Self-Stereotyping

Definition

Self-stereotyping occurs when individuals' beliefs about their own characteristics correspond to common beliefs about the characteristics of a group they belong to. This is generally measured in one of two ways. The first involves measuring the degree to which individuals describe themselves using characteristics that are commonly thought to describe members of their group in general. For example, it is a common belief that women in general are poor at math. Assessing whether individual women feel as if they are poor at math would be consistent with this way of measuring self-stereotyping. The second way researchers measure self-stereotyping is by determining the amount of similarity between how individual group members see their group (or a typical group member) and how they see themselves. For example, ...