The Pros And Cons Of Stereotypes

741 Words3 Pages
Register to read the introduction…

This image or the notion about the person helps us interact with him/her better. Thus, in a case like this, without our stereotypes, we might be completely blank about the other person and may end up on bad terms with them. Another advantage of a stereotype is that it enables us to respond rapidly to situations because we may have had a similar experience …show more content…

By dividing the world into discrete categories, stereotyping fosters an “US VS THEM” mentality amongst people. When we stereotype, we don’t use the word “YOU”, instead we use “THEY”, that is where the problem with stereotyping arises since now, we aren’t addressing the particular person we intend to, rather his/her whole community, for instance, on seeing a woman driving not-so-good, and saying that women are bad drivers, would be a bad stereotype since you are generalizing the statement for the whole community, which certainly might not be true. A famous study of racial stereotyping was published by Katz and Braly in 1933 when they reported the results of a questionnaire completed by students at Princeton University in the USA. The university students were given a list of nationalities and ethnic groups (e.g. Irish, Germans etc.), and a list of 84 personality traits. They were asked to pick out five or six traits which they thought were typical of each group. The Result: there was considerable agreement in the traits selected. White Americans, for example, were seen as industrious, progressive and ambitious. African Americans were seen as lazy, ignorant and musical. It was observed that participants were quite ready to rate ethnic groups even if they had no personal contact with