subtyping

n. 1. In social psychology, the process of creating a new category within a stereotype when experience disconfirms the stereotype, which allows preservation of the stereotype with a new subcategory. Thus if a person has a stereotype of African-Americans as lazy and sees an AfricanAmerican neighbor getting up at 6 o'clock to go jogging every morning, he/she may create a subtype of athletic African Americans so as to maintain the stereotype and account for the new information. 2. In computer programming, the creation of a subclassification in a program that will serve as a member of the superordinate class in some circumstances but not others as duck or robin might be a subclass of the class birds and treated as birds in some contexts and not in others.