Essay on Is Stereotyping Inevitable?

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 present in everyday life and they affect how were perceive other groups or individuals. As most individuals are a member of one societal group or another, it would be beneficial to examine why stereotypes form, and why some are more common than others. The purpose of this study is to identify circumstances in which an illusory correlation will be formed and how that may lead to the formation of stereotypes. An illusory correlation is the existence of a relationship, when no relationship actually exists.

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).

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

Negative stereotypes could lead to many negative consequences. Fiske (2014), a professor of University of Massachuse refer that stereotypes are automatic responses, which have an impact on individuals’ decision

Researcher Joseph Kenneth wrote a book arguing that stereotypes are a key factor in the theory of “Constructualism” (296). The theory of Constructualism is “the process by which people interact, exchange information, and consequently learn” (295). Constructualism argues that individual learning takes place on two levels. First, social interaction brings forth new knowledge that represents cultural customs over time. Second, as people share and receive knowledge with others, a perception of what is expected for them to know becomes apparent. “Paired with the assumption of homophily (Lazarsfeld & Merton, 1954; McPherson, Lovin, & Cook, 2001), that people tend to interact with others similar to them, constructuralism explains how social relationships evolve via interaction”(296). Joseph Kenneth wrote that while people may hold perceptions of other smaller groups, cognitive limitations prevent them from understanding people’s specific qualities. Rather, they use their perceptions by incorporating what they learn about others into generalized beliefs of what people are likely to know. Perceptions are based on past experiences and similarities, such as race or gender. These perceptions are the basis for stereotypes. Stereotypes can be useful because they help people navigate through the world to find others with common interests, but they are not necessarily true

I believe stereotype & prejudice in Romeo & Juliet should be important in society because stereotype & prejudice still happens today like the Travon Martin case. Stereotype & prejudice is part of everyday society. Stereotype is to believe unfairly that all people or things with a particular characteristics are the same. Prejudice is an unfair feeling of dislike for a person or group because of race, sex, religion, etc.: a feeling of like or dislike for someone or something especially when it is not reasonable or logical. Like the wide variety of prejudices that exist in societies around the world, the consequences of the prejudices and the behavior influenced by them are similarly varied.

Stereotypes or as some people call them generalizations are assumptions people often make about the characteristics of members apart of a certain group or race. Though there is no exact period to determine when stereotypes were developed, through commonsense, the answer to these questions is captured in the social learning theory which specifies that learning is a cognitive process that takes place in a social context and can occur purely through observation or direct instruction. In agreement with an article in Psychology Today, the brain uses stereotypes to create shortcuts for itself to explain why things may be a certain way, and many people don’t realize that their brains are making these presumptions subconsciously. Growing up in the

This concern can have ironic effects on performance and behavior that inadvertently increase an individual’s likelihood of confirming the stereotype. In their seminal research on this phenomenon, demonstrated that when the stereotype that Blacks are low in intelligence is salient, Black students underperform relative to White students on standardized tests.” (Najdowski 564) Therefore if Najdowski were to discuss this research question, she would elaborate on the fact that really the stress that the victim and the person who stereotypes is great, as due to stereotype threat, the victim would subconsciously act in such a way that conforms with the claims of the stereotype, while those who do stereotype will see the pattern, which will in turn make it even the more difficult for them to control this forced habit.

Stereotyping is consisted a learned behavior of what we were taught to believe in without having knowledgeable facts. “Prior research has shown that trait concepts and stereotypes become active automatically in the presence of relevant behavior or stereotyped-group features. Experiments showed that participants whose concept of rudeness was well informed interrupted the experimenter more quickly and frequently than did participants informed with polite-related stimuli. Next, participants for whom an elderly stereotype was aware walked more slowly down the hallway when leaving the experiment than did control participants, consistent with the content of that stereotype. Finally, participants for whom the African American stereotype informed subliminally reacted with more hostility to a vexatious request of the transformer. Implications of this automatic behavior priming effect for self-fulfilling prophecies are discussed, as is whether social behavior is necessarily mediated by conscious choice processes” (Bargh, Chen & Burrows, 1996). Leadership and diversity is an important matter concerning cultural and age relationships too, because most people have been brought up to stereotype without having their facts correct. To say someone’s too old to perform a task is just a matter of speech and maybe even proves that a person’s mentality on social interaction skills are lacking. This holds true for people of different cultures that come

From the time of the caveman, to the time of the selfie stick, human beings have been victims of stereotyping and stereotypes. Whereas the instinct was once an element of the “fight or flight” response in which, in order to protect ourselves from possible harm, we would either confront the issue or flee. Whether or not we did one or the other depended strongly on the visual aspects of the threat and whether or not our pre-existing schema related to said traits encouraged “fight” or “flight”. While stereotyping has been an element of human survival in the past, the extent to which stereotyping is still necessary today is debatable.

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.

If stereotypes are accessible in a particular situation, positive affects should increase, and negative affects should decrease, the stereotyping. However, if counter-stereotypic information is available in that situation, the effect of affective states on stereotyping will be the opposite. In other words, the contextual accessible thoughts can be a moderator between affective states and

For the past century, stereotype threat and self handicapping have been of extreme interest to social psychologists. The reasoning behind why people react in certain ways due to the circumstances they are in is a huge discussion topic that interests the field in big way. Stereotype threat occurs when an individual is at risk of confirming a negative stereotype about them or about one’s group (Steele & Aronson, 1995). Previous research has shown that being the victim of a stereotype threat can actually alter one’s performance (Spencer,Steele, Quinn, 1998). Studies have shown an effect of stereotype on performance in relation to many different domains. One particular experiment done by Spencer, Steele & Quinn (1998) wanted to observe if the stereotype that women have weaker math ability compared to men would hinder math performance. The results showed that being explicitly primed of this stereotype prior to taking a difficult math test led to an impairment in math performance within women compared to men. This suggests that being the victim to a negative stereotype can indeed affect one’s performance. The previously stated evidence shows that negative stereotypes might have a much bigger impact on individuals than we may think.

The American fiction writer, Nancy Kress, once said “A stereotype may be negative or positive, but even positive stereotypes present two problems: They are cliches, and they present a human being as far more simple and uniform than any human being actually is” (Kress). Stereotypes are shown in many different formats including in the news, in politics, in pieces of literature, and more. Stereotypes are the ways we see and classify large groups of people, and they almost always affect us.