Are stereotypes harmful?

Many researchers have also taken such a view, arguing that stereotypes are by nature harmful because they lead to the ignoring of the individu­ality of individual members of other cultures and create expectations and self-fulfilling prophecies (Gudykunst 2004) to the detriment of the individual concerned. It is argued that they influence the way in which information is processed and remembered and that such processes may well be based on little or no sound knowledge or experience of the individual or group concerned. At the worst, it can lead to prejudice. However, Smith and Bond (1998: 185-6) point out that 'this liberal dis­taste for stereotyping was held by many social scientists and reinforced by the cultural emphasis on personal uniqueness characteristic of the individualist societies where most research into stereotypes is con­ducted', an observation which can be viewed as a more general warning about the problems which can be caused by the culture-centredness of much research.

One of the major problems with stereotypes is that they easily take on an essentialist character, with the result that group members are treated as having certain invariable and fixed properties, and as being essentially different from members of other groups.

Stereotyping is simply another word for overgeneralization. The differ­ence, however, is that stereotyping carries with it an ideological position. Characteristics of the group are not only overgeneralized to apply to each member of the group, but they are also taken to have some exaggerated nega­tive or positive value. These values are then taken as arguments to support social or political relationships in regard to members of those groups.

For example, it is clear that the sense of time urgency is characteristic of many of the residents of Asia's urban capitals, such as Tokyo, Hong Kong, Seoul, or Singapore. It would become an overgeneralization to simply assume that, because someone was a resident of one of these cities, he or she would show a constant sense of time urgency. It becomes stereo­typing to assume that this is a particularly good or bad quality of that person upon the basis of his or her membership in the group of residents of that city.

Stereotyping is a way of thinking that does not acknowledge internal dif­ferences within a group, and does not acknowledge exceptions to its general rules or principles. Ideologies are largely based on stereotypical thinking, or, to put it the other way around, stereotypes are largely ideological. There is usually a good bit of accurate cultural observation which underlies stereo­types; it is not the truth of those observations which is the problem. The problem is that stereotypes blind us to other, equally important aspects of a person's character or behavior. Stereotypes limit our understanding of human behavior and of intercultural discourse because they limit our view of human activity to just one or two salient dimensions and consider those to be the whole picture. Furthermore, they go on ideologically to use that limited view of individuals and of groups to justify preferential or discrim­inatory treatment by others who hold greater political power.

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