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What factors influence the stereotypes found in society
Gender differences in stereotypes
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We live in a world of stereotypes, which are masked in allegory and reinforced by rhetoric. From the ‘continuous lies spewed from silver-tongued politicians’ to the ‘bingo obsessed, highway-hazardous senior citizen,” stereotypes are manifested and reinforced by people of all walks of life, every single day. By analyzing the different aspects of stereotyping of common groups within societies, the negative impact this behavior yields becomes apparent, as relative to one’s perception.
Stereotyping, or the “thought or image about a group of people based on little or no evidence,” is, in all fairness, convenient and efficient (Moore & Parker, 2007, pp. 122-123). By lumping millions of people together in one group and associating them with certain labels, the brain has to work neither as hard nor as long as it would by trying to remember individual characteristics for each person. Stereotyping is also appealing and contagious. When a loved one or close friend engages in this behavior, it can become difficult to identify or refute the generalization, especially since there are typically mutual underlying interests and predispositions in place. Even more compelling is the insatiable media figure who exploits their ability to captivate others through their rhetoric-- or is that a stereotype in itself?
Politicians are generally labeled as “self-serving and corrupt,” constantly spewing euphemisms of their actions and dysphemisms of their opponents (Purple, 2010). Democrats, from the eyes of a Republican, are generally thought of as being radical, liberal, bleeding hearts who feel the government should control everything; from a liberal perspective, Republicans are considered religious, gun-toting, intolerant extremists who love big ...
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...g senior citizens on the roads, there are many more who shatter the mold. In essence, no group that is lumped together by a label is going to invoke the same image to every person within a society, regardless of what reinforcing rhetoric is used, because individual perception is always relative.
Works Cited
Kang, M., & Jones, K. (2007, February). Why do people get tattoos?. Contexts, 6(1), Retrieved from http://ctx.sagepub.com/content/6/1/42 doi: 10.1525/ctx.2007.6.1.42
Moore, B. N., Parker, R. (2007). Critical Thinking (8th ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.
Purple, Matt. (2010, June 21). Crude stereotypes. The American Spectator, Retrieved from http://spectator.org/archives/2010/06/21/crude-stereotypes
Sanbonmatsu, Kira. (2002). Gender stereotypes and vote choice. American Journal of Political Science, 46(1), Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3088412
In the essay The Way We Lie, Stephanie Ericsson writes that “All the ‘isms’-racism, sexism, ageism, et al.-are founded on and fueled by the stereotype and the cliché, which are lies of exaggeration, omission, and ignorance. They are always dangerous. They take a single tree and make it a landscape.” This quote is important due to the fact that stereotypes play a major role in many aspects of our society. In American society we have a tendency to pass judgment on people just because of a pre-existing stereotype that our society has formed on particular groups over the years. American Society tends to create stereotypes because of the simplicity it adds to our lives, but stereotypes can cause us to oversimplify the characteristics of others, encourage prejudice, and can even create many more severe dangers.
A stereotype is defined as ‘an exaggerated and often prejudiced view of a type of person or group of people’ (Novak, Campbell, & Northcott, 2014, pg. 5). Stereotypes often develop from observations/information that tend to not be true. If they turn out to be true then they are exaggerated and distorted. Further, if someone is found who does not fit the stereotype they are considered to be an exception. Some stereotypes positively portray the elderly but most have a negative impact. This can create prejudice and discrimination towards the elderly which can negatively impact their quality of life (Novac et al., 2014).
The modern usage of the word stereotype was first introduced in 1922 by American journalist Walter Lippman in his book Public Opinion. The major thesis of this book is that in a modern democracy political leaders and ordinary citizens are required to make decisions about a variety of complicated matters that they do not understand. “People believe that their conceptions of German soldiers, Belgian priests, or American Klu Klux Klansman for example are accurate representations of the real members of those classes . . . the conception in most cases is actually a stereotype acquired by the individual from some other source other than his direct experience.”(2)
The human race is comprised of a plethora of shapes, sizes, colors, and figures. Some of these images are regarded as ‘distorted’ in dominant culture, but these distortions are what makes every person unique and should be celebrated. Stereotypes, whether positive or negative, take these ‘distortions’ and assign behavioral attributes to them. This assumes that all persons who meet a certain set of physical requirements behave in a similar way. Due to the diversity of the human race, this outcome is highly improbable. Despite this, stereotypes are often used to describe a group of people, usually amplifying a negative trait that may not b...
A stereotype can have multiple meanings, but one of the most prevailing definitions is that it assumes that groups are representable through a consolidated
Fred Edmund Jandt (2003), the word “stereotype” was first used to show the judgments made about individuals on the origin of their racial background. Today the expression is more commonly used to pass on to events made on the basis of a groups association. Psychologists have attempted to give explanations of stereotyping as errors that our brains make in the judgment of other people that are related to those mistakes our brains make in the view of illustration illusions. When information is blurred, the brain frequently reaches the incorrect conclusion. (p.77)
Kosut, M. (2006). An Ironic Fad: The Commodification And Consumption Of Tattoos. The Journal of Popular Culture, 39(6), 1035-1048. Retrieved November 29, 2013, from http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5931.2006.00333.x
Toni Morrison’s short story “Recitatif” deals with the reader's perspective on stereotypes. It allows the reader’s mind to be creative and question who is the African American women and who is the Caucasian women. The short fiction is based on two main characters; Roberta and Twyla. Neither women’s race is discussed in the story but they are, in fact, different. The setting took place in St. Bonny's shelter where both had no other choice but to be placed together. Roberta and Twyla were not fully considered “orphans” because their parents were not dead; one was sick and one was a dancer. Being that they are not actual orphans, many of the others did not want to hangout with them. “Recitatif” was also filled with stereotypical references to
Race comes in various forms however; it is a topic of concern because no matter if a person claims that they are anti-prejudiced, it is impossible for this world to be free from stereotyping them. A stereotype per dictionary.com is a, “set of inaccurate generalizations about a group/race that allows others, outside the group, to categorize them and treat them according to their group/race”, (SITE DICTIONARY.COM). In the story, Recitatif, readers will come across prejudice acts or stereotypes; however, people tend to realize their own stereotypes as they read or learn about someone else’s, hence making it comfortable throughout the story for themselves.
According to Devine (1989), automatic processing involves the unconscious retrieval of obtained associations that develop through memory repetition; this process links with stimulus cues in the environment. The intense nature of automaticity is that an individual cannot escape or try to ignore the process (Devine, 1989). People build and enforce stereotypes through this automatic process and have no conscious control of memory retrievals. Human bodies take a lot of effort to function, but automatic processing requires little effort. People, therefore, mostly rely on automatic thinking, rather than controlled. This is why some researchers argue that automatic processing is why stereotyping is inevitable; because automaticity is easier, it does not mean controlled thinking cannot disband stereotypes (Devine, 1989). Controlled thinking is intentional and requires active participation of an individual. This proce...
A stereotype is defined as “an often unfair and untrue belief that many people have about [an entire group of] people or things with a particular characteristic” (stereotype, n.d.). While not all stereotypes are necessarily negative, the word “stereotype” itself has a negative connotation that it has earned over the course of human history. Stereotyping has been a mental phenomenon that has intrigued psychologists and others alike for many years. There have been questions to whether or not it is an automatic response or a controlled cognitive belief. More specifically, this study addresses the question if a person’s perception of another person or subject influences the automaticity of stereotyping. This is an important subject because it approaches the issue of whether we as humans can control our immediate, initial thoughts, positive or negative, about a person or thing; which ultimately determines our attitude toward the individual or thing, which effects our behavior.
Stereotypes play an important role in today's society and particularly in Propaganda. According to the Webster's Dictionary stereotyping is defined as a fixed conventional notion or conception of an individual or group of people, heldby a number of people. Stereotypes can be basic or complex generalizations which people apply to individuals or groups based on their appearance, behaviour and beliefs. Stereotypes are found everywhere. Though our world seems to be improving in many ways it seems almost impossible to liberate it from stereotypes.
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.
A stereotype is defined as a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing. There are multitudes of stereotypes in our society today ranging from the physical attributes of a person or groups of people to the behaviors of a person or groups of people. According to An Introduction to Logic, “Often the fallacy of hasty generalization can lead to damaging stereotypes made on the basis of just a few examples. Stereotypes about women, religious groups, minorities, ethnic groups, and so forth are often based on this type of reasoning” (Mosser, Ch. 4, pg. 13). Insufficient evidence is often the cause of inaccurate stereotypes and can be detrimental for everyone involved. Throughout my life, I have been placed into three stereotyped categories for example: being a redhead and hot-tempered, being a Christian that hates gays and finally, being married to a black man and will inevitably end up divorced because of the differences within the black and white cultures, these are fallacies that do not have any validity.
Cognitive psychology on the categorization process highlights the explanation for why stereotyping occurs. According to Michigan State University, "People like to, want to, need to categorize the world, both the social and physical world, into preferably neat little groups." [slide 3] This means that people stereotype not because they a rude, but because it is a natural need. By applying all of the group information to all of its members, categorization eventually saves processing time. Stereotyping also satisfies the need to understand and predict the social world. A stereotype contains a general glance at what someone is going to do. By applying a stereotype to a person, a guess can be made on what that person is like. This can lead to either the befriending or dismissing of an individual. As a society that has a constant need to belong, stereotyping can make one feel better about himself. Grouping oneself into a stereotype can make one feel like a part of a whole, a necessary example of a group. Ingroup favorability bias is brought on by this concept. No matter how good or bad someone 's ideas are, there will always be someone who shares them. This extends to always thinking that the idea you hold true is better than someone else 's, which is the definition of ingroup favorability