STEREOTYPES

Stereotypes

Don't Let Stereotypes distort Your Judgments

Introduction

In this paper we are going to analyse the article Don't Let Stereotypes Warp Your Judgments” written by author Robert.

Discussion

According to the author stereotypes are a kind of gossip about the world, a gossip that makes us prejudge people before we ever lay eyes on them. Hence it is not astonishing that stereotypes have something to do with the dark world of prejudice. Explore most prejudices (note that the phrase means prejudgment) and you will find a cruel stereotype at the centre of each one.

      For it is the exceptional detail that once we have typecast the world, we tend to glimpse persons in terms of our standardized pictures. In another demonstration of the power of stereotypes to affect our dream, a number of Columbia and Barnard scholars were shown 30 images of attractive but unidentified girls, and asked to rate each in periods of “general liking,” “intelligence,” “beauty” and so on. Two months later, the identical assembly was shown the identical images, this time with fictitious Irish, Italian, Jewish and “American” names adhered to the pictures. Right away the rankings changed. Faces which were now seen as comprising a nationwide group went down in examines and still more distant down in likability, while the “American” young women suddenly looked decidedly prettier and nicer.

      Why is it that we stereotype the world in such irrational and hurtful fashion? In part, we start to typecast people in our childhood years. Early in life, as every parent whose progeny has watched a TV Western understands, we discover to spot the Good friends from the awful Guys. Some years before, a communal psychologist displayed very apparently how mighty these stereotypes of childhood vision are. He furtively inquired the most popular youngsters in an elementary school to make ...