Are stereotypes always negative?

Are stereotypes accurate?

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This definition clearly reflects the popular perception of stereotypes as inaccurate and negative overgeneralizations. The only problem is that this popular perception is mostly wrong. Sure, there are people like the fellow in the cartoon, but most of us who have stereotypical thoughts (which is to say, all of us) have very different notions of groups we stereotype than the stereotyped stereotype-holder in the cartoon. The specifics are discussed below. In the meantime, here is a better definition of "stereotype", one deliberately non-judgmental.

"Specific traits attributed to people based on group membership"

Research Summary:

Research studies conducted by cognitive and social psychologists reveal that stereotypes are often contextually based, meaning that we have different stereotypes for different social contexts (see Rupert, 2000). In addition, psychologists generally agree that stereotypes:

• may be accurate or false.
• may describe positive or negative characteristics
• may be intentional or automatic
• may be consciously endorsed or rejected (i.e., may or may not result in prejudice)
• may or may not have an impact on behavior (e.g., discrimination)
• have both positive and negative functions
• may have either positive or negative outcomes

Sometimes they are. For example, men are stereotyped as being violent (relative to women) and data consistently show that a disproportionate number of men commit violent crimes. Sometimes they're not. For example, African American men are often stereotyped as "drug users", but data (from community studies that protect the identity of respondents) show that a higher percentage of White men report illegal drug use than Black men. Often, we don't really know. The bottom line is that the existence of a stereotype not only doesn't tell us anything useful about any individual, it doesn't even tell us anything useful about group differences. All they tell us is that there is a common shared perception about a group difference. The perception may be either accurate or false.

As long as we're not talking about outcomes, stereotypes can describe both positive and negative characteristics, and it is generally true that all groups have both positive and negative stereotypes attached to them. For example, in the United States, the White racial majority group is stereotyped as both smart (positive characteristic) and unathletic (negative characteristic). Stereotypes of Asians as "hard working" and African Americans as "athletic" are also considered to be positive stereotypes, but these and other positive stereotypes can still be damaging to the members of the target group.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11