Stereotype - Essay Example

There are many stereotypes a man could encounter in his entire life and the ultimate reason behind all of these could be associated with mistakes with reasoning to the extent that they become fallacies. Here is one example perhaps some people might have heard and is considered a form of stereotype: “Afro-Americans are good singers.” This is clearly a form of stereotype for some important reasons. However, there are also some substantial bases to support this claim. In the music industry, many Afro-Americans have created a name for showcasing their talents in singing.

In fact, the legendary Michael Jackson was among of them who successfully established his identity and became a music icon in the world’s music industry. Furthermore, in reality TV shows for music-related talents such as American Idol and other relevant shows, there are considerable number of Afro-Americans who usually try to make it all the way on top. What is most interesting is that they really are indeed talented as they could play musical instruments and their voice quality is almost comparable or the same with what the classic singer like Whitney Houston showed to the world.

These reasons to support the above claim could either become so strong or flawed. The reason that it might be strong is due to the point that people could support this claim based on the context of actual observation. However, this could also be flawed due to the fact that one must be committing hasty generalization when pointing the above claim. Hasty generalization is a fallacy that would involve employing arguments with specific cases that are not representative enough in order to create an inference about the whole group (Hurley, 2011, p.142). In fact, there are also many Afro-Americans who are not good in singing and having poor voice quality.

In order for the above claim to be valid, one therefore must not only rely on the basis of observation, but should consider conducting statistical inference in order to find out if the actual observation would be representative enough of the general conclusion inferred from the entire population of samples. “Those who wear glasses are smart” is another statement showcasing stereotype. Indeed, there are some people who believe that those who have poor eyesights have worn their eyes out because of excessive reading as an indication of their affinity for learning.

Those people who love to gain knowledge would possibly end up knowledgable and smart, as they would have substantial information. Information could be generated from reading. Thus, reading could increase knowledge and those who do it most of the time are smart, but the problem is that this could probably exhaust their eyes. Thus, it has become a common belief that those who wear glasses are intelligent or smart people. On the other side of the argument, there is a significant fallacy associated with this belief.

In the first place, there are many people who simply have poor eyesights, so they are obliged to wear glasses at some point. However, not all of them could be called smart as how exactly the term would have to be labelled. In this case, the size of the samples, say those who wear glasses, is not clear, and particularly the data associated with their IQ. For this reason, if the sample size is too small to serve as the basis of the conclusion, then hasty generalization is once again made (Sprague, Stuart & Bodary, 2012, p.222). In the above statement, a false cause fallacy could also be committed.

Reading which could make a man smart could substantially be attributed as cause of poor eyesights. However, in reality, there are other remarkable reasons of human eye defects and important causes associated with being smart. In false cause fallacy, the cause is assumed to preced effect, but this in reality does not make sense at all times to establish actual causal relationship (Verderber, Verderber & Sellnow, 2010, p.397). “Fat people are lazy” is another statement involving stereotype.

When the body is too heavy, there is a tendency that a person could not work as fast as those people with healthy and normal body weight. Thus, from common observation, fat people might work slow. If one would associate working slow with laziness then fat people could not be an exemption. However, there are many fat people who are not lazy and in fact, workaholic. Thus, the above statement is another standard illustration of hasty generalization. Furthermore, to think that if fat people work slow make them lazy, is also a standard illustration of false dichotomy.

In the first place, there are many relevant criteria associated with what is lazy or not, which have not only confined in one’s actual work pace. False dichotomy is committed as in the above case, because the premise created prior to the above statement does not necessarily support the conclusion (Govier, 2009, p.382). References Govier, T. (2009). A practical study of argument (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning. Hurley, P. J. (2011). A concise introduction to logic (11th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

Sprague, J., Stuart, D., & Bodary, D. (2012). The speaker’s handbook (10th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning. Verderber, K., Verderber, R. F., & Sellnow, D. D. (2010). Communicate (13th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.