When dowdy Susan Boyle took the stage on Britain’s Got Talent, the audience’s reaction of jeers and grimaces may have been biologically hardwired. Or so contends a recent article in the NY Times, which suggests that stereotyping is an evolutionary trait.

According to the article:

On a very basic level, judging people by appearance means putting them quickly into impersonal categories, much like deciding whether an animal is a dog or a cat. “Stereotypes are seen as a necessary mechanism for making sense of information,” said David Amodio, an assistant professor of psychology at New York University. “If we look at a chair, we can categorize it quickly even though there are many different kinds of chairs out there.”

In other words, in order to deal with information overload, the brain processes stimuli by filing away new information under well-established categories. Psychology research has also shown that people manage new situations by using schematas – stereotypes or expectations about how certain new events will proceed in light of prior, similar events.  Scientists suggest that such stereotypes and schemata as they relate to classification of people were once useful in detecting threat:

Susan Fiske, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Princeton, said that traditionally, most stereotypes break down into two broad dimensions: whether a person appears to have malignant or benign intent and whether a person appears dangerous. “In ancestral times, it was important to stay away from people who looked angry and dominant,” she said.

Fiske further notes that traditionally attractive women are those who are “baby faced” and not dominant looking. Obviously, the insinuation is that Susan Boyle ain’t pretty. But we shouldn’t feel bad about stating that, because hey, it’s our genes doing the sneering, right?

As a former psychology major, I’ve heard all these theories before, and they always smacked of eugenics. Sure, babies respond to symmetrical faces, “ugly” people are adjudged boring, attractive people are more likely to snag the job. But aside from symmetry, what constitutes “attractive”? It certainly varies by culture and by geographical reason, and it has also changed over time.  In fact, many of the psychological experiments that appear to “confirm” that “attractive” people have first-impression advantages over less attractive people were performed using white men and women only. That may have been a representative sample in the 1840s, but data gathered using such a narrow sample may be inapplicable in today’s multicultural society.  Now, perhaps more than ever before, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

The first time I watched the Susan Boyle clip, I was horrified by the audience and judges’ initial reactions to her appearance, and even more horrified by their “shocked” faces when she started singing. Even if it is an evolutionary reaction to think her unattractive and therefore untalented, it is also evolutionarily advantageous to be able to keep one’s negative perception of others private.  Blaming psychology and evolution does not explain or excuse rudeness.  It’s 2009, not 2009 B.C.

5 Responses to “Stereotyping Susan Boyle”

1. clarissa says:

   April 30, 2009 at 5:25 pm

   wow. i am so happy with this blog. Thank you girls.
   So. I was chocked too. One day last week i had to update myself of who Susan Boyle was and saw the clip in youtube. I was ashamed on how people were looking at her. The camera showed a black hair girl doing faces….just because SB is considered ugly. But hey. That’s television. This sells. They KNOW what they’re doing, people. And that was the catch. Because she is considered ugly and sloppy, big surprise at the end.

   I am form Brazil. Its very common my Brazilian friends post in my facebook youtube clips of ugly and poor Brazilian people without tooth and without speaking properly. They think its hilarious. And they want to share. I personally think its the rudeness thing ever.

   I dont like extremes on anything, but i can decide what to support. Good for SB that she’s finally achieving her goals, i admit i cried seeing her singing, but not sure i was crying for her voice, or because finally she was getting out of her “ugly” stereotype shell.

   Reply
2. sydney says:

   April 30, 2009 at 10:30 pm

   that’s so true. girls from my country often put videos of women
   who are considered fat and ugly. i hate how there is only one singleminded view of beauty. i love susan boyle, and im gonna admit that i thought she wasn’t very pretty, but i never thought about how that would affect her performance. young girls are being taught that tunneled visioned idea of beauty and go to extreme measures to achieve that “look”.

   Reply
3. Inesita says:

   May 1, 2009 at 1:10 am

   Interesting comment:

   http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8017404.stm

   Reply
   • copa says:

     May 2, 2009 at 2:20 am

     Enjoyed the link, thanks for listing it.

     Reply
4. copa says:

   May 2, 2009 at 2:19 am

   How could you have expected any more out of those people when our culture demands beauty to go along with great talent. How many downright ugly popular female musicians can you name off the top of your head? yes, they were rude, but it’s what we have taught them to be generation after generation with few exceptions.

   Reply