You state that you use stereotype as a useful tool in order to make sense of your world.

If this is the case .. then your interpretative tool is in fact misinterpreting the information you're receiving.

How? Stereotyping as an interpretative tool will only allow you to receive and understand part of the message.

Stereotyping is not evil, it is a useful tool for making sense of the world.   The problem arises when you allow the steroetype to be your ONLY judge.

I mentioned groups. The issue with stereotyping is that the process involves an ingroup and an outgroup.

Can you see now why stereotype as an interpretative tool isn't helpful?

Let's move on to your next statement ...

The problem arises when you allow the stereotype to be your ONLY judge. - Wesley

The problem arises the minute you allow stereotype as your interpretative tool .. into your tool box? Why? Because by it's very nature .. it defines your paradigm .. how you think/act/react.

The ABC News magazine program 20/20 just had an interesting piece on the psychology of stereotypes. The main point was that all people have an underlying psychological architecture of stereotypes and that human beings are biologically set up to stereotype. To me, there are several important factors to go with any discussion of stereotypes.

First, how do stereotypes help us? Most of it can be viewed as the ability to quickly categorize people based on certain factors as a way to identify threats, friends, and other people that you can interact with socially. Furthermore, the mental energy it would take for each person you encounter to be processed from scratch without some of the shortcuts that stereotypes provide us would almost debilitate us and make life extremely difficult to navigate. Unfortunately, these networks can contain negative information associated with certain groups that we apply to individuals in those groups that do not actually possess those characteristics.

Second, understanding the stereotypes you hold of others is key in avoiding them getting in your way and resulting in discrimination, prejudice, and unfair assumptions. For exmaple, if you hold a view that ALL men or ALL women are prone to be unfaithful in relationships, then it is important acknowledge that you hold this belief on some level, reality test it, and avoid it becomming a problem that works unconsciously.

The overall message here is that we all have biases, assumptions, and stereotypes for all sorts of people: Caucasian, male, midwestern, tall, thin, pretty, uneducated, wealthy, dog owner, athletes, etc. Acknowledging that these exist, exploring their content, and working through any unfair elements can be a key part to becomming a more competent person socially and psychologically.

Yes, people can stereotype on lots of grounds but that does not mean that some have to be used or are helpful. Some are just plain wrong and cause more problems than they're worth. I don't need to be thinking of a person's "race" to judge whether they're hostile and mean me harm. I can quickly determine that from the body language, what they say, how they say it, when they say it and the nature of the situation.

To undo the damage, there needs to be unequivocal top-down messages which promote mutual tolerance,empathy, trust and respect - and broad social cohesiveness and harmony...

Equitist wrote on Mar 3^rd, 2011 at 5:32pm:



I'll prove it to you:

There has been no exponential increase in the amount of divisive anti-Muslim rhetoric emanating from Western pollies and media outlets over the past decade because every politician or media commentator has been very carful to always say 'it's not Islam, it's the extremists'.


It's only in the last year or so, with the European electorates NOT buying this carefully made distinctions that that some politicins and media outlets are beginning to say that mebbe, just mebbe, you know.... gosh... how to put it?... Muslims seem to dominate the bad news section of the papers and it's news of Muslims behaving badly while shouting Allahu Akhbar. And that's just the bad news covering non-Muslim majority countries.

So all the politicians and media outlets have been very careful to make a distinctions for 10 or more years that is not borne out by the the evening news.



Here's your challenge: prove to me that the anti-western criminal activities and rhetoric of Muslims living in the west has not increased significantly in the past 10 years.