Stereotyping around us - Essay Example

Stereotyping around Us by I was growing up building stereotypes about neighbor countries since I was a little girl. For example, Egyptians seemed to us good in education, the same way as Americans perceive Chinese. Lebanese were always thought to be good in marketing. Kuwaitis were perceived as people loving to show off. So when I came to the United Stated I was really wondering what stereotypes Americans have regarding Saudis. One of my University tutors suggested that all Saudis were rich and wealthy, however I objected that only rich could afford studying abroad.

And it did not mean that all the people are equally rich. Thus, stereotyping is a dangerous thing, as it makes us judge about all the members of certain group (race, nationality, profession) basing on the information about several representatives of that group. However, it is claimed that stereotypes exist in order to make our lives better and more comfortable. We simply do not have time to receive all the information about certain phenomena, analyzing it ourselves and making judgments. In order to save time society has invented stereotypes which allow passing concentrated information from one person to another.

For example, it works with nationalities in a simple way, due to stereotypes we know that all Canadians are polite, Brazilians like to have fun, German are serious and punctual. But not all the stereotypes are positive, unfortunately, and some may hurt dignity of representatives of certain nation (Rogier & Yzerbut, 1999). Stereotypes start acting before mind starts working. Stereotypes leave imprints on our perceptions before this perceptions get to the analytical part of the brain. If a person has solid experience and is not prone to trust all the new information he will critically asses stereotypes and somehow compare it with existing knowledge.

But in most cases people think that stereotypes are trustworthy and accept this information as reasonable. This can lead to building further stereotypes and seeing world in a distorted way in general. It is absolutely superficial to judge all 1 billion of Chinese as academically gifted or viewing all the Kuwaiti as showing off, isn`t it? Therefore, stereotypes must be thought over, analyzed critically and only then taken into consideration. ReferencesRogier, A., & Yzerbyt, V. (1999). Social attribution, correspondence bias, and the emergence of stereotypes, Swiss Journal of Psychology, 58 (4), 233–240.