Robin Hanson observed:
Lower “working” class cultures tend to talk more overtly. Insults are more direct and cutting, friends and co-workers often tease each other about their weaknesses. Nicknames often express weakness – a fat man might be nicknamed “slim.”
Upper class culture, in contrast, tends more to emphasize politeness and indirect communication. This helps to signal intelligence and social awareness, and distinguishes upper from lower classes. Upper class folks can be just as cruel, but their words have more plausible deniability.
While this all sounds plausible to me, and is an interesting observation, I couldn’t help but ask myself “where did Robin learn about lower class cultures?” I am always a little skeptical when upper class folks describe the routine behaviors of lower class folks. I will explain.
I spend a lot of social time with students and professors. When I see academic life portrayed in movies, I often dismiss much of it as unrealistic (some of the scenes in The Social Network, for example). It’s easy to spot and dismiss false portrayals of our own in-group in the media.
However, if there is a group of people that I do not interact much with, a lot of my views of them are probably formed by the media (and by portrayals of them described in my in-group).
Suppose, for example, that poor people are portrayed as being more crude. If I observe a low income mother swearing at her child at the train station, that might reinforce the belief about crudeness. However, seeing dozens of other low income mothers not swearing at their children might have little effect.
The opposite is true for my own in-group. I might know a few people in my SES group who drink heavily and swear around their kids. But I’d dismiss them as unusual cases, and not think of them when I think of how my peers behave.
Thus, my theory is that we largely ignore the extreme cases when we think of caricatures of our in-group, but let the extreme cases drive how we view our status non-peers.
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note: I’m not saying Robin is inaccurate. His comments just lead me down this path of thinking.
Yes, we view our own in-group and more detailed and diverse, outgroups as more homogenous. This gives rise to the illusion of asymmetric insight.
This also goes a long way to explaining why skinny people think that fat people are fat because they lack will power, or eat poorly, or don’t exercise. (I am only a recent convert on this point.)