eyed demons of occupying forces. When flight does not appear to be an option for an individual or group they may resort to the fight reaction of violence, as they did in the Boxer Rebellion massacre of foreigners in China, and in the potential for domestic violence clearly presented today by armed American terrorist militia groups. The intentionally subtle or subliminal cognitive manipulation of fears and stereotypes for marketing, religious or political purposes can be a tool for increasing sales, recruitment, donations or votes, but could also potentially result in the paranoid radicalization of groups like the terrorist militias, and individuals like the Fort Hood psychiatrist, whose online communications before the incident are still being evaluated to determine why he described feelings of fear and persecution from multiple sources before the attack. While we usually think of the word “stereotyping” to describe a negative behavior that we are told we should discourage, we don’t usually follow the thought through to consider the full potential for damage that it could present to our society.
The instincts that lead us to form stereotypes may be so deeply rooted that we may never be able to eliminate the temptations they present or make ourselves immune to the potential harm that they can do to our society, but with reasonable care we may be able to recognize and think beyond many of them. Our awareness alone that our instincts may lead us to fear which may then lead us to engage in judgmental behavior, discrimination and racism is a good start. If we also understand that our instincts can be used to make us into little more than cattle driven here and there by marketing, political or social campaigns should certainly present enough of a threat to our society to motivate us to think more critically about how and why we group people and what characteristics we associate with those groups. Perhaps when we think carefully about our behaviors and the sources of our opinions we can then strive to go above and beyond our initial impulses even to the point of risking the appearance of being apologetic or guilty to other groups, which is to touch on yet another modern stereotype about “white guilt”. It is our capacity to examine and question our own thought processes and the sources of our fears and opinions that allows us to define our species as sapient, or wise, a uniquely human characteristic. The key to avoiding a group-think mentality and to preserving our autonomy in this kind of multi-cultural, marketing-oriented society may be for us to learn from the mistakes of history and to maintain a healthy dose of skepticism. Hopefully we will find our need to survive our own instinctive behaviors and vulnerabilities enough of a motivation to propel us forward in exercising that sapience, wisdom, in preventing them from being used against us. With so many forces doing battle for our brains, fears, faiths, votes and consumer habits we should be happy that any progress has been made toward eliminating negative stereotypes, and we should continue to “cry foul” for however long it takes.
Resources
1 Infant and Child Development, Volume 10 Issue 1-2, Pages 21 – 24, Face recognition in the newborn infant by Alan Slater, Paul C. Quinn , published online : 19 Apr 2001, retrieved March 06, 2010 from
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/79502690/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
2 Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology, Volume 11, Issue 3 , pages 147 – 153, online abstract, Newborn and fetal response to maternal voice, by P. G. Hepper ; D. Scott ; S. Shahidullah, published July 1993, retrieved March 06, 2010 from
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a788346767~db=all
3 The Washington Post, online edition, Female priests defy Catholic Church, hope to change it , By Katie Balestra, Published: January 23, 2010, retrieved March 6, 2010 from
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/22/AR2010012202919.html
4 The New York Times, online edition, Divorced Before Puberty, Op Ed Columnist, By Nicholas D. Kristof, Published: March 3, 2010, retrieved March 06, 2010 from
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/04/opinion/04kristof.html
5 United Nations Department of Public Information DPI/1772/HR–February 1996 , retrieved March 06, 2010 from http://www.un.org/rights/dpi1772e.htm
6 United Nations Population Fund, online, Ending Widespread Violence Against Women, retrieved March 06, 2010 from http://www.unfpa.org/gender/violence.htm
7 The New York Times, online edition, Politics, New Poll Shows Support for Repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ By Dalia Sussman, published February 11, 2010, retrieved March 06, 2010 from http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/new-poll-shows-support-for-repeal-of-dont-ask-dont-tell/
8 Mother Jones, online edition, Why Do Some Conservatives Play Footsie With Treason?, By Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery , March/April 2010 Issue, retrieved March 6, 2010 from
http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/03/editors-note
9 National Public Radio, online print edition, Top Republicans: Yeah, We’re Calling Obama Socialist by Liz Halloran, Published: March 5, 2010, retrieved March 06, 2010 from
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124359632&sc=fb&cc=fp
10 The New York Times, online edition, The Axis of the Obsessed and Deranged , Op Ed Columnist, By Frank Rich, Published: February 27, 2010, retrieved March 6, 2010 from
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/opinion/28rich.html
11 Cognitive Policy Works Politics for Real People , online,
Obama, Tea Parties, and the Battle for Our Brains by George Lakoff, published Feb 23rd, 2010, retrieved March 06 from http://www.cognitivepolicyworks.com/2010/02/23/obama-tea-parties-and-the-battle-for-our-brains/
Additional Resources:
Strategies of Ambiguity: Modeling Rhetoric in Primary Election Campaigns by Tom Hayes, Chad Murphy, Martin Johnson, and Shaun Bowler, Department of Political Science, University of California, Riverside
http://faculty.ucr.edu/~martinj/research/Strategies_of_Ambiguity_2008.pdf
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