Culture and human behavior
Or, an argument about stereotyping
A stereotype is a kind of generalization about a particular group of people or beings.
Since I am Romanian, I can mention a few stereotypes that I have heard about us—that we are thieves, that we are hot-headed, that we talk loudly, that we are unfriendly and direct in confrontational encounters, that we are very hospitable and friendly to strangers, that we are hard-working, and so on.
To give another example, there is the so-called “American lean.” Americans apparently have a tendency to balance their weight on one foot while they’re standing, or else to lean against walls or other items to support their weight. Special agents who are expected to hide their identities while abroad are specially trained not to stand like this, since it gives them away as Americans.
Still other stereotypes about Americans exist. For example, Americans can be naive and credulous when interacting with strangers, they open up quickly and let others know a lot about their personal lives, they are confident in their ability to achieve big things, and so on.
Stereotypes are generalizations, and they are never literally true of every single individual within a certain category. At best, they describe broadly observable trends that occur with enough regularity among instances of that type to motivate the development of the stereotype itself.
Consider the following example.
If I said that human beings have two arms and two legs while spiders have eight legs, a statement like that would not be literally true in every single case. There are human beings with fewer than or more than two arms and two legs, as well as spiders with fewer than or more than eight legs. But it’s still true that human beings have two arms and two legs (and spiders eight legs) often enough that we can safely form the generalization.
Stereotypes are like that. There are probably Americans out there who do not have the tendency to lean on one leg or support their weight against a wall or whatever happens to be around them. (For my part, I love to lean when I stand.) Even so, it happens often enough that the stereotype came into existence. Indeed, it even has enough basis in reality that it has to be trained out of special agents who are supposed to hide the fact that they’re Americans.
Most people tend to think of stereotyping as somehow morally objectionable or wrong. Many people are quick to reject the application of a stereotype to themselves or to others by mentioning counter-examples known to them by experience.
Certainly it can be unpleasant to be stereotyped by others, especially if the stereotype in question is a negative one. One never likes being shamed. But even when it’s a positive stereotype, some people still feel a bit uneasy or upset at being so easily categorized or “found out” by others.
If the stereotype being applied to you is inaccurate, it’s easy to see why you might be upset about it. It’s your honor at stake. Someone has said or assumed something bad about you without an adequate basis. It makes sense to be mad about it. But why would being accurately stereotyped be upsetting?
There could be any number of reasons, but for my part, I think it’s because being accurately stereotyped means that the other person has a certain edge over you in terms of predicting your behaviors. You have been “found out” by another, seemingly effortlessly. You feel yourself less in control of your own actions and destiny than you previous thought, while the other person shows that they maintain a certain amount of control over your interactions with them that you don’t have.
Many people would like to think that they are free, individuals, unique and irreducible to any category, unpredictable because endowed with freedom of the will to choose to act however one pleases. A lot of contemporary philosophy is specifically concerned to undermine these lofty notions of independence. I want to point out here that this kind of attitude conflicts strongly with something else that we know about human beings—namely, that we inhabit distinct cultures and ways of life that form our thinking, desiring, caring, and acting.
A culture is a particular way that a group of people exists. It includes the language they speak, the ways they interact with each other, their values and morals, their concerns and preoccupations, their creations and artifacts, and so on.
There are different levels of culture. For example, there are macro-cultures that apply to nations as a whole: American culture is the shared way of life particular to Americans, Romanian culture the shared way of life particular to Romanians, and so on.
There also micro-cultures that are particular to smaller groups of people. For instance, there is the culture that was established in my own household after I got married and moved in with my wife. Our shared way of life is particular to us, and it can be quite different from another couple’s “marital culture,” so to speak.
Cultures of whatever sort develop when people exist in the same place and interact with each other with sufficient regularity over a long period of time. Through their interactions with each other and with their environments, people develop shared habits and customs that come to define their lives. They then pass them on to their children, raising them in the way of life that they came to inhabit and ensuring the continued existence of the culture for another generation.
One way of understanding cultures is that they are dispositions to exist and live in specific ways that groups of people share in common. Just like plants have a disposition to take in carbon dioxide and produce oxygen, or to follow the path of the sun over the course of the day, and so on, a culture is a disposition to think and feel and behave a certain way that a number of people living together have in common.
Now, here’s where I think there is a certain confusion in contemporary thinking. On the one hand, people are generally against stereotyping. They think it’s bad and even often baseless to stereotype others. On the other hand, people believe in the existence of cultures. Indeed, not only do they believe in the existence of cultures, but they also maintain that respecting other people’s cultures is a highly important value, as well.
Where’s the tension? In the following.
If there are any such things as cultures, then other people’s behaviors are predictable on the basis of the fact that they inhabit a certain culture the contours and details of which can be defined and specified. And if it’s possible to predict how a person will behave on account of their culture, i.e. on account of their belonging to a particular category or group, then it’s possible to stereotype them accurately.
I find a curious conclusion to follow from this. If there are such things as cultures, then people can be accurately stereotyped to a certain degree. It won’t be perfect in every case, of course, since people are always different, and not everything about a person’s behavior is a matter of culture. Some things are particular to them as individuals.
But to the extent that a person belongs to a culture, to that very extent his behavior, thinking, and acting can be stereotyped. To the extent that a person defies stereotypes, he simply does not inhabit a culture in that respect—i.e., he does not share dispositions of behavior and thought with others.
People often like to play this game where they get upset when others make reasonable assumptions about how they feel or think on the basis of a stereotype. “Oh, I’m an American, so I must love hamburgers!” they exclaim, sarcastic and offended. If you ask me, reacting like that is just a way of trying to take control over the conversation again—to assume a position of dominance relative to one’s interlocutors.
In those situations, it doesn’t matter that the stereotype might be right or even that the mention of the stereotype indicates a certain cultural awareness and knowledge on the part of the stereotyper. What really matters is that one doesn’t feel like the other has one in the palm of his hand. Once one has been accurately stereotyped, one’s sense of one’s control over the conversation is evaporated, so one has to find a way out.
Whether or not that’s a good way to react to stereotypes, I can’t say. My own inclination is to deny a stereotype inaccurately applied to me or else to own up to one that does apply, because, after all, I am not a free-floating atomic individual who exists independently of any external influences whatsoever. To the extent that I belong to any culture, I can be accurately stereotyped.