Comments on: Scholarship on stereotyping accurately!

Question: Scholarship on stereotyping accurately!

shivohum — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 16:24:50 -0800

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.

By: MonkeyToes

MonkeyToes — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 16:46:28 -0800

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.

By: iamkimiam

iamkimiam — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 16:58:35 -0800

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.

By: k8t

k8t — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 16:59:48 -0800

Attribution Theory may hold a bit of what you're looking for.

By: frieze

frieze — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 17:51:25 -0800

what?

By: k8t

k8t — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 18:12:15 -0800

Also check out linguistic expectancy bias and linguistic intergroup bias.

By: mullingitover

mullingitover — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 18:24:15 -0800

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.

By: shivohum

shivohum — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 18:24:42 -0800

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.

By: porpoise

porpoise — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 18:53:14 -0800

Something along the lines of forensic psychology ?

By: acridrabbit

acridrabbit — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 18:55:25 -0800

You might get something out of The Gift of Fear, which talks a lot about reading people's motivations and trusting your intuition.

By: aliksd

aliksd — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 19:06:13 -0800

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!

By: booksandlibretti

booksandlibretti — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 16:20:53 -0800

By: mu~ha~ha~ha~har

mu~ha~ha~ha~har — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 09:17:38 -0800

Paul Ekman - extremely interesting man!! (And blessed with a great sense of humor too it would seem)