Stereotype and Prejudice

When we use stereotypes, we are criticizing someone, for example, when we say all police officers are corrupt, all men who aren’t into sports are gay or all blonde women are dumb. Stereotyping is a result of incompetence on distorted information accepted as a fact without question. A stereotype is simply a widely-held belief that an individual is a member of a certain group based upon characteristics. Stereotyping can be positive, for example, all Blacks are good at sports, all Asians are good at math or French people are romantic. Stereotypes can also help identify how to interact with each other, for example Canadians are exceptionally polite. Either way stereotyping is morally wrong and judgmental. If your group is positively stereotyped in an area, then you can endure a lot more frustration and difficultly before you assume or infer that you don't belong in that domain (Steele, 2010). This paper will focus on the origin of stereotyping, how stereotypes affect judgement and behavior and will explore profiling versus stereotyping.

People have a natural tendency to stereotype, given to them the minute they can form ideas. These stereotypes are seen as wrong by the twenty-first century society of America, something humanity should fight within. They are seen as immoral, a human instinct to be fought. Stereotyping is generally viewed as a negative thing: many people even claim it’s evil, a way to oppress those different from others. It is commonly thought to have a major influence on the way people perceive others, often influencing their perceptions negatively, thus being seen as having a bad effect on the way people view other cultures or ideas. However, other people claim that stereotyping can have a positive influence over the lives of others, and is not innately bad. Thus begging the question; is stereotyping inherently bad, or has it done some good for the world too?

Prejudice is the preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience. In

Right outside a corner store, next to a stoplight, or at a park, there may be a homeless person asking for some sort of help; it can either be for a place to stay, money, or food. Many people are used to categorizing a group of people by a solo characteristic, known as a stereotype. Misconception, on the other hand, is a conclusion of someone or something that is wrong because it is based on faulty thinking or facts. Stereotypes and misconceptions appear to be similar, however, these two are not. A misconception is formed from having a stereotype. Stereotypes and misconceptions are built because many try, but are unable to understand a person or a group, or are just simply unwilling to understand the person or group. There are over a million

To many people, both inside and outside of the psychology field, stereotypes are seen as negative overstatements about individuals and groups of people, which may be used to justify discrimination (Allport, 1954/1979). However, there are distinctions to be made between stereotypes and the act of stereotyping. Stereotyping is a natural process that can actually be beneficial. This process has been characterized by different cognitive processes, such as perception and memory, and social theories, like social cognitive theory and self-categorization theory. Stereotypes, on the other hand, are the product of the stereotyping process and are judgements made about individuals or groups. Even though stereotyping is a natural process performed by

This is a paper on stereotypes and stereotype threats.Stereotypes are made about everyone and everything. In Inzlicht and King's (2010)research there is a thing called stereotype threat. Stereotype threat is basically a person fearing they will be judged on their stereotype no matter who they ar(Inzlicht,King,2010). A stereotype is a preconceived notion made about a race,gender,or culture. People unconsciously feed into their stereotype negativity, this is known as stereotype threat. This paper is about stereotype threats and how people feed into them.

In this modern world, prejudice is still a universal problem we still have yet to overcome. Although it is true that our society is much less prejudiced than it was 40-50 years ago, we are still struggling to create racial harmony in a world that is so diverse in terms of racial group, sexual orientations, ethnicity, nationality, religions, and so on. I think the core of prejudice comes from stereotyping, which is the generalization of motives, characteristics, or behavior to an entire group of people. In the world where media propaganda is ubiquitous, often times most stereotypes are not formed on valid experiences, instead they are based on images publicized by the mass media, or even created within our heads after seeing and hearing examples from many different sources, like movies, or even hearsay. Stereotyping is more powerful than we think, because it allows those false pictures to control our thinking that leads us to assign uniform characteristics to any person in a group, without consideration of the actual difference between members of that particular group.

There are three major perspectives on stereotypes: Psychodynamic perspective, sociocultural perspectives and Cognitive perspectives. Psychodynamic perspective argues that stereotypes serve intra-psychic needs - protect self against anxiety (ego defense mechanisms); self-esteem benefits to viewing outgroup negatively. If stereotypes are to change, alternatives must be supplied for protecting against anxiety. Sociocultural argues that stereotypes are made by society and that for stereotypes to change new stereotypes need to be made. Cognitive Perspectives suggest that categorization is fundamental - simplifies, organizes, allows predictability. Stereotypes guide information processing to produce a bias that maintains the status quo. Attend to, notice stereotype-consistent information, make stereotype-consistent inferences, and recall stereotype-consistent information better, and so on.

Everyday humans are affected by negative stereotyping. Stereotyping can have lasting effects on a person. Some people feel like the odd person walking down the street do to stereotyping. Some of the negative effects of stereotyping are inability to focus, performing poorly, and falling into harsh stereotyping.

Modern day stereotypes and prejudice only help to nationalize the hysteria and make it appear like less of a problem and more like entertainment. This can be seen, specifically, with the current Syrian Refugee Crisis occurring in the United States. Walter Kirn, an American novelist and literary critic, stated that ‘‘Everyone loves a witch hunt as long as it’s someone else’s witch being hunted.’’ (Kirn, Walter). Thus, proving that the Crucible was also looked upon as daily entertainment and the Syrian Refugee Crisis. Society has become more susceptible to hysteria since the Salem Witch Trials because of it’s contentment.

As humans, we judge everyone. When we look at someone we distinguish who they are through the color of their skin, hair, and the overall way that they look. So when you see someone they have already been categorized in your head sometimes without even knowing it. The problem with this is people are identified by their characteristics physically, and not their character, personally. By doing this we create opinions of others based on stereotypes.

False rape accusations can be incredibly destructive to the lives of those who are accused. As such, it is important that each case is investigated to the fullest extent possible and that the situations remain disclosed to the public until a verdict is reached. The idea of "innocent until proven guilty" must always be protected in our society; Allowing any case to ignore this philosophy is detrimental to freedom and due process all over the country. However, it is also very important to make sure that women and men can feel safe to report if they have been raped. People should not be shamed for reporting a rape, but they often are. Unfortunately, even the most cherished of people can turn out to be sexual predators. For example,

Stereotyping and discrimination are very deeply ingrained in American culture. Even though there have been movements taken to combat stereotyping and discrimination such as the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Rights movement, and the Black Lives Matter Movement, it still exists. This raises the question of, how do we end it? While there is no definite answer there is a way to avoid stereotyping and discrimination. The three essayists Bharati Mukherjee, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Brent Staples and show that by learning about stereotyping, people can also learn how to change themselves to avoid discrimination based on stereotypes. By comparing and contrasting these essayists experiences as well as outside research to show the theme of why people

The denotation of stereotyping itself is comprised of a derogatory attitude that people hold against or towards individual’s within a specific group. Stereotyping has always been a part of humanity’s nature to judge because of the societal perception that people constantly use to analyze and classify things. It is an everyday habit, that has highly influenced society’s character towards people that belong to different groups, more particularly, people’s “age, gender, race, religion, etc”(Chen, Nov. 26, 2017). Stereotyping is a proclivity that has been around for thousands of years, and it is still prominently vivid in society today. No corner of the world has been left untouched by this intangible thing because stereotypes are used on

Stereotyping is a huge problem in society, specifically in the workplace. We are living in a social world that provides us with a lot of complex information and because our capacity to process such information is limited, we have developed ways to simplify it. One way is by social categorization, which is how stereotyping occurs. Stereotyping is the process of using a few observable characteristic to assign people to a preconceived social category, and then assigning less observable traits to those persons based on their membership in the group (McShane 1999, p.151). In essence, when we generalize individuals based on sub-groups and come up with an assumption and judgment before giving the individual a chance to show us who they are, we are stereotyping. Stereotypes are used in various situations and can be positive or negative. Regardless of the type of stereotypes used, it greatly impacts our social interaction and the way we perceive others. So, in what ways can stereotypes be helpful or not helpful to individuals and the organization’s productivity and goals?