{"id":12992,"date":"2015-03-06T09:00:59","date_gmt":"2015-03-06T14:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=12992"},"modified":"2017-09-17T18:02:39","modified_gmt":"2017-09-17T23:02:39","slug":"skull-face-and-the-self-fulfilling-stereotype","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2015\/03\/06\/skull-face-and-the-self-fulfilling-stereotype\/","title":{"rendered":"Skull Face And The Self-Fulfilling Stereotype"},"content":{"rendered":"

Flashback Friday.<\/em><\/p>\n

Studies show that people will often act in ways consistent with how they are treated. Therefore, treating someone according to a stereotype will likely produce behavior that confirms the stereotype. This is called a self-fulfilling stereotype<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Consider Rick Genest:<\/p>\n

\"\"
Flickr creative commons IDJ Photography<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In a Bizarre<\/a> interview, illustrated by photographer Neville Elder<\/a>, he was asked why he\u00a0spent $4,000 on tattoos that made him look like death. He\u00a0replied:<\/p>\n

\n

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\u2019t a happy person at all. That\u2019s why I got the skull tattooed on my face in the first place, I suppose\u2014I wanted to fucking kill everybody.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But\u00a0that’s not how it worked out. His tattoos didn’t freak\u00a0everyone out and ruin their day; people loved them. They flocked to him. They complimented him and took pictures with him. And Genest\u00a0began to feel… good.<\/em><\/p>\n

…since having them done I\u2019ve become a much happier and nicer person…\u00a0I started getting all this positive feedback \u2013 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He continues:<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been having so much fun with it that life has definitely changed for the better. I honestly wouldn\u2019t change a thing… not that I have much choice in the matter.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So basically his tattoos were a big fuck you to the world. He \u201chated pretty much everything and everybody.\u201d\u00a0But they\u00a0inspired others to start treating him positively and, in response, he\u00a0became a positive\u00a0person.<\/p>\n

Sometime after this article was published,\u00a0Genest was “discovered” and since then he’s done quite a bit of modeling and acting<\/a>. His life is certainly different now, but the happiness his tattoos brought him didn’t come from the fame and fortune, it came before all that, just from people being friendly.\u00a0An awesome example of the self-fulfilling stereotype.<\/p>\n

NOTE: <\/strong>This post\u00a0appeared in 2009 and was fleshed out for a two-page essay for Contexts magazine<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Flashback Friday. Studies show that people will often act in ways consistent with how they are treated. Therefore, treating someone according to a stereotype will likely produce behavior that confirms the stereotype. This is called a self-fulfilling stereotype. Consider Rick Genest: In a Bizarre interview, illustrated by photographer Neville Elder, he was asked why he\u00a0spent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[233,283,37],"class_list":["post-12992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-death","tag-prejudicediscrimination","tag-social-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12992"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71724,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12992\/revisions\/71724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}