Deviance

80 contexts.org

sskull faceandtheself-fulfillingstereotypebylisawadeandgwensharpsociological IMAGESConsider for a moment the experience of a man known as Zombie, interviewed at Bizarre magazine and photographed

by Neville Elder. Zombie, who lives in Montreal, spent about

$4,000 and 24 hours having his body tattooed to look like a

rotting corpse. Asked why he decided to decorate his body this

way, he replied:

“I hated pretty much everything and everybody. I just

wanted to pass out in the gutter and swear at cars as they

went by, shit like that. I wasn’t a happy person at all. That’s

why I got the skull tattooed on my face in the first place, I sup-

pose—I wanted to fucking kill everybody.”

Zombie’s tattoos were a way for him to tell off the world.

But the world didn’t get the message. Instead of shunning or

fearing him, people were drawn to him. His tattoos were so dra-

matic and unique that they inspired people to compliment him.

He became interesting. People wanted to say “hello,” to know

him, to have him at their parties. And that made him… happy.

“…Since having [my tattoos] done I’ve become a much

happier and nicer person… I started getting all this positive

feedback—people would come up to me and say how cool

they thought it looked. I started getting invited to parties and

bars all the time. Strangers ask to have pictures taken with me.

I’ve been having so much fun with it that life has definitely

changed for the better.”

Zombie’s life-changing experience beautifully illustrates the

power that others have to influence our attitudes and behavior.

In their 1977 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

article “Self Perception and Interpersonal Behavior,” psychol-

ogists Mark Snyder, Elizabeth Tanke, and Ellen Berscheid asked

how this influence might link social biases and the disadvan-

tages suffered by targets of such biases. How often was peo-

ple’s treatment of others based on stereotypes, Snyder and his

colleagues wondered, such that certain people would routinely

experience bad treatment and low expectations? This might,

they thought, contribute to widespread social patterns of dis-

advantage for those already suffering from biased perceptions

or cause unhappiness and self-doubt among negatively stereo-

typed individuals. Finally, they questioned whether some types

of individuals routinely experienced good treatment and high

expectations, leading them to be happier and more successful

than they would have been otherwise.

They decided to first study attractiveness. Previous research

had shown that women judged conventionally “attractive”

were believed to be nicer, friendlier, funnier, and more social than

women judged “unattractive.” The authors wondered: if men

treated pretty women as if they were all of these things, would

81fall 2010 contexts

they thereby draw out exactly those characteristics?

In fact, they did.

Snyder and his colleagues designed a study in

which men interacted with women over the phone. The

men were randomly given a photograph of a conven-

tionally attractive or unattractive woman and were told

they’d be talking to her. Before they made the call, Sny-

der asked how the men expected their conversation

would go. Confirming prior studies, the men with a pic-

ture of a pretty woman said that they expected her to be “socia-

ble, poised, humorous, and socially adept.” Men holding a

picture of a woman who did not meet feminine beauty stan-

dards, in contrast, expected them to be

“unsociable, awkward, serious, and

socially inept.”

Just as the research team sus-

pected, when the men called the

women, their behavior reflected their pre-conceived notions.

Men who thought the woman they were speaking to was

attractive were more confident, animated, and expressed more

pleasure in their interaction than those men who thought they

were speaking to a less attractive woman. And the women

responded in kind. Women who were treated with warmth

responded with warmth, and women who were treated coldly

allowed the conversation to languish frigidly. The men’s pre-

conceptions elicited stereotype-consistent behavior. Impor-

tantly, these findings indicate that we may leave interactions

confident that our prejudices are valid, even though we elicited

the behavior we expected to see.

In later studies, Snyder and other scholars would show

that the self-fulfilling stereotype applies to other stigmatized

groups, including people of color, women, the elderly, and peo-

ple with mental illnesses. The phenomenon, then, is a gener-

alizable one. Our stereotypes of the intelligence, work ethic,

strength, speed, creativity, or wisdom of groups may actually

be produced among individuals in interaction and then repli-

cated over time as our expectations lead to the fulfillment of

the stereotypes we

endorse. The more

often we believe our

prejudices have been

validated, the more

they shape our behav-

ior and attitudes in

patterned ways that

reflect those stereo-

types. The self-fulfilling nature of stereotypes, then, brings

stereotypical behavior into existence at the same time that it jus-

tifies the very prejudices that drove our interactions.

In sum, Zombie got tattoos he thought would disgust other

people, using his body to express his anger and social alien-

ation. But instead of pushing others away, his tattoos drew

them to him. As a result, his perception of himself changed.

Not only was he invited to parties, he became the friendly, out-

going person you might want to invite to parties. The socio-

logical insight here is that this social psychological

phenomenon—the self-fulfilling stereotype—doesn’t only

shape individual lives in random ways. It also shapes societies

in patterned ways that enhance the lives of some (like Zombie),

but strongly disadvantage others.

LisaWade is in the sociology department at Occidental College andGwenSharp

is in the department of social sciences at Nevada State College.They write about

visual representations and sociology on the blog Sociological Images.

Contexts,Vol.9,No.4,pp.80-81. ISSN 1536-5042,electronic ISSN 1537-6052.© 2010AmericanSociological Association. All rights reserved. For permission to photocopy or reproduce, see http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintinfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/ctx.2010.9.4.80.

Zombie’s tattoos were a way for him to tell off the world. But the world didn’t get the message.

All photos byNeville Elder,www.nevilleelder.com.