Stereotyping

2. Stereotyping is exaggerated generalizations associated with categorizing system, they go beyond the facts at hand and make claims that usually have no valid basis. It is also something that most people fond difficult to avoid from doing. What do you think?

From my thinking, Stereotyping simply means the act of hasty generalization to a certain groups based on the action of an individual or a small part of that group. According to Hendrix (2002) in Pearson et al, “Unfortunately, our stereotypes of people from different groups are often negative.” People should avoid doing stereotyping at all cost, since it has the capability to stray the relationship between human being. When one does stereotyping, prejudice occur due to unfavorable predisposition towards the one who does the stereotyping.Basically, We do this because different factors contribute to why people stereotype each other. We stereotype people when we are unable or unwilling to obtain all of the information we need to make a fair judgement about people or situations. In the absence of the so called 'total picture,' to stereotype people in many cases allow us to 'fill in the missing pieces of information." Our society often innocently creates and perpetuates stereotypes, but these stereotypes often lead to unfair discrimination and persecution when the person been stereotype is unfavorable. For example, if we are walking through a park late at night and encounter three senior citizens wearing fur coats and walking with canes, we may not feel as threatened as if we were met by three high school-aged boys wearing hoodies. These generalizations root from our experiences we have had ourselves, read in books, and magazines, seen in movies or television, or have had related to us by friends and family. In many cases, these stereotypical generalizations are reasonably accurate. Yet in virtually, every case we are resorting to is prejudice by ascribing characteristics about a person based on appearance, without knowledge of the total facts. By stereotyping, we assume that a person or a group of certain characteristics. quite often, we have stereotyped a person who might be a member of a group with which we have not had firsthand contact with before