Cultural Stereotypes and Personal Beliefs About Individuals With Dwarfism

                The article starts of discussing that a lot of different types of people have been studied in terms of prejudice and stereotyping, but individuals with Dwarfism have been ignored for the most part. Medical research on little people is vast and expansive, but psychological research is sparse. Understanding stereotypes related to little people is important because it can help expand knowledge regarding stereotypes of other groups with distinct physical characteristics. The current research is interested at looking at perceptions of the majority group, typically referred to as average height individuals, toward individuals with Dwarfism. This article looked at three different studies to examine both average height individuals’ awareness of cultural-level stereotypes and their personal-level beliefs about little people.

                In study 1, they assessed the content of cultural stereotypes and personal beliefs regarding little people using an adjective checklist method. They used 172 average height undergrads enrolled in psych classes at three separate college across the country. The average age was 21.08, 64.53% were female, and 34.30% were male, with 2 participants not indicating gender. The 10 most commonly endorsed traits for the cultural stereotype were: weird (40.1% of respondents), incapable (34.7%), creepy (32.9%), unathletic (29.3%), childlike(26.3%), clumsy(22.8%), entertaining(18.6%), lowself-esteem(18.6%), quick-tempered (18.0%), and humorous (13.8%).The 10 most commonly endorsed traits for personal beliefs were: capable (34.4% of respondents), independent (28.8%), intelligent (20.9%), individualistic (20.9%), kind (19.6%), ambitious (17.8%), sensitive (16.6%), low self-esteem (14.1%), loyal to family ties (13.5%), and witty (12.9%). Generally speaking, students had unfavorable impressions of little people, with the only positive thing they believed about little people was their ability to make others laugh, which can easily be perceived as negative also.

                In study 2, they examined the content of cultural and personal beliefs again, and  they employed a between-subjects design, so that any given participant only selected traits to reflect the cultural stereotype or to reflect his or her personal beliefs. They used 94 average height undergrads with an average age of 21.89. 78.72% of participants were female and 19.15% were male, with 2 not indicating gender. The 10 most commonly endorsed traits for the cultural stereotype were incapable (37.0% of respondents), childlike (34.8%), weird (32.6%), creepy (30.4%), low self-esteem (30.4%), unathletic (21.7%), humorous (21.7%), quick tempered (17.4%), entertaining (15.2%), and sensitive (13.0%). The 10 most commonly endorsed traits for personal beliefs were capable (52.6% of respondents), individualistic (28.9%), independent (26.3%), ambitious (26.3%), unathletic (23.7%), intelligent (21.1%), persistent (21.1%), kind (18.4%), reserved (18.4%), and sensitive (18.4%). They found that  the content of the cultural stereotype of little people was primarily negative, whereas personal beliefs were primarily positive, meaning that little people do not align to the negative perceptions about themselves.

                In study 3, they addressed the aforementioned limitations by assessing average height participants’ cognitive and affective reactions to little people using an open-ended method. They used 195 undergrad participants with an average age of 19.86. 67.18% of participants were female and 31.80% were male, with two participants not indicating their gender. Despite only asking participants to indicate personal beliefs, the most commonly cited characteristics were a mixture of favorable and unfavorable qualities. These included quick-tempered (33.7% of respondents), kind (30.2%), humorous (22.5%), happy (21.9%), low self-esteem (20.1%), incapable (16.6%), ambitious (16.6%), intelligent (13.6%), capable (12.4%), and clumsy (11.8%). A number of the most commonly cited characteristics using the close-ended method did not appear with the present open-ended approach, including weird, childlike, unathletic, entertaining, independent, and creepy (all less than 10%).The most frequently cited emotional reactions in response to little people were cheerfulness (54.9% of respondents), sympathy (52.2%), sadness (50.5%), nervousness (35.3%), affection (27.7%), anger (25.0%), surprise (19.0%), fear (18.5%), joy (10.9%), and zest (9.8%).

                The general picture of little people by average height people is a negative one, with characteristics like: weird, childlike, quick-tempered, and incapable. These reactions may stem from the historically media-driven tendency to view little people as objects of entertainment.