How many kinds of stereotypes are there

Although people holding this prejudiced attitude do not know all people who were not born in the United States, they dislike them due to their status as foreigners. Can you think of a prejudiced attitude you have held toward a group of people?

How did your prejudice develop? Prejudice often begins in the form of a stereotype —that is, a specific belief or assumption about individuals based solely on their membership in a group, regardless of their individual characteristics. Stereotypes become overgeneralized and applied to all members of a group. We cannot possibly know each individual person of advanced age to know that all older adults are slow and incompetent.

Therefore, this negative belief is overgeneralized to all members of the group, even though many of the individual group members may in fact be spry and intelligent. Another example of a well-known stereotype involves beliefs about racial differences among athletes. As Hodge, Burden, Robinson, and Bennett point out, Black male athletes are often believed to be more athletic, yet less intelligent, than their White male counterparts.

These beliefs persist despite a number of high profile examples to the contrary. Sadly, such beliefs often influence how these athletes are treated by others and how they view themselves and their own capabilities. Whether or not you agree with a stereotype, stereotypes are generally well-known within in a given culture Devine, Sometimes people will act on their prejudiced attitudes toward a group of people, and this behavior is known as discrimination.

As a result of holding negative beliefs stereotypes and negative attitudes prejudice about a particular group, people often treat the target of prejudice poorly, such as excluding older adults from their circle of friends.

An example of a psychologist experiencing gender discrimination is found in the life and studies of Mary Whiton Calkins.

Calkins was given special permission to attend graduate seminars at Harvard at that time in the late s, Harvard did not accept women and at one point was the sole student of the famous psychologist William James. Have you ever been the target of discrimination? If so, how did this negative treatment make you feel?

The discussion of stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination most often uses negative and problematic thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. However, people can hold positive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors toward individuals based on group membership; for example, they would show preferential treatment for people who are like themselves—that is, who share the same gender, race, or favorite sports team.

Why are these aspects of an unfamiliar person so important? Although these secondary characteristics are important in forming a first impression of a stranger, the social categories of race, gender, and age provide a wealth of information about an individual. This information, however, often is based on stereotypes.

We may have different expectations of strangers depending on their race, gender, and age. What stereotypes and prejudices do you hold about people who are from a race, gender, and age group different from your own? Find out your implicit associations by taking an Implicit Association Test here! What are some stereotypes of various racial or ethnic groups?

Racism exists for many racial and ethnic groups. Mexican Americans and other Latino groups also are targets of racism from the police and other members of the community. For example, when purchasing items with a personal check, Latino shoppers are more likely than White shoppers to be asked to show formal identification Dovidio et al. In one case of alleged harassment by the police, several East Haven, Connecticut, police officers were arrested on federal charges due to reportedly continued harassment and brutalization of Latinos.

This statement undermines the important issue of racial profiling and police harassment of Latinos, while belittling Latino culture by emphasizing an interest in a food product stereotypically associated with Latinos. Have you witnessed racism toward any of these racial or ethnic groups?

Are you aware of racism in your community? Sexism is prejudice and discrimination toward individuals based on their sex. Typically, sexism takes the form of men holding biases against women, but either sex can show sexism toward their own or their opposite sex. Like racism, sexism may be subtle and difficult to detect. Common forms of sexism in modern society include gender role expectations, such as expecting women to be the caretakers of the household.

For example, women are expected to be friendly, passive, and nurturing, and when women behave in an unfriendly, assertive, or neglectful manner they often are disliked for violating their gender role Rudman, Research by Laurie Rudman finds that when female job applicants self-promote, they are likely to be viewed as competent, but they may be disliked and are less likely to be hired because they violated gender expectations for modesty.

Sexism can exist on a societal level such as in hiring, employment opportunities, and education. Have you ever experienced or witnessed sexism? Why do you think there are differences in the jobs women and men have, such as more women nurses but more male surgeons Betz, ?

People often form judgments and hold expectations about people based on their age. These judgments and expectations can lead to ageism, or prejudice and discrimination toward individuals based solely on their age. Typically, ageism occurs against older adults, but ageism also can occur toward younger adults.

Think of expectations you hold for older adults. Ageism is widespread in U. So where did they get those ideas, assuming that most of them had never met anyone from Turkey? For example, organizations that preach contempt for other races and praise for their own is an example of a blatant bias.

And scarily, these blatant biases tend to run in packs: People who openly hate one outgroup also hate many others. To illustrate this pattern, we turn to two personality scales next. For example, someone high in SDO would likely be upset if someone from an outgroup moved into his or her neighborhood. For example, researchers have found that those who score higher on SDO are usually lower than average on tolerance, empathy, altruism, and community orientation.

In general, those high in SDO have a strong belief in work ethic—that hard work always pays off and leisure is a waste of time. People higher on SDO tend to choose and thrive in occupations that maintain existing group hierarchies police, prosecutors, business , compared to those lower in SDO, who tend to pick more equalizing occupations social work, public defense, psychology.

The point is that SDO—a preference for inequality as normal and natural—also predicts endorsing the superiority of certain groups: men, native-born residents, heterosexuals, and believers in the dominant religion.

This means seeing women, minorities, homosexuals, and non-believers as inferior. Understandably, the first list of groups tend to score higher on SDO, while the second group tends to score lower. For example, the SDO gender difference men higher, women lower appears all over the world.

At its heart, SDO rests on a fundamental belief that the world is tough and competitive with only a limited number of resources. Thus, those high in SDO see groups as battling each other for these resources, with winners at the top of the social hierarchy and losers at the bottom see Table 1.

That is, RWA endorses respect for obedience and authority in the service of group conformity Altemeyer, Those high in RWA may equally dislike the outgroup member moving into the neighborhood but for different reasons. RWA respects group unity over individual preferences, wanting to maintain group values in the face of differing opinions.

Despite its name, though, RWA is not necessarily limited to people on the right conservatives. Like SDO, there does appear to be an association between this personality scale i. Extreme scores on RWA predict biases against outgroups while demanding in-group loyalty and conformity Notably, the combination of high RWA and high SDO predicts joining hate groups that openly endorse aggression against minority groups, immigrants, homosexuals, and believers in non-dominant religions Altemeyer, Fortunately, old-fashioned biases have diminished over the 20th century and into the 21st century.

These subtle biases are unexamined and sometimes unconscious but real in their consequences. They are automatic, ambiguous, and ambivalent, but nonetheless biased, unfair, and disrespectful to the belief in equality. Most people like themselves well enough, and most people identify themselves as members of certain groups but not others. Logic suggests, then, that because we like ourselves, we therefore like the groups we associate with more, whether those groups are our hometown, school, religion, gender, or ethnicity.

We'll start by discussing some common stereotypes about people from the United States. While there may be specific individuals that live in the United States and fit these stereotypes, not every American fits into these assumptions.

As for negative stereotypes about Americans, the list is far longer. Americans are stereotypically considered to be:. It can be upsetting to read these negative stereotypes, but it's important to remember that they come from generalized assumptions.

Just because a stereotype exists doesn't mean that it is true. Before reading this article, you may not have realized that there are positive stereotypes because when you hear the word "stereotype," you probably associate it with a negative connotation.

However, positive stereotypes could still be considered negative because, by nature, a stereotype leads you to believe something about someone that may not necessarily be true. Some examples of positive stereotypes about gay men are that they are assumed to be:. If you'd never met a gay man before, you might wrongfully assume that he should be friendly all the time or ready to join you on a shopping trip to the mall to help you pick out the next oh-so-cute dress.

These stereotypes lead to unrealistic expectations. Gay men are individuals just like everyone else, which means that:. So, if you truly believe these things about gay men, then you may be disappointed to meet one and find out he's an individual just like everyone else.

Maybe he might like to shop, but he may not be so physically fit. Or maybe he loves fashion but hates people. The reality is that you can't group people into a box and use that box to define them. Although these stereotypes sound positive, they can be negative when others treat women a certain way because of them. Take, for example, the idea that all women should be motherly. If there is a crying baby in the room, people may expect the women to tend to it.

However, not all women are motherly and nurturing. Some may not even like children. Some women never desire to be a mother, and they don't feel the need to tend to children when they hear them cry. While it might be easy to assume that all women are meant to be mothers, it's better not to make that assumption.

Additionally, while it may sound nice to assume that women are naturally more deserving of respect than men, the fact is that all humans are deserving of the same respect, regardless of gender or any other type of variation. Sadly, as many of us want to remain open-minded regarding other people and their cultures, we are all predisposed to believing stereotypes.

It's wired into our subconscious. Social psychologists believe we tend to subscribe to negative stereotypes because we all need to feel like we belong to our particular "faction" or group. We want to, by nature, feel good about our "group," and so we judge anyone who isn't a member.

Stereotypes are also "confirmed" by our interactions with other people. For instance, a person of one race may believe that all people of another race will be hostile toward him simply because of his race. One day, he meets a person of the other race for the first time, looking angry. It could be because the person just fought with his wife or had a rough day at work, but our original person will assume the aggressive look is meant for him, which thereby "confirms" the negative stereotype he holds.

In this example, the first man's bias is understandable but still incorrect. He may have had other negative interactions with people of the other race in the past, or he may have grown up hearing things from his family or seeing things on TV wherein a person of the other race was not nice to a person of his race.

So, with these ideas already in his mind upon meeting the angry person, he thinks to himself that the stereotype is true when, in fact, he has only met one person.