What causes stereotypes

Post Reply New Topic

I wonder what causes stereotypes
Like about my Polish nation, that we Poles Are best car thieves or
American are ugly and Fat
Britain woman are ugly
Gypsies or African are only criminals.
Jews are greedy
Russians are nation of drunkman
French are arogant and snotty

or non nation stereotypes that we AS people cannot work in team,
All athelts are dump and many mores

I wonder what cause stereotypes i hope i did not offend anyone

Well those ones come from merely repeating the same things we learned from our parents. But in general i think categorization leads to stereotyping, and brains categorize and assume to create the information. From unconscious things like perception of how long lines are if we put 'angles' on them, to things like 'that person tall and black, they must be good at basketball'.

I think it comes from people who, seeing some members of a group they dislike doing something objectionable, attribute those behaviors and traits to that whole group in order to demonize or ridicule them. In that way the perception is: (at least here in America) Poles are dumb, Germans are Nazis, blacks are criminals or lazy, Latinos are criminal or lazy, Jews are greedy and conniving, etc.

Personal experience


Hearing things in the media or entertainment about things (eg. we often hear about aspies being very logical and being computer programmers and great at math and doing engineering so people might assume all aspies are that and another example is thinking autistic people are violent because that is what you often hear from people but no one is going to say how non violent their autistic child is so the negative always stands out more)


I don't think anyone is immune to stereotyping and you could be doing it yourself and not even realize it. There are even stereotypes about NTs and I read them often like they don't have any special interests and don't like facts, they all go out and party and always want to chit chat and never want to be alone, NTs don't have routines or don't go the same direction to places, NTs don't self stimulate, NTs don't have any disorders, NTs don't like honesty. I have often seen prejudice posts about them here. I think that comes from reading about autism and assuming NTs don't do either of those things and also it comes from personal experience and only the negative ones stand out more than the good ones.

Maybe it's an unpopular thing to think, but I think most are based in some degree of truth. Not sure why it's even wrong to say that, but it seems to be.

That's not to say stereotypes are absolute truths, but they have strong tendencies to be true. Greatly improved probability, if you will. Being different culturally from nation to nation, why would this be a surprise? Not to mention, why would it be wrong to think that way? Why must we all be forced into this nonsensical "human race/were all the same" bs? Just because I see that you're different, and point out and contrast our cultural differences, even in a satirical sense, why is that such a travesty against humanity? Yeah, if I'm smashing someone's windshield in because they are French, then lock me up. Then again, if I smash anyone's for any reason do the same anyway. Whole thing makes no sense to me. Never will.

Of course, many people do take that thinking too far, I'll agree. Doesn't make the thinking wrong. Makes the person wrong.

I didn't know British women being ugly was a stereotype hahahha I thought people assumed we drank tea all the time (which is true for me) or were alcoholics

Stereotyping is a psycological defence mechanism to recognise objects or situations without having to thing deeply. For example all lions are going to eat you so when you see a lion you run. Its a trick the brain uses so you can respond to something quickly with little thought

Our stereotype on polish is that they are all labourers.

Low intelligence has been shown to be a predictor of racial and anti-homosexual prejudice (both can be considered types of stereotypical attitudes)....

Yeah I sometimes wonder if my ex boyfriend had low intelligence because he was so prone to stereotyping and being prejudice and most people would just change their minds after learning more from experience and seeing things but not him. But I also wonder online if that means the whole internet is filled with idiots because of their prejudice beliefs and the fact they don't change their minds after being given a new perspective.

Pattern recognition gone awry; I don't notice all the bad white drivers on my daily commute, but I remember every time an elderly Korean cuts me off and make a generalization about it.

Anchoring effects in the mind, a mentality geared towards risk-reward evaluations, and the need to create sufficiently compact mental representations that they can be used to make decisions in real time.

We stereotype many things. Trees and rocks. The polyatomic ion table is a reductive stereotype that accurately represents only a handful of common examples using a much more compact representation than the QED framework that accurately describes them all.

Stereotypes seem to settle in wherever we aren't sufficiently motivated to generate more complex representations. But even when there is it may not trigger a reformulation of a stereotype but the creation of an exception.

"in" group

"Us" versus "them" mentality

Ignorance

Overgeneralization

Pattern recognition

Prejudice

Fear