Phone/Photo Experiment

Stereotype basically is to classify social, cultural groups or individuals based on some prior assumptions. Stereotype might be either positive or negative. It is commonly confused with prejudice. But if both definitions are compared, we would be able to see that they are different. Prejudice ‘is a belief or judgment made without ascertaining the facts of a case’. Prejudice is most commonly used to refer to a judgment toward a people or a person because of his/ her race, social class, gender, ethnicity, age, disability, political beliefs, religion, sexual orientation or other personal characteristics. In the modern world, prejudice is more used to classify race.

Based on our readings, stereotypes vary on race, sex and sexual orientation. Snyder mentioned the stereotype of 'physically unattractive’ by his telephone/photo experiment. They showed attractive and unattractive female photos to their male subjects before phone calls and they recorded the conversations. Males that thought they are talking to attractive females were more gentle and polite. But the subjects that they thought they were speaking to un-attractive ladies were more cold and impolite. Female subjects responded the same way that male subjects talked to them.

In some points I have to say that I am disagreeing with Snyder's experiment. First of all who decides who is attractive? And who is not? He defined attractiveness as the number of admirers that individual has. But I think being attractive changes person to person. For instance, a person might attract to somebody when society finds him/her unattractive.

Also I think the stereotype mentioned above depends on the purpose of the conversation. It might sound ridiculous but if the conversion is business related, both side are commonly professional and people do not care about the appearance of the person who they are talking to. If the conversation is friendly, I do not think that people will be impolite for talking to an un-attractive friend. If both sides are more serious about the conversation, such as arranging a date, as long as individuals are polite, both of the individuals have right to reject the offer without hurting each other if they are not attracted. I do not think we should classify it as a stereotype since there is no judgement like 'all un attractive people are evil'.

Kivanc Yoruk