Why we lump populations into stereotypes
By 
Shan-ul-Hai •
August 8, 2008
I don’t think I’m the first one to notice that we tend to group people in a way that makes us believe that they’re “all the same”. Most Americans, for instance, think that India is one large country with one huge, homogeneous population… in fact, India is about as culturally diverse as Europe. Similarly, I’ve noticed plenty of white Americans who expect all black people to be criminals and all Muslims to be terrorists. On the other hand, people rarely make such generalizations about their own ethnic group.
Why is this? Well, psychologists call it “outgroup homogeneity.” People tend to believe that their own group is more varied than other groups; interestingly enough, this effect is unrelated to whether or not a person knows a lot of people from different groups. It even exists between groups that interact with each other frequently, like men and women. We go as far as to manifest the effect in our fiction… for example, it seems that alien planets are always culturally uniform.
Many Americans think that all Arabs are aggressive militants. Many Arabs think that all Americans are aggressive militants. Israelis think that all Palestinians are aggressors; Palestinians think that all Israelis are aggressors. If we could find a way to defeat this outgroup homogeneity, couldn’t we eliminate many of our cross-cultural problems?
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I think that most people would rather not even try to defeat outgroup homogeneity. It seems to me that humans thrive on conflict, or else we’d have figured out peaceful solutions to our problems. But no. Everyone thinks they’re right. I’m not excluding myself here, as I am quite opinionated. It’s like it’s etched into my DNA.
Having an open mind is a very difficult undertaking, especially in this day and age.