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Homegrown stereotypes reflect the beliefs that people hold about their own ingroup. For example, in one survey, college students were asked how comfortable they felt about college drinking practices and how comfortable the rest of the students on campus felt about it. Students consistently thought that most students were fairly comfortable with the amount of drinking that was going on (the homegrown stereotype), even though they themselves were less comfortable with it. In this case, the homegrown stereotype is combined with pluralistic ignorance; most of the students who were surveyed believed that they themselves were less comfortable with drinking behaviors than were the rest of the students.

In a second example, the members of a religious community were strictly forbidden from card playing, drinking, and smoking. However, even though most members of the community believed that everyone else supported these church bans (the homegrown stereotype), in private, in the company of the researcher, most played cards, smoked, and drank. They too were demonstrating pluralistic ignorance.

Homegrown stereotypes are not always accompanied by pluralistic ignorance. In the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks many Americans took to flying the flag. This was done as an expression of patriotic self-presentation directed at the ingroup, which gave rise to the homegrown stereotype that Americans are a patriotic group. This is how most homegrown stereotypes come to be. Self-presentations that are enacted by most group members are assumed to be the values that apply to the entire group. This kind of self-stereotyping is most likely to happen when conditions heighten the salience of group identity, as happened on September 11, 2001.

Ingroup members tend to present themselves differently to each other than they do to outgroup members. For example, a teacher presents herself one way to students, but another way when she relaxes in the company of other teachers in the staff lounge. Neither presentation is necessarily an authentic one, reflecting the private self. However, the way that she presents herself to other teachers is more likely to conform to a homegrown stereotype of what teachers are like.

Self-presentations that reflect homegrown stereotypes usually include some degree of outgroup antagonism. For example, teachers in one high-school setting strongly believed that the majority of teachers distrusted pupils and considered it necessary to focus on maintaining order and strict discipline in the school, even though they themselves did not harbor such an anti-student sentiment. The homegrown stereotype was supported by the views that teachers expressed publicly to each other. The same outgroup antagonism was evident in a survey of prison guards and prisoners. Everyone surveyed overestimated the harshness of their own group’s attitude toward the other group. Both prisoners and guards tended to see their groups as hostile and unsympathetic to the other group, even though they themselves held a more moderated private view.

Self-presentations also produce homegrown stereotypes when they’re motivated by a desire to be seen as loyal to one’s ingroup and its values. For example, nurses, who stereotypically present a facade of professionalism, calmness, and competence often cover up feelings of anxiety and stress because they feel that expressing such feelings would deviate from the way that nurses are supposed to behave.

What the homegrown stereotype says about group members depends not only on the way that individual members present themselves, but also on who is doing the presentation. Some group members are more vocal, public, and expressive than are others. They are likely to be the people who hold the most prototypical views. For example, in a school with an extreme liberal reputation, it is the conspicuous, extreme liberal minority that defines the homegrown stereotype, not the less extreme majority.

Homegrown stereotypes are generally accurate in the sense that they accurately reflect how group members want to present themselves publicly, even if they are inaccurate insofar as members’ private self-ratings. People are better at convincing others of what they are like than at convincing themselves.

Compare homegrown and outgroup stereotypes. How do they differ in terms of origin, the mechanisms that perpetuate them, and the functions that they serve? What are some homegrown stereotypes that you have discerned in your own groups? Might those homegrown stereotypes be reflecting pluralistic ignorance? How would you find out?