Stereotypes

What are stereotypes?

Stereotypes are set of beliefs that people have on someone based on their nationality, gender and races. Stereotypes are usually represent an prejudiced attitude, uncritical judgement or oversimplified opinion. Stereotypes can be positive or negative based on the person and the situations. Stereotyping are bad as they provides inaccurate, generalized and biased opinions of other, thus creating social problems.

 Examples of stereotyping can be the followings:

• All Irish people are drunks and eat potatoes.
• All Jews are greedy.
• All people who live in England have bad teeth.
• All Asians are good at math.

How does stereotypes affect communication?

When people stereotype it creates bias opinion or generalization of the other person during the communication. People who judge others based on their stereotype will be influenced by his perceptions and his opinion which may influence how he may communicate toward that person. Also when people tend to make assumptions, it leads to problems and conflicts during communications. During communication if a person raises his opinions that are based on his stereotype on the other person, the other person may take offense to this opinion and this may create conflict between them. For example, many people will stereotype tall people to be good at basketball. Therefore, during conversation a stereotyping person may ask if a tall person is good at basketball or try to focus the subject of the conversation based on basketball even if the both parties are not interested in basketball. This leads to stereotyping to be a barrier in communications that stops effective communication.

 Past Experience

When I was 13 years old, I was studying at International School Eindhoven which is located in Netherlands. While I was studying at that school, I have made friends from numerous countries like American, British, Indian, dutch and many more. Even though they were high diversity in the school, most of the student were westerners and not many were Asian. During lunch time, most people including myself brought packed lunch and almost everyone brought sandwich as their lunch. While I was sitting with my friends and unpacking my lunch, one of my friend asked what I packed for lunch and I told him that I packed sandwich. My friend then said he thought I will be bringing rice or noodle for my lunch to which I responded I did not brought rice or noodle but sandwich.

Based on his facial expression and the conversation, I believe he was not joking or trying to make fun of me, but was just making assumptions based on my race and nationality. I was not offended by what he had said but made he a bit uncomfortable and made me think about how easy it is for someone to make assumption other people and make a remark about it.

What are the implication from this event

This experience has taught me that stereotyping can be a barrier in communication. Like the experience I had, his remark on Asian only eating rice has raised misunderstanding and conflict between me and him. I also learned that how easily stereotype can be created and how much it can affect communication among different people. This experience taught me not to create assumptions about other people and not to act based on your assumption to that person.

Storyboard

Conclusion

In conclusion, stereotype let people make generalization and assumption about other people. Even though stereotyping can happen unconsciously or without any malicious intentions, people should try to stop stereotyping and making assumptions other people but try to learn more about the person.

Reference

• Dictionary.cambridge.org. (2020). STEREOTYPE | meaning in the Cambridge English https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/stereotype
• Jacobs, T. (2020). How Stereotypes Take Shape https://psmag.com/social-justice/knowledge-process-information-scotland-stereotypes-take-shape-86697