Audit person-judgments for prototype substitution

Check whether a judgment about a person is based on their actual behavior or on resemblance to a type.

Why it works

The representativeness heuristic underpins stereotyping: a person is assigned the traits of the group they resemble, regardless of individual evidence. This is cognitively efficient — group base rates are often real — but it misfires when group variance is high, when the individual is atypical, or when the "group" is a cultural stereotype rather than an empirical category. Deliberately auditing for prototype substitution ("Am I seeing this person or their template?") activates individuating-information processing.

How to do it

1. When forming an impression of a person, write down the specific behaviors or statements you observed.
2. Ask: "Would I hold this judgment if the person fit a different prototype?"
3. Identify whether your conclusion follows from their individual evidence or from group membership.
4. Seek one individuating data point that is inconsistent with the prototype to test the flexibility of your judgment.

Evidence

Research on individuation (Locksley et al., 1980; Kunda & Thagard, 1996) shows that providing individuating behavioral information can override stereotype-based judgments, but only when that information is concrete and unambiguous. (observational)

Stereotypes often encode real statistical patterns; the problem is treating them as certainties about individuals rather than probabilistic base rates. This practice corrects overconfidence, not the use of base rates.

Sources

• Locksley, Borgida, Brekke & Hepburn (1980), Sex stereotypes and social judgment, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Common mistake

Seeking individuating information but then discounting it when it doesn’t fit the prototype ("they’re just an exception"), which is the representativeness heuristic reasserting itself.