Work structure creates the need for bias while society supplies its content
Evidence
However, the content of coping responses may well reflect the prevailing biases of the society. The need for biases may be rooted in the work structure, but the expression of this need may take different forms. Stereotyping thus may be thought of as aform of simplification. While simplifications are mental shortcuts (of many different kinds) that summarize and come to stand for more complex phenomena, stereotypes are simplifications in whose validity people strongly believe, and yet they are prejudicial and inaccurate as summary characteristics for groups of people with nominally similar attributes. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1049
Categorization
- XREF: Resolves the mechanism question for the reader’s hypothesis: discretionary work generates the cognitive demand for simplification, while culture only fills in which stereotype is expressed. — connects to: Frontline work structure, not worker prejudice, creates receptivity to stereotypes — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 844; Bureaucratic functionality makes bias officially unacknowledgeable and contested — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 847; Institutional bias operates through structure rather than direct external pressure — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 859 (+6 more)
- recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
Broader Connections
- Institutional bias operates through structure rather than direct external pressure
#corroborates(0.85) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 859 - Employers exploit society’s broader prejudices as a free labor-control resource
#expands(0.80) — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 916 - People stereotype groups to justify an existing division of labor
#expands(0.80) - Structural role changes in society can update stereotypes and reduce prejudice.
#qualifies(0.72) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 226 - Most ingroup bias overvalues the ingroup rather than devaluing the outgroup
#complicates(0.72) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 555