Stereotypes

What is Stereotyping?

The general explanation for stereotype is “…a fixed, over generalized belief about a particular group or class of people.” (Cardwell, 1996). 

Starting off by a comedic video by Key and Peele, about stereotyping races and culture.

Stereotyping is like judging people and categorizing them. Its what the general public think of based on different factors like race, culture and belief. So for example, in Singapore and many other places around the world, people with tattoos are often judged and people always think that they’re usually associated with gangsters. However not all with tattoos are bad people or criminals. Even our minster of Law, Mr K. Shanmugam agrees to that. He even posted it on his Instagram!

How does stereotyping affect the way we communicate.

Stereotyping can be useful at time and also harmful at times.

It causes us to judge people and we tend to discriminate and prejudice others. For example, If I see a guy comes up to me and by judging his looks, which I believe he doesn’t look happy, I will assume that he is unfriendly and I will probably avoid him without even knowing him. From this point this is harmful to us as we will fail to get to know someone, maybe he is someone important or he is really friendly but its just the looks that makes him not.

However it is useful at times as stereotyping can enable us to remember important information about others and also respond appropriately when meeting new people.

Storyboard

So this happened to two of my friends, which they only knew each other that particular night. Both of them were pretty much jokers, so we were out for basketball and after the session the three of us went for supper and while I was waiting for my food when overheard this conversation among them.

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Reference

Getrevising.co.uk. (2019). Are Stereotypes a good thing?. [online] Available at: https://getrevising.co.uk/grids/are-stereotypes-a-good-thing [Accessed 26 Jul. 2019].

Mcleod, S. (2015). Stereotypes | Simply Psychology. [online] Simplypsychology.org. Available at: https://www.simplypsychology.org/katz-braly.html [Accessed 26 Jul. 2019].