Stereotype

stereotype

A stereotype is used to catergorize a group of people. People don't understand that type of person, so they put them into classifications, thinking that everyone who is that needs to be like that, or anyone who acts like their classifications is one.

Stereotype for Goths are black clothes, black makeup, depressed, hated by society.

Stereotype for Punks are mohawks, spikes, chains, menace to society, always getting in trouble.

The use of stereotypes is a major way in which we simplify our social world; since they reduce the amount of processing (i.e. thinking) we have to do when we meet a new person.

By stereotyping we infer that a person has a whole range of characteristics and abilities that we assume all members of that group have. Stereotypes lead to social categorization, which is one of the reasons for prejudice attitudes (i.e. “them” and “us” mentality) which leads to in-groups and out-groups.

Most stereotypes probably tend to convey a negative impression. Positive examples would include judges (the phrase “sober as a judge” would suggest this is a stereotype with a very respectable set of characteristics), overweight people (who are often seen as “jolly”) and television newsreaders (usually seen as highly dependable, respectable and impartial). Negative stereotypes seem far more common, however.

What are stereotypes?

To understand what stereotypes are it is useful to consider three principles which guide work on the social psychology of stereotyping. No perspective shares all principles to the same degree, rather different perspectives sample from each of the principles to greater or lesser degrees.

Nevertheless the three guiding principles we can identify are as follows:

(a)stereotypes are aids to explanation, (b)stereotypes are energy-saving

devices ,and (c)stereotypes are shared group beliefs.

The first of these implies that stereotypes should form so as to help the perceiver make sense of a situation, the second implies that stereotypes should form to reduce effort on the part of the perceiver, and the third implies that stereotypes should be formed in line with the accepted views or norms of social groups that the perceiver belongs to.

Stereotypes are energy saving devices

If stereotypes are devices which people form in order to help understand the world, why do they take the particular form they do and how do they achieve this explanatory function? The most common answer in social psychology is that stereotypes aid explanation by saving time and effort.

Stereotypes are shared group beliefs

Stereotypes attract little attention when they are not shared by many people. If every individual had a very different stereotype of some group then those stereotypes would be of little interest. Shared stereotypes ,for example, are useful for predicting and understanding the behaviour of members of one group to another. If stereotypes are primarily interesting because they are shared it becomes important to understand why they are shared and how they come to be shared.

When we observe that many different people have similar stereotypes of the same group then we can offer a number of qualitatively different explanations for that state of affairs. One obvious explanation is the effect of coincidental processes operating on individual minds. There are two key variants on this view: one is that a common environment provides similar stimulus experience to different people and therefore similar stereotypes emerge.

Common Stereotypes

Men and Women

There are also some common stereotypes of men and women, such as:

• Men are strong and do all the work.

• Men are the "backbone."

• Women aren't as smart as a man.

• Women can’t do as good of a job as a man.

• Girls are not good at sports.

• Guys are messy and unclean.

• Men who spend too much time on the computer or read are geeks.

Cultures

Stereotypes also exist about cultures an countries as a whole. Stereotype examples of this sort include the premises that:

• All white Americans are obese, lazy, and dim-witted. Homer Simpson of the TV series The Simpsons is the personification of this stereotype.

• Mexican stereotypes suggest that all Mexicans are lazy and came into America illegally.

• All Arabs and Muslims are terrorists.

• All people who live in England have bad teeth.

• Italian or French people are the best lovers.

• All Blacks outside of the United States are poor.

• All Jews are greedy.

• All Asians are good at math. All Asians like to eat rice and drive slow.

• All Irish people are drunks and eat potatoes.

• All Americans are generally

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