The Importance Of Stereotyping

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.

Researchers hypothesized priming subjects to activate the racial stereotype that Blacks are hostile will lead to the conception that ambiguously aggressive behaviours are more aggressive when performed by a Black rather than a White actor. For the second study, 122 White undergraduate students were separated into three conditions: 78 subjects in the judgement condition, 32 in the recognition condition, and 12 in the guess condition. Researchers made use of detectionless processing and attentionless processing. Subjects were asked to identify the location of words presented rapidly. This was done to prevent subjects from identifying the primes. Subjects were exposed to either 20% or 80% of words related to racial stereotypes. Following the priming stage, subjects read a paragraph of an unknown person behaving hostile and rated the target person. Those in the judgement condition were to judge the person they read about. Those in the recognition condition were to identify the items they believed were presented to them in the priming stage. Those in the guess condition were to guess the word they saw in the priming stage. This study was problematic because equating automatic stereotypes with knowledge of a stereotype is inappropriate; knowledge of information does not cause people to practice it. The results of this study suggest that stereotypes have

Schemas are mental structures people use to organize their knowledge about the social world (Akert, Aronson, & Wilson, 2010). The accessibility of schemas makes them easier to retrieve in social situations. Priming is also relevant in how people apply schemas. Researchers in Germany pursued the idea that stereotypes organize as multiple, context-specific schemas that activate only by a combination of category and context information

The overuse of radical stereotyping: developed, encouraged and adjusted by society, can also encourage people to fashion their actions and

A stereotype is “...a fixed, over generalised belief about a particular group or class of people.” (Cardwell, 1996).

Nowadays, everything has been developed by scientists, technologists, and developers, which makes almost everything seem not only convenient, but also people are lazy. Changing technologies, both in communication and transportation have connected every person around the world. People can see many things different from themselves such as cultures, civilization, social life, and human activities. Ordinary humans have to sort things, including people when seeing many various things for remembering. Moreover, in the articles, “See Baby Discriminate” by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, “Don’t Let Stereotypes Warp Your Judgments” by Robert L. Heilbroner, “To Any Would Be Terrorists” by Naomi Shihab Nye, and “Not a Genuine Black Man” by Brian Copeland, the writers discuss about stereotype through their experiences, research, and experiments. The authors show judgments are the main part of the stereotype, which let us racially profile others with discrimination. The brain’s systems work automatically and naturally in order to think from sensory perception. Thus, the way of thought is to classify people and others by using history, appearance, and race because people don’t want to observe the others all the time, to prejudice in some groups, and to divide themselves racially.

The concept of stereotype is defined as “a belief that associates a group of people with certain traits” (Kassin, Fein, & Markus et al., 2008, p. 133), which can influence a person’s thinking process and perception of others as well as the world. Stereotypes are related to other concepts, such as prejudice and discrimination, which strengthen the distortion of people’s reality. Another component of a stereotype includes the concept of outgroup homogeneity effect which is the “tendency to assume that there is greater similarity among members of outgroups than among members of ingroups” (Kassin et al., 2008, p. 135). The concept of outgroup homogeneity effect refers to a misconception of others caused

Staples illustrates how the nature of stereotypes can affect how we perceive others around us in either an excessively admirable light or, in his and many other cases, as barbaric or antagonistic. In his introductory

2. Dunlap, J. (2013). Stereotype threat. In P. L. Mason (Ed.), Encyclopedia of race and racism(2nd ed.). Farmington, MI: Gale. Retrieved from http://proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/login?url=http://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/galerace/stereotype_threat/0?institutionId=4358

However, many of the group-based stereotypes are incorrect and generalizing and it promotes further misunderstandings and prejudice. Prejudice is having a false attitude toward an out-group in comparison to one’s in-group. Prejudiced individuals are prejudging without knowing any information about the “Others” (Rogers and Steinfatt).

An example would be a student who believes all teachers are intimidating and bossy from past experiences, but after having a shy and timid teacher, their view may change their internal schema and stereotype of all teachers being individual. Scientists may want to study the reactions of the student and how he or she will integrate the new schema. Social cognition researchers are also interested to study the regulation of activated schemas. It is widely perceived that the situational activation of schemata is automatic, outside of conscious control. However, the regulation and activation of social schemas is self-regulatory and independently motivated.

Devine (1989) argues that stereotypes are inevitable on the basis that stereotypes and prejudice coexist and that stereotyping occurs automatically. Devine attempts to prove this hypothesis in three experiments. Devine reasons that “as long as stereotypes exist, prejudice will follow.” This hypothesis is rooted in a correlation. Prejudice and stereotypes are related, however there is no clear evidence of causality; Knowledge of a stereotype does not mean an individual agrees with it.

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.