Persistance of stereotyping
This essay will help explain some processes that help us understand why stereotyping persists. In this essay it will give example of discrimination and why it happens. Discrimination can happen when putting people with certain traits that look similar and grouping them in ways that they get categorised and leads to discrimination because of their traits. Secondly, this essay will talk about illusory correlations as it effects stereotyping such as people tend to assume that certain groups and traits occur together, and they regularly overestimate the strength of the association between the two variables. Thirdly, this essay will give an example of stereotyping that appeared due to racism because of her physical features/physical impairment. Lastly, this essay will give reasons why stereotype are not accurate.
Stereotyping occurs and it takes place in many different ways and form over a wide range of ages, groups cultural, etc stereotyping can just about happen to anyone. Stereotypes according to Kassin,Fein & Markus (2008) "are so universal and frequently experienced that they seem almost an essential part of the human condition. For this reason, it may be difficult to consider where they come from and why they are so hard to difficult to extinguish."(p,133) .A stereotype is when principles and values get associated because of their traits into groups because of their common attributes they many appear to have. They get classified into group as people find it easier to base knowledge about someone based on a similar attribute which link them to a social group they can be recognized with and identified with some it can help us make an impression based on what group theta are classified or seem to be a part of. Stereotypes can affect us if we are exposed to negative images in the media involving harmful and not so harmful images and ideas about the roles of women, men, cultural, race, ethnicity, etc. Stereotyping and the implications it causes is so wide speared and it doesn't just effect the individual it can effect ones owns culture beliefs, age groups, social group. Stereotyping doesn't just effect one certain set of peoples it can affect whole societies.
In this synopsis an example of stereotyping was I was walking with my friend in the Charwell car park and there were a group of girls up head. When we heard something come out of one of the mouth they said" I hate this why are there all these parks for disabled people it's so unfair we have park so far away and walk". Then one of the others girls said" maybe one of you guys should break your legs, and then we will get to park closer." As they were saying this there was a young woman of colour in a wheel chair getting out of her car and she was listening to what these incentive girls were saying. The girls in fount of me continued to go on discriminating people that were in wheel chairs saying they must be "handy caps". It sounded like they were putting all people with a physical impairment or a mental impairment in to a group. They were saying that why don't disable people just say at home because not like they can work or anything and they just get in "our way". This seemed like a very discriminating situation and we felt sorry for the young women of colour who had to put up with hearing these girls talk like that. With this situation
An incident of stereotyping is discrimination against people who have a disability or an impairment. Many people stereotype people with disabilities it's a form of discrimination which can affect a person's participation in many basic types of activity and affect people's participation in a range of jobs and day to day activity. When people are discriminated against they feel that others are judging and their self esteem is low so they don't participate in physical activity, jobs they want to do but because of their impairments and its harder for them to. Different types of stereotyping such as, positive and negative both have a impact on New Zealand society. It's hard for people to have self determination if they are getting discriminated against so it leads our society to more discrimination and restrictions with gender, education, disability, religion, ethnicity, age.
Firstly, this example fits Kassin,Fein & Markus (2008) as they state that "discrimination concerns negative behaviours directed against persons because of their membership in a particular group."(p,133). This can sometimes be effected and influenced by both people's beliefs and feeling towards a social group. With disability there are many factors the society creates, even when we think that we are helping. Because with the barriers that were created as we built a society we didn't takes into account the problems people with impairments may have to overcome to live the basic day to day life that we sometimes tend to take for granted . Hon Lianne Dalziel (2001) states that "Disability is not something individuals have. What individuals have are impairments. They may be physical, sensory, neurological, psychiatric, intellectual or other impairments."( p,1) . People without any type of impairment have created a world where there is one main way of living. Because as a world as a hole we built a huge part of it without any features for people with impairment, because the majority of the population does not have any type of physical impairments that cause them not to walk. By building for one way of living they were making it harder for people with impairments to access many buildings as they were only really providing barriers for then. such as if they had a "wheel chair, walking stick, etc". There's rules now that provide more support as people have taken into account impairments when building so they're not discriminating against people who may or may not have a physical impairment as much as before.
Secondly, this fits this example because illusory correlation was a factor in this incident Stated by Schaller, M (1991) "the term illusory correlation is used to refer to a perceived correlation between two variables that differs from the actual correlation between two variables."(p,26). People tend to assume that because events that seem to have accrued at the same time that one of the event must be linked with the other and caused it. Eg; in the incident it showed that people were quick to judge and put the young girl in to a group/ categorized her and made a link that she was "incapable" and may also have a metal impairment as well. The girls didn't know anything about the girl's situation. With illusory correlation can accrue often without us even taken much notice of them. Kassin,Fein & Markus (2008) states that "the implications for stereotyping are important here as well: People overestimate the joint occurrence of variables they expect to be associated with each other, such as stereotyped groups and stereotypic behaviours." (p,138). An illusory correlation is when people hear about something that has happened and they overestimate the cause of what happened and link it back to stereotyping because of the correlation that many be linked to the event.eg: if there is a car crash were their is a teen involve most people automatically think that because of the teen inexperience that the teen caused the crash, when in fact there could have been a number of factors that caused the crash. But people link events with certain age groups or traits, or between social groups and behaviours because of the correlation and the link they have in common.
Thirdly, the example of stereotyping in the incident was it appeared in the situation the girls seemed to be ruder towards the young girl in the wheel chair because of her physical features and her physical impairment as the 3 girls were white European girls and the girl in the wheel chair was a different race so it seemed the girls were being racist toward the wheel chair girl. According to Kassin,Fein & Markus (2008 s) that images that reflect the diversity that show the context of displaying join social groups in a positive way can help weaken stereotypes and the conflict between group stereotyping. It also applies in this case that no one can be entirely resistant from forms of racism. According to Kassin,Fein & Markus (2008) " it is important to realize that racism exists at several different levels"( p,161). Kassin,Fein & Markus (2008) stated many of us at a individual level can be racist towards any other person, towards a person regarding their culture and their beliefs ,also towards them regarding their cultural levels. With racism it can cause a great deal of different racism situations. By having different cultures around the world means that in some case more so than others we find that some are more privileged, while many others find them self's being more discriminated against.
Lastly, this incident of stereotyping was not accurate as the girls made a false observation of stereotyping based on similar traits rather than even knowing what the girl was capable of. This fit the example of stereotyping as they made a false assumption when they didn't have any information, they just gartered information based on a inaccurate stereotype. Kassin,Fein & Markus (2008)) states that "accurate could mean that stereotypes reflect universal, stable, possibly genetic differences; or it could mean that stereotypes reflect differences that exist under particular sets of societal and historic conditions, although with the recognition that these differences may well change if these conditions change." (p137). There can be many factors when people attempt to perceive another person or persons. How we act towards them and or behaviour towards them in some ways that can make stereotype because of person's behaviours can reinforce the nature of stereotyping in a harmful way. People associate stereotypes and traits with certain groups and preen judge rather than looking at the individual person or persons. They tend to associate people with a stereotype group that they look and look like they would fix into. Such as in the situation explained above the girls didn't know how the young girl became impaired. They made a pree judgment based on stereotyping and automatically grouped the young girl into a group based on her traits not her capability or as an individual.
I believe that some cases of stereotyping are still effecting people opinions of other people and making false judgment. People continue to remain putting people into categorized groups and are still pre judging people and not seeing the individual because they are worried about how people may react to them because of their appearance and features and certain traits they may have in common with a stupid stereotype. People shouldn't stereotype they should get to know somebody " not to judge a book by its cover" they should make their own ideas about a person for who they are inside rather than pree judging and stereotyping. Stereotypes can make the information processing easier for people that's why people tend to do it. It allows the person or persons to rely on knowledge about a certain culture, age group that somebody may be similar to and it allows them to make false assumption without even knowing the person. They place judgment because of stereotyping facts because of knowledge they hold that is associated to a particular group so they don't tend to rely on knew information. I believe that the models of stereotyping are not always accurate; we still continue to put people into groups. Stereotypes are hard to control because it has environmental factors and can have a huge effect on different social roles, different social groups around the world. People link people together because of their traits and how they think they fit into a group. Therefore never having a chance to find their personal identity and if they accept the fact they can be placed in a group they are allowing them self to be stereotyped.
In conclusion stereotyping are universal and frequently experienced and that they seem almost a fundamental part of how humans perceive others. Stereotypes are hard to recognise they take many shapes and forms it's hard to extinguish what they are. The essay showed how and why discrimination happens. It showed how the illusory correlations can effect stereotyping as people tend to overestimate the strength of the association between the two variables. The essay showed an example of stereotyping that appeared due to racism because of physical features/physical impairment. And last of all in the essay it gave reasons why stereotype are not accurate to a certain point.
