Chapter 14: What Does Labeling do to Stereotyping?: Beyond Prototypes and Cognitive Economy

Overcoming stereotyping is one of the most substantial challenges for successful multicultural education. Stereotyping has many different forms. A Catholic university that bans interracial relations demonstrates one form of institutionalized stereotyping. A Hollywood movie that singles out a certain ethnic group for a denigrated role also perpetuates cultural stereotypes. In addition to institutionalized stereotyping, another crucial source of stereotyping is misattribution that people commit in everyday situations (Henning-Stout & Brown-Cheatham, 1999). In this chapter, we will examine a specific aspect of misattribution, namely labeling, and will investigate cognitive regularities governing stereotyping.

In what follows, we will first introduce a general phenomenon related to labeling and its implications to multicultural education. Then, we will propose a new account that explains a cognitive-basis of stereotyping. Finally, we will describe four empirical studies, which intend to shed new light on this issue.