A stereotype is a cognition composed of generalized images, beliefs, and feelings about the characteristics of members of a group or a socially constructed category.
Stereotypes typically rely on salient features based on experience with group members or shared by those in one's culture. Stereotypes usually ignore the variety of features true of people in a group.
Stereotypes are usually negative but positive stereotypes exist. It is very difficult to change a stereotype.
Group stereotypes
Group stereotypes are those cognitions that consider all members of a recognized group to have the same characteristics. Commonly recognized groups can include religions (e.g., Christians, Jews, Muslims), political parties (e.g., Republicans, Democrats), organizations (e.g., Red Cross, ACLU), businesses, and nations (e.g., Americans, Germans), Race (e.g., Blacks, Whites), Ethnicity (e.g., Mexican American, Native American).
People may hold separate stereotypes about the people in various subgroups (e.g., Catholics, Methodists).
Socially constructed category stereotypes
Socially constructed category stereotypes are stereotypes that people apply to categories of people, which may be based on one or a few features. Social categories often include demographic characteristics like age categories (seniors, adolescents), gender categories (women, men, gays, lesbians), ethnic categories (e.g, Whites, Blacks, Caucasians, Native Americans), social values (liberals, conservatives).
Research on stereotypes
Research on stereotypes is relevant to understanding
intergroup behavior. Tajfel (1982) adopts the definition of stereotype offered by
Stallybrass (1977).
"…an over-simplified mental image of (usually) some
category of person, institution or event which is shared, in essential features,
by large numbers of people... Stereotypes are commonly, but not necessarily,
accompanied by prejudice, i.e. by a favorable or unfavorable predisposition
toward any member of the category in question ("p .601).
Stereotypes develop from salient characteristics, which then
become an available heuristic assumed to apply to a group as a whole. People
can become category prototypes. Leaders in politics, organizations, or religion
are seen as holding representative views and traits of their groups.
A solo status phenomenon occurs when a person or a few people
stand out as different from the rest of the group. Their characteristics then
become exaggerated in both positive and negative ways. For example, a black
worker in a group of white workers or a woman in a men’s work group.
Research on illusory correlations is also relevant to
stereotyping. When a minority perform a behavior, there is an assumption that
all members of the minority perform the same behavior.
Books on Stereotypes
Books on Social Psychology
References
Tajfel, H. (1982). Social
psychology of intergroup relations. Annual
Review of Psychology, 33, 1-39.
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