Can Prejudice Ever Be A Good Thing Analysis

Stereotypes are a form of prejudice everyone will once experience in their lifetime. Stereotypes are centered around an individual's race, gender, social class, religion, and age. They have been known to be elements people use to make judgments and subjectify people to one key feature. As Gordon Allport states, “ To state the matter technically, a noun abstracts from a concrete reality some one features and assembles different concrete realities only with respect to this one feature”(364). Mr.Allport’s words can be summed up to say stereotypes have been used as key fundamentals to associate one feature or aspect of a person with a group that represents it, typically in an unfavorable way.

In Paul Bloom’s TED Talk, “Can Prejudice Ever Be a Good Thing?,” he discusses the stereotypes people encounter in their everyday lives. Bloom asserts his personal opinions, along with facts, to show how prejudice and stereotypes begin to form in the human mind at a young age. He states that prejudice can be rational and useful but it can also be irrational, often leading to immoral consequences. He presents studies done by other psychologists that prove the development of stereotypes throughout the lifetime of an individual. Some of the studies show the way people react when they view an African American in relation to a white American. People favor the white Americans over the African Americans because it’s an instinct to choose white over

Stereotypes have great impacts on people all over the world. One of the reasons why people believe stereotypes blindly is that they know less about the objects. In order to decline the uncertainty of this new object, people choose to believe the stereotypes to feel safer. For the purpose of understanding the world more objectively, we ought to treat stereotypes critically and at least not be convinced of stereotypes blindly anymore.

Stereotypes are socially constructed, over-generalized views regarding a particular group of persons with certain characteristics that are widely accepted, and usually expected, in a society. The dominant group of a certain society, which in this case is probably Caucasians and men, usually creates these social constructions. Claude M. Steele, a researcher from Stanford University, performed multiple research studies on the idea and psychological effects of stereotypes on its victims. In his studies, he coins the term “stereotype threat” as the “social-psychological predicament that can arise from widely-known negative stereotypes about one's group,” which implies that “the existence of such a stereotype means that anything one does or any of one's features that conform to it make the stereotype more plausible as a self-characterization in the eyes of others, and perhaps even in one's own eyes” (Steele 797).

Stereotypes and generalizations have negatively depicted the image and character of individuals and groups throughout time. In making these stereotypes we forget about the true character of the individual or group. Somehow throughout time what we have gathered and decided through stereotypes has created the everlasting image we have of one another, it's been hard to change the viewpoint ever since. Through the reading of this article and attaining continuous information of the harm of stereotypes are placing in our world we can start to move away from these unfortunate depictions.

Prejudice is when we have a preconceived opinion about someone or a group of people that is formed without knowledge, or even a real understanding about them.

In life, there is a common ground on which most every person can relate. At one time or another, we have all been promoters of or victims of the unremitting nature of stereotypes. According to the Webster’s dictionary, a stereotype is defined as “a simplified and standardized conception or image invested with special meaning and held in common by members of a group.” Most stereotypes take on a negative form and are based on characteristics such as age, gender, race, status, and personal beliefs. Generally speaking, the greatest problem that arises with stereotypes is that they judge group of people by the characteristics and actions of their ancestors, rather than on an individual basis. More often than not, these assumptions will

Stereotypes can be defined as sweeping generalizations about members of a certain race, religion, gender, nationality, or other group. They are made everyday in almost every society. We develop stereotypes when we are unable or unwilling to obtain all the information we would need to make fair judgments about people or situations. By stereotyping, we assume that a person or group has certain characteristics. Quite often, we develop these ideas about people who are members of groups with which we have not had firsthand contact. Stereotyping usually leads to unfair results, such as discrimination, racial profiling, and unnecessary violence, all behaviors which need to be stopped.

Embedded deeply in societal culture is the innate desire to put others into specific categories: customarily called stereotypes. Brent Staples had been on the receiving end of stereotypes for as long as he could recall. In Just Walk On By by Brent Staples, the author makes it abundantly clear, through the use of rhetorical devices such as imagery, expert testimony, pathos, and ethos, that he himself is aware of racial stereotypes and why society has them.

The dangers of these stereotypes are clear. Stereotyping can lead to depression, a loss of self-meaning, and even a subservience to these stereotypes, which only enforces them. These moral distortions of stereotyping are one of the evils plaguing modern-day society. In his essay “Stereotypes and Stereotyping: A Moral Analysis”, Lawrence Blum states that stereotypes are “rigid false generalizations (Blum 265).” The rigidity of these stereotypes forces many to stay consistent with those

Stereotypes are, in a way, a knowledge and a justification; they tend to explain the dynamics of the social group in addition to explaining why that particular group of people is the way it is. Generally, those holding a position of social power are more likely to endorse and be in complete support of negative stereotypes of low status groups. The research in this article primarily focuses on the consequences suffered as a result of behavioral discrimination as opposed to the consequences of prejudice. There is no evidence that shows whether stereotypes are formed on a basis of justifying prejudice or not.

In many circles of the world, various groups of people distinguish themselves from one another through religion, language, culture, and sometimes gender. People also develop stereotypes about a particular group of people in order to identify them. However, most of the time, these stereotypes hold true for only some members of a group. Sometimes, these stereotypes are just plain misconceptions that do not even apply to the group it claims to. Stereotypes are placed on people because it is a way to easily identify what type of person or ethnicity an individual is. At one point in time, these stereotypes may have been true; however, in today’s modern society, most of these stereotypes are outdated and false, which leads them to turn into

Most people find stereotypes to be obnoxious, especially when they have to do with sensitive subjects like gender or race. “Stereotyping is a generalization about a group or category of people that can have a powerful influence on how we perceive others and their communication behaviors” (Floyd, 61). Because they underestimate the differences among individuals in a group, stereotyping can lead to inaccurate and offensive perceptions of other people. Although stereotypes are prevalent in almost every society, becoming aware of our perceptions of others, as well as differentiating between both positive and negative stereotypes can help us overcome those stereotypes.

The presences of stereotypes are overwhelming and are developed by both the environment a subject is raised in and their family. Stereotypes, which are pervasive throughout different societies, become intertwined in the collective values of the society as justification for all forms of social, economic, and political inequality among groups (Devine and Elliot 2000;Kaplan 2004; Operario and Fiske 2004). As people become more exposed to stereotypes they start to become a permanent part of a person’s life, they begin to stereotype themselves almost always involuntarily.

The first effect of stereotyping is a phenomenon known as “stereotype threat” that occurs in a situation where a person is in fear of unintentionally confirming a negative stereotype. Several studies have been conducted to discover the effects of stereotype threats. For example, I discovered that Toni Schmader, an assistant professor of the UA psychology department, and Michael Johns, a UA graduate (ethos), conducted studies that showed, “college women score lower on tests of mathematical ability, and Hispanic students might score lower on tests of intelligence, not because they have less ability, but because reminders of negative stereotypes temporarily decrease their ‘working memory capacity’ (UA News Services, “Exploring the Negative Consequences of Stereotyping”, UANews.Arizona.edu).” This demonstrates that the students did not do worse on the test due to their lack of skills, but rather due to negative stereotypes. In a similar study by professors Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson, African American and White college students took the same intelligence test under two conditions. In the stereotype threat condition the students were told the test would evaluate their intelligence, and in the