Stereotypes: What are they and why are they made?

What is a stereotype? Why do we use them?

A stereotype is an oversimplified idea about a person (or people in general). There are many different stereotypes people make about others, and they can be very strange when you think about them. For example, a stereotypical judgment is made that a person is intelligent if they wear glasses and enjoy reading. If you think about this, intelligence is associated with bad eyesight and a love for stories (that's strange isn't it?).

While many stereotypes are mainly harmless, others can be borderline discriminatory. People who may support a certain political figure are often ridiculed and shown and portrayed in derogatory matters, although this is not always the case.

I did a little bit of research to find out why stereotypes exist, and here is what I found:

- It is human behavior to prematurely judge someone

- Humans like to make assumptions based on what race or class a person is in, or even on their appearance

- Judgements are made based on experiences with similar people they have dealt with in the past

- There are many kinds of stereotypes

Sometimes stereotypes may actually be useful. For example, people always assume that tall people are good at basketball. Again, with most stereotypes, this is not always the case. If a coach had to pick between a tall kid and a short kid to select onto a basketball team, the tall kid would probably get selected nine out of ten times if the coach chose not to let them demonstrate their skills.

But even in the case demonstrated above, this is only advantageous to the taller kid. The shorter kid is left out because a stereotype was made that short people can't be better at basketball than tall people. So although this was a positive experience for the tall kid, the short kid feels left out, and that is because of stereotypes.

In the perfect world, nobody should stereotype other people. However, a lot of these stereotypes are made in our subconscious mind, because everyone perceives the world in a different way. But let's all try to view the world in a more positive light and give everyone an equal opportunity to show who they are because people are unique and different!

That's it for this post! Please let me know in the comments what you would like me to write about next!

Thanks!

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