A stereotype is a widely held belief or expectation about a category of people which may be simplistic in nature and applied to undifferentiated individuals. The assumptions people make about others can be stereotyping, and there can be positive, negative, or neutral in nature, but in any case, it can result in biased conclusions. For example, to say ‘all elderly people forget things’ or ‘all teenagers are increasingly rebellious’ can be regarded as a form of stereotyping. Stereotypes are a form of cognitive scaffolding that people utilize to simplify social parameters, in so doing, people construct caricatured representational frameworks of social interaction, which can be divorced from reality and further fuel social biases. The behavior of individuals can be changed, or rather turn negative, because of stereotype threat, which is the fear of being regarded as a negative stereotype of their group. Stereotypes can be changed or lessened through raising consciousness, increasing intergroup contact, and actively countering apathy fuelled assumptions.
Categories