Essay Questions
1. Is there any harm in national stereotypes?
Key Points:
- Stereotypes can be defined in a number of ways:
- A simplified and fixed image of all members of a culture or group; the group is typically based on race, religion, ethnicity, age, gender or national origins.
- Generalizations about people that are based on limited, sometimes inaccurate, but often easily available information, and are characterized by no or minimal contact with members of the stereotyped group and on second-hand information rather than first-hand experience.
- A single statement or attitude about a group of people that does not recognize the complex, multi-dimensional nature of individual human beings irrespective of race, religion, ethnicity, age, gender or nationality.
- Stereotypes can be positive, negative or mixed, but they are usually unfair and misleading.
- In general, stereotypes reduce individuals to a rigid, inflexible image.
- Stereotypes do not account for the fact that human beings are individually complex, each person possessing a unique constellation of personal attributes.
- Instead, stereotypes suggest that everyone within a group is the same.
- An especially worrying aspects of stereotypes in a geopolitical context is that they tend to dehumanize people, placing all members of a group into one homogeneous category.
- The basis for stereotyping lies in the nature of human cognition.
- When we stereotype people, we pre-judge them; we assume that all people in a group have the same traits.
- The use of stereotypes leads to false assumptions about people and can lead to misunderstandings, hostile and abusive behaviours, conflicts, discrimination, and prejudice.
- Stereotypes may have their roots in experiences we have had ourselves, read about in books and magazines, seen in films or television, or have had related to us by friends and family.
- In some cases, stereotypes may be reasonably accurate.
- In virtually every case where we stereotype, we are resorting to prejudice by inferring characteristics of an individual person based on a group characteristic, without knowledge of all the facts.
- Stereotypes are sometimes hard to recognize because they are fixed beliefs.
- When stereotypical judgements are reduced, it is easier to acknowledge and appreciate individual differences and cultural diversity.
