Prejudice v/s Stereotypes

I was really confused after the lecture on stereotypes with the terms we use in this course. All the terms are so inter related that I just could not think straight.

Then I saw this article online which defines each and every term we discussed, and to what conclusion I came that stereotypes would just be prejudice, what we practice now days. So basically we assume certain pieces of information about a certain group of people or people of certain areas, with whom we havent had first hand contact; which is again prejudice but in a low level scenario.

Now relating this to the study we read in the Synder article, the photograph/telephone experiment. I suppose if the people werent given the photographs of the person they are talking to but then let them just talk to them and see what they thought the person was by asking certain type of questions, would show what people assume about others even when they are communicating for the first time with each other.

It was also said that stereotypes also evolve out of fears of persons from minority groups. Like coming in contact with an mentally-ill person we would certainly consider him violent prone, then looking at a black person on the street if you are alone.

I believe these stereotypical ideas cannot be removed from our minds but the only thing can be done is that we should not try to assume anything without getting in touch with the person. Like in colleges and everyday life it does affect how we interact with people and our attitude towards them.

http://remember.org/guide/History.root.stereotypes.html