Prejudice and discrimination

Definitions of stereotypes

What are stereotypes?

Stereotypes

A very important factor that can intervene in the process of impression perception is that of stereotyping. Stereotypes can blinker people's judgments, leading them to focus on certain pieces of 'evi­dence' and to overlook other, contradictory 'evidence'.

Despite the widespread use of the term 'stereotypes', there is no real consensus among social psychologists as to exactly what they are.

Stereotypes are grossly oversimplified and overgeneralized abstractions about groups of people and are usually highly inaccurate although they may contain a grain of truth. (Pennington 1986: 90)

A stereotype refers to those folk beliefs about the attributes characterizing a social category on which there is substantial agreement.

(Mackie 1973: 435; cited by Schneider 2004: 16)

Stereotyping has three characteristics: the categorization of persons, a con­sensus on attributed traits, and a discrepancy between attributed traits and actual traits.

(Secord and Backman 1964: 66; cited by Schneider 2004: 16)

[A stereotype is] a positive or negative set of beliefs held by an individual about the characteristics of a group of people. It varies in its accuracy, the extent to which it captures the degree to which the stereotyped group mem­bers possess these traits, and the extent to which the set of beliefs is shared by others.

(Jones 1997: 170; cited by Schneider 2004: 17)

Stereotypes are qualities perceived to be associated with particular groups or categories of people. (Schneider 2004: 24)

Stereotypes can be conceived of as processes which have the function of simplifying judgement and which occur in situations characterized by lit­tle information, high complexity and pressure of time. [...] They are thus tools for the management of one's environment with more or less distorting effects.

(Schafer 1994: 461; translated by Franklin)

According to Schneider (2004: 24, 562), stereotypes are simply gen­eralizations about groups of people, and people use them on a regular basis. Then, having identified the likely groups, people frequently infer certain features for the target audience, such as their expected amount of prior knowledge, topics that will be of interest/ relevance to them, and their ideological beliefs and/or assumptions. This kind of generalizing is thus an integral part of our everyday lives.

Stereotyping is often associated with prejudice and/or discrimin­ation, these concepts are interrelated but not equivalent.

Prejudice can be defined as the set of affective reactions we have toward people as a function of their category memberships.

(Schneider 2004: 27)

A stereotype is a group of beliefs about persons who are members of a par­ticular group, whereas prejudice can better be thought of as an attitude, usu­ally negative, towards members of a group. (Smith and Bond 1998: 184-5)

Discrimination is the treatment of a person or a group of people unfairly or differently because of their membership of a particular social group.

(Chryssochoou 2004: 36)

Whereas prejudice represents the affective or emotional reaction to social groups, stereotypes are the cognitive manifestation of prejudice, and discrimination is the behavioral manifestation of prejudice. Using this model, a person's negative attitude toward a group [...] may be conceptualized as:

Negative stereotype: members of Group X are lazy, unreliable and slovenly. Prejudiced attitude: I don't like (people who belong to) Group X. Discrimination: I prefer to exclude them from the neighbourhood, avoid hiring them etc.

(Jones: 2002: 4)

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