Stereotypes “constitute a person’s set of expectations about a social group’s characteristics, including traits, behaviors, ad roles.”
Stereotypes remove individual attributes from consideration as everyone within the designated group is considered to be the same.
Some stereotypes are descriptive, which professor Michael Gill defines “as perceivers’ beliefs about the characteristics of a social group and indicate the attributes, roles, and behaviors that describe that group,” e.g., all women are friendly; all men like sports.
Other stereoptyes are prescriptive in that they define how a specific gender should be or is meant to be. Professor Gill puts it this way: they “depict the specific behavioral norms that individuals must uphold to avoid” being derided or punished by others. Examples include women should be seen and not heard; men are meant to be the bosses.
Research shows that children have definite stereotypes about women, ethnicities. and other social groups by age 5.
Everyone uses stereotypes.
Psychologists once believed that only bigoted people used stereotypes. Now the study of unconscious bias is revealing the unsettling truth: We all use stereotypes, all the time, without knowing it. We have met the enemy of equality, and the enemy is us. ~Annie Murphy Paul, writer
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