Talk:Stereotype

LIST OF STEREOTYPES

HELP PLEASE ADD TO LIST

What benefit would a list or sterotypes add to the article? 81.149.82.243 10:52, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Head paragraph

Ste

too simple a reading

You might wish to, rather than provide a long list of archetypal stereotypes that now defines the word (for better or worse), expand on the issue a bit. Stereotyping is a sort of mechanism, almost sophisticated, and its significance is found not in the multitude of mundane stereotypes like "lazy mexican" and so forth, but in the way attributes roles to types of people, and for that matter the way it attributes types to people. I would take this upon myself, but alas I am too lazy, and Mexican for that matter.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.158.66.174 (talk • contribs)

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''''''''blah blah blah boring!''''''''

Way too many examples

I've removed a few examples from the list of stereotypes because they were pretty irrelevant to an examination of stereotypes, such as the tobacco-spitting baseball player. This list is starting to become too long, in my opinion, and I think we ought to pare it down to a list of ten to twenty important stereotypes. And considering the vast number of stereotypes there are in all of the world's English-speaking countries, there have got to be some kind of criteria which would weed out stereotypes such as "the over-delivering game show host." Superking 23:24, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Not Stereotypes

Most of these don't really qualify as stereotypes, I think. "The brightly coloured cort jester?" If anything, that is a misconception. Most of these seem more along the lines of a cliché.

I was thinking the same thing. You don't hear conversations where people say, "Oh, you know court jesters. They're all alike. Their kind is very brightly colored." Superking 07:01, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yeah the court jester was way to stupid but somebody erased my nerdy kid in school!!!! i thought that was a good one :D Maberk

I just think the articlue ought to list important stereotypes, preferably with historical significance in English-speaking countries. I've been hesitant to remove SOME, as I don't know how widespread they are in, say, Great Britain or Australia. But the nerdy schoolkid one was a problem because that's a caricature, not a stereotype.

A good example is the one about black people being lazy. It's a blanket statement about an entire group of people, and it has no factual basis. But with the nerdy schoolkid, who is that a stereotype of? Nerds, or schoolchildren? Either way, aside from being pretty prominent in pop culture, I just don't think it's had any kind of historical impact. Superking 07:47, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Stereotypes? Stereotypes? I gotta RCA and a BTK oh, wait the last one was a group I heard on the stereo. ooops! MY BAD!!!! Hey, do people really still think of others in this manner. Oh so 2 minutes ago and not too mention archaic. Let me do a Joan Rivers impersonation.. GAG ME!!! NO really is it true we still have stereotypes and by the way people do talk about how britely colored I am after all I am "THE COURT JESTER" Go courtjester Go courtjester!!

im curious. why bother merging them? they are separate and yet the same. why not just let them be separate and just list the links for those who want specified information/ meanings. i for one want them separate- i want the meaning to use in essays and stuff. keep it pure and simple and just leave them as they are.

I think that stereotyping is just stupid. I think you shouldn't care about thoses things....so what if their different! Dont stereotype until you look in the mirror

Types of stereotyping

I've removed "immigration status" from the list, because I think it's too specific. If we include it then we might as well include hundreds of other types of stereotyping. Besides, I'm not sure there's a common stereotype linking, e.g., illegal Mexican immigrants and illegal Swedish immigrants. The "illegal immigrant" stereotype is really an example of national stereotyping, IMO.

Pervasively Problematic

This entry makes many undocumented and unsupported claims, and it fails to capture the broad diversity of views regarding what constitutes a stereotype, whether they are socially shared or individually unique, and whether stereotypes are generally accurate or inaccurate. It has references, but the refernces do not provide support for the specific claims or definitions.

One central problem is with all of the references. Notice that Steele, C. and his collaborators are the *only* researchers whose work is discussed. The references appear to be a promotion for the work of Claude Steele.

Claude Steele is best known for his work on "stereotype threat," which is, basically, the idea that when people worry about confirming a stereotype it actually causes them to confirm that stereotype. Please notice that the terms "threat" and "stereotype" appear in almost every one of the cited articles (one uses the term "vulnerability" instead).

This is good and important work on its merits. "Stereotype Threat" probably deserves a wikipedia entry of its own. But there is a problem:

Claude Steele has never conducted research assessing the accuracy of people's stereotypes. To do so requires: 1. Assessing people's beliefs about one or more groups 2. Assessing the characteristics of those groups (e.g., via Census data or other scientific methods) 3. Comparing beliefs to criteria.

I realize this is an absolute statement -- "Claude Steele has never conducted accuracy research" -- but it is absolutely true. If anyone can find a single exception to this, I will retract this claim. (Indeed, Steele's work can be read as explaining *why* some stereotypes *are* true).

Worse, numerous researches *have* studied the accuracy of stereotypes and none -- absolutely none -- of them are cited. This is a serious problem, which feeds back to the content of the article, because, if researchers who have studied stereotype accuracy and inaccuracy were cited, many of the claims in this article would not be supported.

I provide below a short and preliminary list of articles that have actually assessed either the accuracy of people's stereotypes or the extent to which people rely on their stereotypes when judging individuals (the idea that people routinely and powerfully assume individuals fit their stereotypes is a basis for claiming stereotypes are inaccurate, but it, too, has been largely disconfirmed by social scientific data).

Ashton, M. C., & Esses, V. M. (1999). Stereotype accuracy : Estimating the academic performance of ethnic groups. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 225-236.

Brodt, S. E., & Ross, L. D. (1998). The role of stereotyping in overconfident social prediction. Social Cognition, 16, 225 252

Goldman, W., & Lewis, P. (1977). Beautiful is good: Evidence that the physically attractive are more socially skillful. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13, 125 130.

Hall, J. A., & Carter, J. D. (1999). Gender-stereotype accuracy as an individual difference. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 350-359.

Judd, C. M., & Park, B. (1993). Definition and assessment of accuracy in social stereotypes. Psychological Review, 100, 109-128.

Jussim, L., Eccles, J., & Madon, S. J. (1996). Social perception, social stereotypes, and teacher expectations: Accuracy and the quest for the powerful self-fulfilling prophecy. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 29, 281-388.

Kunda, Z., Thagard, P. (1996). Forming impressions from stereotypes, traits, and behaviors: A parallel-constraint-satisfaction theory. Psychological Review, 103, 284-308.

Lee, Y. T., Jussim, L., & McCauley, C. R. (Eds.), Stereotype accuracy: Toward appreciating group differences. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

Locksley, A., Borgida, E., Brekke, N., & Hepburn, C. (1980). Sex stereotypes and social judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 821-831.

Mackie, M. (1973). Arriving at "truth" by definition: The case of stereotype inaccuracy. Social Problems, 20, 431-447.

Madon, S. J., Jussim, L., Keiper, S., Eccles, J., Smith, A., & Palumbo, P. (1998). The accuracy and power of sex, social class and ethnic stereotypes: Naturalistic studies in person perception. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24, 1304 1318.

McCauley, C., & Stitt, C. L. (1978). An individual and quantitative measure of stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 929-940.

McCauley, C., Stitt, C. L., & Segal, M. (1980). Stereotyping: From prejudice to prediction. Psychological Bulletin, 87, 195-208.

Park, B., & Judd, C. M. (2005). Rethinking the link between categorization and prejudice within the social cognition perspective. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 9, 108-130.

Ryan, C. (1996). Accuracy of Black and White college students’ in-group and out-group stereotypes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22, 1114-1127.

Ryan, C. (1995). Motivations and the perceiver's group membership: Consequences for stereotype accuracy. In Y. T. Lee, L. Jussim, & C. R. McCauley (eds.), (pp. 189-214) Stereotype accuracy. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

Ryan, C. S., & Bogart, L. M. (2001). Longitudinal changes in the accuracy of new group members’ in-group and out-group stereotypes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 118-133.

Swim, J. K. (1994). Perceived versus meta-analytic effect sizes: An assessment of the accuracy of gender stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 21-36.

Swim, J., Borgida, E., Maruyama, G., & Myers, D. G. (1989). Joan McKay vs. John McKay: Do gender stereotypes bias evaluations? Psychological Bulletin, 105, 409-429.

Some of these articles are fairly technical, but I think most people could get the gist of their main points without much hard scientific training. If possible, I therefore request that commentators on this article read at least one of the above articles (any one!) in order to understand why this wikipedia entry fails to represent the full range of social science thinking on these issues. If possible, also please read any one of the Steele articles -- the American Psychologist one makes for very good reading, it is an important topic, but you will see -- he assesses *effects* of stereotypes, not whether they are accurate, shared, unjustifiably applied to individuals, etc.

I hope I have made this entry in the appropriate "wikipedia" way. I have been using it for a while, but this is my first foray into editing entries.

LeeJ55 14:14, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I appreciate the suggestions! Wikipedia is volunteer-run, and it seems very likely that someone who knows more about this subject hasn't come along yet. I agree with your criticisms of the article, but I lack the expertise to attempt a fix - if you see something you think is particularly egregious, please change it, reference it, or delete it yourself. Be Bold!. Ziggurat 01:00, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I will unlink this article from Stereotype threat and make it point to Race and intelligence#Environmental explanations, which contains the background for this topic, and at least a sentence or two (with footnotes and references). It's not perfect, but at least serves as a better starting point than Stereotype, which has no information about the issue. (I will clean up the references of this article accordingly.) An alternative would be Intelligence testing, but there is nothing about Stereotype threat there either (though there maybe ought to.) Disagree? Revert me with all speed! Arbor 08:39, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Merge with Ethnic Stereotype?

Another issue is that an Ethnic Stereotype must be a subset of the category "Stereotype." Therefore, although it is reasonable to discuss ethnic stereotypes, the entry probably should be merged here.

At minimum, the definition and discussion of terms should be consistent, if two separate entries are maintained.

(forgot to sign, LeeJ55)

Stereotypes aren't always ethic, and I would argue are rarely so. Ethnic Stereotypes are usually the most visible and offensive stereotypes, but we stereotype everyone we see the moment we see them. I don't support the merge. PDXblazers 02:00, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Its not that this should be merged into Ethnic Stereotype. Consistent with PDXblasers point, only *some* stereotypes are ethnic. However all ethnic stereotypes are ... stereotypes! On this basis, Ethnic Stereotype should be merged into Stereotype. Failure to do so risks having a fundamentally different definition, description, etc., for one construct (ethnic stereotype) that is a mere subset of another (stereotype). LeeJ55, 8/1/06.

Stereotyping etymology

I notice that Stereotyping is a term given for a type of print making for newspapers - a 'stereotype' is a metal printing plate. Generalising about a group is a bit like the printing process - mark something up once and then apply all over. Perhaps worth including this in the discussion?

^not me. Also, I was trying to find the etymology section that I was reading yesterday... Where did it go? E racer1999 02:04, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

They were removed by 72.155.165.208 on 22 April. It appears to have been vandalism. I've replaced the sections. Nkocharh 19:55, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Removed

==Other places==

Stereotyping is becoming a natural way for people to catagorize and organize ethinic groups, races, sex, social communities, etc. But it has been happening in areas such as online on things like xbox live especially on certain games for the xbox where stereotyping and racism go rampant. The latest i've seen was one british boy and one american boy stereotyping one another about which race is supereior and since neither of these boys will see each other they believe thatit is ok to be like that in a community where people just want to have fun so that kind of behavior is unacceptable even in those places.

The above was removed because it is anecdotal, not encyclopedic. I left it hear in case the author comes back and would like to rewrite/reference it. JamieJones ^talk 00:41, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Odd paragraph

This paragraph has problems:

Stereotypes were all formed from ones invalid opinion or a prior fact that was maliciously contourted into a hurtful statement. The later can be exemplified by the Jewish stereotype of greed. This was actually formed in the Middle Ages, where those of Christian descent were not allowed to be merchants or money lenders. As a result, the occupation was dominated by those of Jewish descent. The stereotype was then formed that Jewish people were greedy because they had jobs that had to do with money.

It has already been established in the article that not all stereotypes are hurtful or malicious. Also, not all stereotypes are contorted, but may simply be generalizations that are factual for a group as a whole, even if it is not factual for every member of that group. Lastly, while the stereotype of Jewish greed is a good example of a hurtful stereotype, it doesn't seem to fit with the beginning of the paragraph. Perhaps it belongs in a section of examples of stereotypes. --24.200.34.209 23:03, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Where are the examples?

I'd like to know what certain stereotypes are, thanks. Oh yeah and stereotypes exist for a reason because they're true.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.89.165.90 (talk • contribs)

First off, I do not agree with the second statement by the above poster; I am a jew, but I am not particularly stingy. However, I think a list of stereotypes could be useful. Perhaps on its own page. 81.107.155.142 19:21, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Although, I must admit I have a tendency to pick pennies up off the floor. And I am a bit neurotic... 81.107.155.142 19:40, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

The Arts of Nations

I deleted the Kahlil Gibran text, in which he associates various "arts" or attributes to nations, as being poetic and personal associations, rather than illuminating the article. RickDC 16:38, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

hmm.... a bit unencyclopedic.

Now I don't have much experience with this sort of stuff. But it seems that sizeable parts of this article are a bit, damnit! how do i put this?........

They're just a bit preachy, bordering on speculation as well i should say. Some general well used reliable scientific quotations and/or descriptions might help this article out a little bit.

Just my two cents. Nateland 19:51, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Unencyclopedic is an understatement. Not looking to fight here, but is it just me or is this article a bit on the "POV'd" side? 66.31.225.37 19:55, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

international stereotypes - request for help with dispute resolution

I am in dispute with another Wikipedian about the American stereotype of the typical European. Does anyone know of any sources of material about the stereotypes held by Americans about Europeans? Its a tall order I know. Does anyone now how high up the list would be attributes such as "effeminate", "dirty", "cowardly", "lazy" or "condescending towards other cultures" would be? They seem way off the mark to me, but I don't live in the US. I am sure readers of this post can quickly get the gist of the dispute by tracking my recent edits or visiting the talk page for Anti-Europeanism.--Tom 23:28, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

The issue may hang on how pervasive a view or opinion is held in a population before it can be called a stereotype. If 30% of a given population carried common views about another population set, then I think few could argue that this would constitute a recognized stereotype providing that an equally or stronger opposite view was not held by the rest of the group. But what if the belief was held by, say, just 5% (and 95% therefore who did not believe that)? Would that still be considered a stereotype? Where does one draw the line? I'd still value some discussion about this from those with an interest in the issue of stereotyping. --Tom 10:24, 19 June 2007 (UTC)