Stereotypes

After reading Mark Snyder's article , Self-Fulfilling Stereotypes, and discussing the issue of stereotypes in class, I can see that stereotypes do actually have a great influence in the behavior and relationships we have with one another. I also believe that it is not our first intention to use or practice stereotypes for race and sex. It comes natural to us without even knowing it sometimes; we may not think to use it as offensive way to perceive people or even as a form of prejudice. We take what we believe or what we we are told to believe about a certain group and generalize as being true for each member of that group. In a sense, it's our way of creating a setting for ourselves so we know how to behave and interact with other races, and the same or opposite sex. Usually these settings are developed from taking in what people tell us of a certain group, much like the example mentioned by Snyder with the kid's view of people from Minneapolis. Another way to develop our stereotypes of others is from our own experience. From the people we met of the opposite sex and different races, we create our own generalized beliefs of the characteristics that all people of those individuals have.

Of course there is the "erroneous" that Snyder mentions from creating stereotypes. This erroneous is the use of prejudice and the idea of generalize characteristics to a group from the observance of only few of those individuals from that group. People tend to ignore the individuals who make the stereotypes false and only focus on greater percentage of their encounter of people who fit the stereotypes. I also would then agree with Snyder that it would definitely take a person quite a while to readjust or completely change the way the perceive a race or certain sex. Unexplainably, its hard to remove the labels and qualities that we set for individuals and their characteristics. This probably goes hand in hand with the idea that the first impressions in meeting someone is everything or most important of all.