How Statistical Discrimination May Be Costing Your Practice

Statistical discrimination is our tendency to believe something about a group of people based on a perceived group average. These beliefs don’t necessarily have to come from a prejudiced point of view; instead, they are an example of our minds using a cognitive shortcut.

When we meet someone for the first time, our minds fill in presumed details about them based on the only information we have available at that time: how they look--which can be a result of their race, gender, age, and so on. Once we mentally place this person into a group, we then attribute certain characteristics to them based on what we believe is typical of this group. To give an example using animals, if we encountered a new cat, we might believe that this cat hates water because that’s a common stereotype attributed to cats.