Racial Stereotypes Include Peoples Perspectives about Certain Racial - Essay Example

Self-deception Stereotypes occur when people tend to harbor definite feelings about specific groups of people regarding their culture or social status. Such ideas or feelings originate from generally inaccurate assumptions of such groups which are derived from overgeneralizing common traits found in some members of the groups. Based on this definition, racial stereotypes include people’s perspectives about certain racial or ethnic groups which are generally false or unfavorable. Stereotyping others origin from the tendency to consider things in categories so that things can be grouped according to their common characteristics as it helps people to study about them or communicate with them. For instance, there is a tendency to believe that African Americans are generally good basketball players. Although this is a positive stereotyping, this also indicates that people will also indulge in negative stereotypes (Zastrow & Kirst-Ashman, 220). One important influence is the media as often news articles are biased towards certain communities like the blacks, Hispanics or the Jewish. In order to gain viewership from the majority groups, media often focuses on crime committed by the minorities as viewers would better respond to this. Thus, media perpetuates racial stereotyping by indicating blacks are more crime prone than the whites. It is not always true that people consider all the factors before making judgmental decisions in a rational way. Robert B. Cialdini suggests that people are often restricted by time or distance and so they tend to make their decisions based on cognitive shortcuts known as judgmental heuristics. According to Cialdini, “we must very often use our sterotypes, our rules of thumb, to classify things according to a few key features and then to respond without thinking when one or another of these trigger features is present” (Triche, 18). Racial stereotyping occurs not from judging one individual but by attributing certain characteristics to a group of people. It is based on irrational knowledge collected from various sources. Therefore, although stereotyping can lead to cognitive shortcuts they often lead to false results. Stereotyping hinders development of human thought and social progress. Stereotyping involves cognitive component, i.e. ideas that people connect with a certain group or community based on their culture and society. This process of stereotyping includes “encoding and storage of stereotype concepts, the selection and activation of these concepts into working memory and their application in judgments and behaviours” (Amodio, 675). The temporal lobe and inferior frontal gyrus support semantic memory, object memory, retrieval and conceptual activation – all of which lead to stereotyping (Amodio, 675). Horribilizing occurs when people arrive at conclusions even before studying all the data that have been obtained to understand the real incidents. Very often people get carried away by anything that seem as wrong to them and judge it based on prejudices, and then end up with accusations that are blown out of proportions thus exaggerating the crime (Day, 110). By horribilizing someone, people may become stressful which can be alleviated with more benign thoughts like unfortunate, sad or painful (Eliot & Breo, 107). Anything can be horribilized like physical pain. Pain often acts as hindrance in the context of thought processes, behavioral patterns and even relationship with others. Pain that is often a result of injury gives us the signal that our part of the body requires attention. However, it is how we horribilize pain that decides the intensity of pain. For instance, if we constantly focus on the pain then we feel its severity. On the other hand, if we engage our mind in other interesting activities then we may momentarily forget about the physical sensation that is pain. It is a well known fact that boxers often fail to notice their physical pain during contests since they remain absorbed in defending themselves from their opponents. Moreover not every person horribilizes pain in the same manner. While for some people, pain can be experienced in a detached manner there are others who consider pain as excruciating and horrible. Therefore, pain’s intensity and duration depend on the level of horribilizing it (Kumar & Kumar, 2). Often we connect some kinds of actions to specific group of people and horribilize anyone who performs in the same manner to label them like ‘woman driver’ or ‘stupid jerk’. When some men prefer to drive slow, we tend to label them as driving like women as we consider women drivers as slow. Instead of changing our opinion that men can be slow drivers too we tend to stick to our preconceived idea that women and not men are slow drivers. People more often than not blame others for any problems that occur to them. It is a way of refusing to accept responsibility for their actions and choices. When people are too much focused on blaming others rather than finding the flaws within themselves, then they are inclined to feel powerless and helpless. People can have more control of their lives if they attempt to take responsibilities for their own actions and choices. When we blame others we inevitable give that person the power to obstruct our progress in life. For instance, when we blame a person it becomes obvious that we want that person to change and we will not change unless that person will change. Therefore, it is not wise to give others so much control over our lives. Very often men and women blame each other when relationships fail instead of each looking within themselves to find their contributions towards the failed relationship. Men should not expect women to refrain from questioning if they stay out till late at night. Similarly, women should not expect men to remain at home if they keep on nagging and fussing. Only if people will learn to admit their own mistakes they will try to improve those areas (Holmes, 372). 2. From very young age people tend to blame others for their actions and choices and for most of the times the reason is to avoid getting punished. It is also true in cases when the child who is blaming is clearly the one who is to blame. Although such guileless efforts to appear innocent is extremely common among young children, the truth is that very often than not people do not outgrow this blaming habit even when they grow up. Such tendency to avoid taking responsibility for own actions is not a positive trait and rather it is a shameful behavior to blame or criticize others whenever anything goes wrong. There are many psychological reasons behind blaming others. Often people do not want to endure the burden of feeling bad for something and so they blame others so that they project their bad feelings into them. It is like by focusing on the bad things of others people can stay away from feeling bad about themselves. Also, when people lose control of a situation they tend to blame others for the problem out of fear. People also tend to blame others for the simple reason that they do not want to admit that they can do anything wrong. Often people blame traffic jam for their tardiness instead of admitting that they should have taken traffic jam into account and so should have left home earlier. Blaming others also depends on the level of affection or detachment in a relationship. When two people have mutual affection there will be high level of love, trust and understanding between them. This will also lead one person to take the blame on himself even when he knows that the other person is at fault. In this case, instead of blaming the other person, we tend to take up responsibilities for even those things which we have not done. It is common occurrence that mothers often defend their children from their fathers’ wrath when they have done something wrong. On the other hand, in relationships where there is lack of affection and rather there is detachment then people will tend to blame others for actions that are their own. In this case, people feel happy to put the burden of guilt on the other person rather than taking up responsibilities for their own actions or choices. People seem to inflate their self-image when they blame others. People who have an inflated ego tend to believe that they cannot do anything wrong and whatever they can do are always superior to what others can do. They also believe that they are always right and others are always wrong. These people suffer from over confidence and hence they do not judge the risks of their actions. People with inflated self-image do not give credit to others who do their jobs properly or if someone has done anything better than them, and instead they tend to blame others for anything that goes wrong because like it is already said they do not believe that they can do anything wrong. When these people horribilize others, they are actually pampering their inflated self-esteem. One example can be a homeless man giving away money to others. A study has shown that people will show anger at that man and walk away while there are others who will give their own money to the man. People stereotype homeless people so those who need money and so they should be begging for money. If the opposite happens, then people will feel their ego hurt and will either walk away or will give away own money (“What if the homeless gave you money?”). 3. The concept of self-deception indicates that problems cannot be solved in the real manner since people do not accept the real problems. For instance, in an office there can be lack of good communication between the boss and his subordinates simple because the boss is suffering from self-deception that he has open-door policy when that is actually not the case. In spite of constant complaints from his employees, the problem cannot be solved unless the boss realizes his self-deception and addresses the problem of poor communication properly (Fairholm, 107). It is assumed that people project themselves in the manner that they see and treat others. In the context of self-deception it is possible to avoid collusion by genuinely interacting with others. For this, “we simply have to look to ourselves first, rather than see problems only in others” (Fairholm, 107). 4. Stereotyping involves a sympathetic or empathetic approach towards others. While the empathy implies understanding the pain or suffering of others because of having experience of the same, sympathy showing concern for others and providing assurance. Every person has own insecurities and vulnerabilities and according to Dr Brene Brown people can move ahead in life only by embracing their vulnerabilities. Based on interviews she noticed that people who feel worthy of being loved are the ones who have a strong sense of love and belonging. For them being vulnerable made them beautiful rather than being comfortable (Brown, 2010). Vulnerability is often seen as sign of weakness when actually it is psychological strength of a person. It takes courage to admit own fault and weaknesses, and once it is done we can connect with others and share our love and joy. However, leaders need to project confidence to convince people that they can manage things. Vulnerability does not mean exposing all shortcomings of the self. According to Bob Rosen (2013) vulnerability is not weakness as it is simply the act of accepting that we are equally flawed and imperfect like everyone else. Since people want leaders to be one of them therefore it is important that leaders accept their vulnerabilities so that people can relate with them (Rosen, 148). Golden Mean of Aristotle indicates moral behavior which is between two extremes of excess and deficiency. According to Aristotle courage is one such behavior that is between coward (escaping from risks) and recklessness (taking unnecessary risks) (Gensler et al., 27). The way of perceiving others depends on our viewing the situation from a specific angle and ignoring others, which is again influenced by several factors. To learn the intent of others we question ourselves about them. For instance, we tend to believe that people who are efficient in solving problems have leadership qualities with the ability to control situations (Hayes, 34). There are several ways to know whether a person is authentic. One thing is that such people will embrace vulnerability by admitting their flaws. They are also open-minded with the tendency to share their views and opinions with the world. 5. Collusion happens when two people blame each other and none of them is ready to accept their own faults. Such incidents are common in real life and they often lead to broken relationships. Lack of empathy and understanding is the common root of collusion. In such case the basic thing that happens is two people are constantly “trading guilt and blame” while at the same time refusing to admit that it is going on (Heron, 135). For instance, a husband may wake up at night caused by his baby crying. His first feeling will be to attend the baby so that his wife can sleep. However, collusion happens if he chooses to betray himself and do the contrary. 6. Collusion can be avoided if we show respect towards others and the way they are feeling. Only by accepting our own flaws can we gain the right to blame others. For solution to any problem, it is necessary that we look within ourselves to understand our contributory role in the problem and then work towards rectifying our position before telling others to do the same. For instance a person may not feel like dancing while his fiancé is eager to dance. Collusion can be avoided if he chooses to dance in spite of his feeling awkward. References Brown, Brene. “The Power of Vulnerability” [video] from: https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability?language=en (2010) Day, Randal D. A Fathers Heartbeat: 7 Virtues of Successful Fathers, Cedar Fort, 2012 Eliot, Robert, S. & Breo, Dennis L. Is It Worth Dying For? How To Make Stress Work For You - Not Against You, Random House Publishing Group, 2010 Fairholm, Matthew. Putting Your Values to Work: Becoming the Leader Others Want to Follow, ABC-CLIO, 2013 Gensler, Harry J., Spurgin, Earl W. & Swindal, James C. Ethics: Contemporary Readings, Psychology Press, 2004 Hayes, John. Interpersonal Skills at Work, Psychology Press, 2002 Heron, John. “Life cycles and learning cycles.” 129-146, In Contemporary Theories of Learning, ed. Knud Illeris. NY: Routledge, 2009 Holmes, Kimberly A. Maybe God is trying to tell you something, Xulon Press, 2003 Kumar, R. & Kumar, Meenal. Guide To Body Pains : Prevention, Management And Cure, Deep and Deep Publications, 2004 Rosen, Bob. Grounded: How Leaders Stay Rooted in an Uncertain World, John Wiley & Sons, 2013 Triche, Nathan E. Without Force: Examining Voluntary Compliance in Police/citizen Encounters, ProQuest, 2008 “What if the homeless gave you money?” [video] from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZvYvOkqxA8 (2015) Zastrow, Charles & Kirst-Ashman, Karen. Understand Human Behavior and the Social Environment, Cengage Learning, 2009 Read More