Scholarship on stereotyping accurately!

February 26, 2007 4:24 PM

What are the best scholarly books and articles in any field that would bear on how you might rapidly assess a person and predict aspects of his or her behavior based on various easily (not *necessarily* instantly) ascertainable characteristics (demographic information, body language, speaking patterns, ethnicity, education, etc.)?

The scholarship could come from any field: psychology--social, personality, psychotherapy; police interrogation; negotiation; theater; interdisciplinary work on emotional intelligence; anything at all.

posted by shivohum to human relations (12 comments total)

Have you read Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink"? This might be a good starting point, as it covers several different disciplines, though it is about rapid decision-making rather than personality assessment per se.
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:46 PM on February 26, 2007

There's a book I read - I *think* it's called "Reading People" and it's exactly what you're talking about. The writer was a screener for juries, so she had to quickly assess people based on similar criteria that you mention above.

"Blink" is also an interesting read on quick assessments and intuition. So is "Freakonomics", but that starts to stray off topic a little bit.
posted by iamkimiam at 4:58 PM on February 26, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Attribution Theory may hold a bit of what you're looking for.
posted by k8t at 4:59 PM on February 26, 2007

what?
posted by frieze at 5:51 PM on February 26, 2007

Also check out linguistic expectancy bias and linguistic intergroup bias.
posted by k8t at 6:12 PM on February 26, 2007

iamkimiam writes "There's a book I read - I *think* it's called 'Reading People' and it's exactly what you're talking about. The writer was a screener for juries, so she had to quickly assess people based on similar criteria that you mention above."

Yep, it's Reading People, and it's on Amazon.

You might also want to check out John Reid.
posted by mullingitover at 6:24 PM on February 26, 2007

Have you read Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf?" This might be a good starting point

Do you really think that people who must deal quickly and effectively with diverse others treat everyone as a blank slate until they've learned their life histories and seen their actions over a long period of time?

I'm not saying that stereotyping based on race or gender or any other super-broad characteristic works or should be practiced. Yet I can't believe that successful salespeople, hostage negotiators, lawyers, psychologists, interrogators, and others don't make quick judgments, and often successful ones at that.

All I'm looking for is scholarly work that might be used to systematize or supplement the insights that are currently subtly stored in their intuitions.

To those who have provided helpful answers so far: thank you. And I look forward to more.
posted by shivohum at 6:24 PM on February 26, 2007

Something along the lines of forensic psychology ?
posted by porpoise at 6:53 PM on February 26, 2007

You might get something out of The Gift of Fear, which talks a lot about reading people's motivations and trusting your intuition.
posted by acridrabbit at 6:55 PM on February 26, 2007

Paul Ekman studies emotion and has training cds on how to recognize subtle emotional cues. Sorry that I cannot link to the information directly--I have never been able to successfully link in metafilter and I am just stopping by for a quick look--must get the kids in bed!
posted by aliksd at 7:06 PM on February 26, 2007

Semi-related: How do you assess intelligence from an initial conversation?
posted by booksandlibretti at 4:20 PM on February 27, 2007

Paul Ekman - extremely interesting man!! (And blessed with a great sense of humor too it would seem)
posted by mu~ha~ha~ha~har at 9:17 AM on September 26, 2007