Ecology stereotypes exist across societies and override race and family structure stereotypes.

Abstract

Perceivers hold ecology stereotypes-beliefs about how the environments others live in shape their behavior. Drawing upon a life history perspective, we examine the stereotypes people hold about those who live in relatively harsh and unpredictable ecologies. First, across diverse demographic groups and societies (the United States, India, Japan, Romania, the United Kingdom), people believe that individuals who live in harsh and unpredictable environments engage in "faster" behaviors (n = 2,078; ds from .80 to 2.14)-that they are more impulsive, sexually unrestricted, opportunistic, and invest less in education and their own children (Studies 1, 2, and 3). Second, these ecology stereotypes seem to underlie certain Black/White race stereotypes held by White perceivers in the United States (Study 1) and family structure stereotypes (i.e., growing up in a single-mother home) held by perceivers in both Japan and the United States (Studies 4a and 5a). Supporting this, the application of these race and family structure stereotypes is overridden or attenuated when perceivers are presented with direct information about a specific person's ecology (Studies 1, 4A, and 5B). Third, beliefs that there is high ecological mobility within a society reduce the magnitude of ecology stereotypes (Study 3), as one would expect if ecology stereotypes function to help perceivers better predict others' behavior. Last, ecology stereotypes do not seem to be just general valence biases or to simply reflect social class stereotypes. In sum, ecology stereotypes may be an influential but relatively unexamined type of stereotype, with broad implications for thinking about other group stereotypes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).