stereotypes

Meaning: A stereotype is a schema about a social category, a mental shortcut that assigns characteristics to a person because of group membership. It comes from social categorization, which reduces the mental effort of processing many people. Stereotypes can be positive or negative and can be inaccurate, overgeneralized, or resistant to disconfirming evidence. Confirmation bias helps maintain them, and the out-group homogeneity effect (seeing out-group members as all alike) feeds them.

On the MCAT: Expect a passage or vignette describing a belief, a feeling, and an action toward a group, and a question asking you to label each. Belief about a group = stereotype. Negative attitude or emotion = prejudice. Unequal treatment = discrimination. Related ideas also appear: stereotype threat (worry about confirming a negative stereotype can lower performance, as in the work of Steele and Aronson), self-fulfilling prophecy, and ethnocentrism.

Common confusion: Students treat stereotype, prejudice, and discrimination as synonyms. A stereotype is only a cognitive belief, so someone can hold one without feeling hostility or acting on it. Also, stereotypes are not necessarily negative: a flattering generalization about a group is still a stereotype because it assigns traits to individuals by group membership.