race- and gender-based stereotypes diminish.49 To paraphrase communication expert Irving J. Lee, the more we are able to discriminate among individuals, the less we will actively discriminate against individuals.50 We can be aware of stereotypes but reject them.
Skill Builder
Can Future Me Be Stereotype Free?
First read the incident reported over two decades ago, by sports journalist Jerry Bembry:
At a basketball media day at the Naval Academy, a ranking Navy official was greeting the news media. Each journalist received a gracious hello, but when the Navy man got to me I was asked a question.
“So,” the official said, extending his hand. “Where did you play ball at to get this job?”
His assumption: Because I’m an athletic-looking African American male, my education must have come in combination with an athletic scholarship. It’s a question I’m often asked, although I’ve never played collegiate sports.
No matter how many times it happens to me, it’s unsettling.
Next, make a list of traits you believe to be characteristics of members of each of the following groups: Afghans, North Koreans, Israelis, and the French. Explain how your created list could influence your communication in the future with each group’s members. To what do you attribute the traits you selected?
1 Have you ever been the target of a prejudgment or stereotyped perception? How did you respond?
2 Have you ever prejudged or stereotyped another person? How did the other person respond?
3 What happens if those we prejudge come to believe our stereotype for them?
4 What steps can you take personally to prevent the special kind of harm done by stereotyping?
We Think We Know It All
Even with the Internet, knowledge of everything about anything is impossible. In the now classic work Science and Sanity, Alfred Korzybski coined the term allness to refer to the erroneous belief that any one person possibly can know all there is to know about everything.51
To avoid allness, we begin by recognizing that, because we can focus on only a portion of available stimuli, we necessarily neglect other portions. Another safeguard is to refrain from thinking of ourselves as the center of the world. Allness can impede the development of effective relationships. To counter it, try ending every assessment you make with the words et cetera (and the rest). You can never know everything there is to know about anything, and those words remind you that you should never pretend to know it all.
Ekaterina Kolomeets/Shutterstock.com
We Blinder Ourselves
Blinders on a horse reduce the number of visual stimuli it receives. Similarly, we put figurative blinders on ourselves. The following exercise illustrates the concept of blindering as a perceptual hindrance: Attempt to draw four straight lines that will connect each of the dots in Figure 3.8. Do this without lifting your pencil or pen from the page or retracing a line.
Did you find the exercise challenging? Most do, but why? The problem imposes only one restriction—that you connect the dots with four straight lines without lifting your pencil or pen from the page or backtracking over a line. Most of us, however, add another restriction. After examining the dots, we assume that the figure to be formed must be a square. Actually, no such restriction exists, and once you realize this, the solution becomes clear. (Check the answer in the Answer Key at the back of the book.) In effect, you were “blindered” by the image of a square as you tried to solve the problem. Wearing blinders may help horses, but they dramatically limit humans. Blindering is a habit that forces us to see in limited ways. It often leads to undesirable actions or prevents us from finding solutions outside of our narrow viewpoints.
Figure 3.8
We Confuse Facts and Inferences
Another factor affecting our perception and evaluation of people and events is the failure to distinguish what we think, wish, or infer to be true from what we observe.
It is important to distinguish inferences from facts. A fact is something that we know is true on the basis of observation. You see a woman walking down the street, carrying a briefcase. The statement “That woman is carrying a briefcase” is a fact. If the woman with the briefcase has a frown on her face, you may state, “That woman is unhappy.” The second statement is an inference, because it cannot be verified by observation. Failure to recognize the difference between a fact and an inference can be embarrassing or dangerous. For example, if an actor begins flubbing lines and walking unevenly, he might be accused of coming to work drunk, when the truth could be that he has a neurological illness.
When we confuse an inference with a fact, we are likely to jump to a conclusion—which just might be wrong. This is not to discourage you from making inferences. After all, we live our lives on an inferential level. We do, however, want to caution you against making inferences unconsciously. What is consequential is to stop operating as if inferences were facts.
The following lists summarize the essential differences between facts and inferences:
FACTSMay be made only after observation or experienceAre limited to what has been observedCan be offered by the observer onlyMay refer to the past or to the presentApproach certainty
INFERENCESMay be made at any timeExtend beyond observationCan be offered by anyoneMay refer to any time—past, present, or futureRepresent varying degrees of probability
We Exhibit Deficient Empathy Skills
Differing perceptions lie at the heart of many of our personal and societal challenges. If we can exhibit empathy, that is, experience the world from a perspective other than our own, we can do our part to foster mutual understanding.
Both cognitive and emotional behaviors are integral to empathy. The cognitive component, perspective taking (the ability to assume the viewpoint of another person), requires that we take on the point of view of another, setting our own point of view away until we understand theirs. The second component of empathy, emotional understanding, requires that we step into the shoes of the other person and feel what they are feeling. The third component is caring.
When you genuinely care about the welfare of another person and you combine this with the personal realization of what that person’s situation is like, you gain a greater appreciation of what you and the world look like through that person’s eyes. The reflection or mirroring response reveals that we have the capacity to understand more fully what others are doing, feeling, and saying. Empathizing frees us to take action, feel emotions, and perceive situations in different ways.
Unfortunately, research reveals that since 2000, the ability of college students to empathize has declined. Researchers
