Stereotypes are things that people use to classify or categorize a certain type of group whether it be a group of people, places, or things. Although many people believe that they themselves do not use stereotypes, the study of unconscious bias shows that the average person uses stereotypes all the time without realizing it because of the unconscious mind. Stereotypes are learned at a young age and continue to develop in the mind over time. In fact, research shows that by five years of age many children have ingrained stereotypes already in their minds. It’s not that children choose to accept stereotypes or even that their parents intentionally teach stereotypes to them, but the fact that children’s minds are not yet developed enough to be …show more content…
Some people believe that humans are born with most of their knowledge already inside of their minds, but in reality most of what a person consciously knows is from what they see and learn from the environment around them. Society exposes people to many contradictory ideas about many stereotypical subjects such as race, gender, religion, etc. This makes for a confused mindset. Society speaks aloud about what is right and what is wrong and people try to coin these ideas as their own so that they can feel better about themselves. However, such ideas are only ideals that people have, and that fact does not fool the unconscious mind. This is why humans think so much before they say things. If people let their unconscious mind control their conversations, they would find themselves in a lot of bad situations that they do not want to be in. The unconscious bias explains a lot of people’s inconsistencies in behavior. People are unable to control their biased responses, so they have to rely on their memories to be able to determine what reality is. However, those memories can be deceptive because they can sometimes drift away from the ideal thoughts that people think that they have. As much as one might despise stereotyping, it is something that is ingrained in humans that no one can change and the more that people try to fight those ideas, the stronger they become. Encouraging