To understand what stereotypes are it is useful to consider three principles that guide work on the social psychology of stereotyping. No perspective shares all principles to the same degree, rather different perspectives sample from each of the principles to greater or lesser degrees. Nevertheless, the three guiding principles we can identify are as follows: (a) stereotypes are aids to explanation, (b) stereotypes are energy-saving devices, and (c) stereotypes are shared group beliefs. The first of these implies that stereotypes should form so as to help the perceiver make sense of a situation, the second implies that stereotypes should form to reduce effort on the part of the perceiver, and the third implies that stereotypes should be formed in line with the accepted views or norms of social groups that the perceiver belongs to.
Words have power. They have the power to hurt or soothe, to honor or insult, to inform or misinform. Words reflect and shape prevailing attitudes, attitudes that in turn shape social behavior. Words both mirror and influence the ways we treat people and the ways they view themselves. And words disparaging and disrespectful labels in particular–inflict emotional pain on those to whom they are applied. The words used by mass media to refer to mental illnesses and to the people who suffer from mental illnesses have such power, making it important to consider those words and the ways they are typically used and misused.
In 1980 the Mental Health Association of Hawaii developed a resource guide specifically for writers and editors. Positively titled Building New Links of Understanding, the guide began with a description of the issues of concern stigma and media contributions to it and presented statistics about mental health problems in Hawaii. A second section juxtaposed common myths (for example, that people with mental illnesses are dangerous) with facts concerning those myths. Still another section provided specific suggestions as to how media might avoid stereotyping communications, including words and phrasing to avoid and other terms to substitute for offensive ones. It advised, for example, that writers avoid words like “psycho” or “maniac” and avoid emphasizing a person’s history of emotional disorder or psychiatric hospitalization if it was not essential to the situation being described.
Still another educational strategy, one not yet as actively pursued as the ones already mentioned, is to try to reach future writers, editors, and producers through their training curricula. Literature, journalism, and filmmaking programs often include not only technical training but also the exploration of issues in the field. Coverage of the issue of social influence and stereotyping could well include consideration of media images of mental illness, just as it now includes an examination of the images of women and minorities. If the creators of media images can be sensitized early in their careers to the problems of mental illness stereotypes in mass media and to the facts about mental illnesses, there will be less to overcome later. Mental health advocates have begun exploring ways to participate in the education of future media professionals and to influence the faculty of mass communications training programs to add to their curricula discussions of the stereotyping of mental illness.
Another, somewhat more aggressive, approach to changing current and future images is to create pressure for change by communicating concerns and complaints to media professionals about specific presentations whenever they occur. This approach recognizes that mass media are consumer-oriented industries. They are businesses, run for profit, and their profits depend greatly on consumer satisfaction. They consequently tend to take consumer concerns very seriously. Furthermore, most mass media have stated commitments to social responsibility and have industry standards that urge responsible treatment of sensitive subjects. Concerns communicated by consumers to whom media presentations are being marketed can create a demand for change.
A number of mental health organizations have made the reduction of stigmatizing presentations about mental illness one of their priorities and routinely respond to problematic media depictions. One of the strategies taken by such organizations to increase their effectiveness in identifying and responding to stigmatizing media material involves what has sometimes been referred to as a “media watch” or “stigma clearinghouse” model. This model calls for participants/members to be alert to media presentations about mental illness and to call to the organization’s attention any depiction for which they think action would be appropriate. Organization representatives then respond to as many depictions as possible, contacting media personnel and conveying their concerns on behalf of their members. Media watchers are also urged to take individual action and to write or call themselves to express their concerns about depictions directly to the media involved. In addition, media watch sponsors sometimes call upon their members for a concentrated and coordinated response to specific depictions-for instance, they organize letter-writing campaigns–when a more powerful response is deemed necessary.
Public sensibilities about the ways groups of people are characterized and referred to have grown along with the rise of feminism, civil rights, and ethnic pride. Although some disparage aspects of the movement toward “political correctness,” most recognize and accept the important idea behind it–the idea that all people deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. At the same time, both social scientists and the general public have become increasingly convinced of the power of the mass media to shape attitudes and perceptions. As a result, the mass media have become much more careful in their portrayals of different groups, particularly disadvantaged and historically devalued groups. Considerable progress has been made in the reduction of negative stereotypes of women, racial minorities, immigrants, and other diverse groups.
One other site of media stereotyping is the depiction of the elderly who find their marginal social status enforced by media constructions which reduce them to useless, sometimes comical, and sometimes troublesome, appendages to the mainstream of society. Characters like the mother in the sitcom “Mother and Son” portray several aspects of the burdensome aged: dependent, forgetful, manipulative, silly, and embarrassing. The news media also tend to focus on issues that emphasize the ‘problematic’ of the elderly: their problems with health care, their vulnerability, their victimization by criminals and bureaucracy, the problem of the burden they represent to society. They are portrayed in terms of the responsibility that others have to them, rather than their social worth as contributing members of the community.
Media stereotypes reduce social groups usually minorities to a few base denominators that reflect prejudices and negative perceptions of those groups. Sometimes the media’s projections of those stereotypes are harmful. In extreme cases like the Nazis’ stereotyping of the Jews, they can be extremely harmful. The media become blameworthy when the stereotypes they project contribute to the spread or reinforcement of hostile attitudes towards the stereotyped groups among the wider community. But media professionals normally reject this charge on the grounds that they are not responsible for the hostile attitudes or the stereotypes. They argue that the stereotypes came first and got woven into the media constructions along with other components from the shared community knowledge that are the media’s raw materials. The media do not make attitudes, they just reflect them, which is the classic defense against criticisms of media stereotypes.
It is true that there is always a relationship between the ideas and attitudes that the media reflect and the ideas and attitudes of society. But media apologists would suggest that the flow of those ideas and attitudes is a boomerang path, from society to the media and from the media back to society. In fact, the process is much more complicated. The media take up ideas and attitudes from society but they embellish and imbue them with their own ideas and attitudes which are unique products of their own subculture. The product that they return to society is a mixture of attitudinal inputs from both parties. So the media’s claim to neutrality is insupportable. Because of the central role, the mass media play in the production of culture and information in our society it is impossible to isolate social attitudes from the attitudes portrayed in media messages. The media are clearly involved in the construction of stereotypes, if not as the originator then at least as the co-producer. So the media must take some measure of responsibility for the negative effects of stereotyping and their role in the division of society between the smugly empowered majority and the derided and maligned minorities.
Media stereotypes involve taking the characteristics of a few individuals in a group and applying them to the group overall, usually with a certain amount of elaboration and exaggeration. The media industries most often accused of stereotyping like to claim that the stereotypes existed already in community attitudes towards the group in question and that the media were simply reflecting society’s attitudes towards that group. Media critics argue that some stereotypes are actually created by the media while many others are reinforced and amplified by the media’s constant use of them.
Women are stereotyped by female media roles that project negative female characteristics, such as vanity, emotionality, domesticity, inferior work skills (when compared to men), subservience to men, and low intelligence. These characteristics are often displayed by female roles in TV soap operas and sitcoms, as well as feature films and dramas. Among the minority groups that also suffer from media stereotyping are Aborigines, who are depicted as violent, lazy, confrontational, and a social problem, particularly in print and broadcast media news and current affairs stories. Other ethnic minorities have suffered from the media’s tendency to stereotype new settlers to Australia by depicting them as dull, tradition-bound, violent, and unstable. Stereotyping occurs because of media industry conventions that dictate how certain characters should be drawn and how certain groups should be represented in media products. Stereotyping exists outside the media and is a popular form of humor. But the media emphasizes the hostility inherent in stereotypical constructions and lends credibility to the stereotypes by giving them a reality.
References
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