Stereotyping around us Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Stereotyping around us - Essay Example 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