Stereotypes are misleading and deceptive generalizations regarding an individual or a group of people that are likely to make the person or group immune when confronted with facts (Croom, 2015).
Stereotypes and Their Influence
Stereotypes play an important role in influencing the powerful understanding of the person or community enduring stereotypes through this act. This is accomplished by observing the stereotypical traits while they are not present. This results in a failure to distinguish between features that are likely to homogenize a personality or a group. This study finds out that an individual who participates in stereotyping relates some distinct traits to the group that is experiencing cases of stereotypes. There is perspective misrepresentation that occurs when stereotyping would lead to many methods or means of ethical falsification with less attention from the pre-determined ethical philosophers. According to Croom, (2015), Stereotype is characterized by many effects some of which include total failure in observing an individual or the member group being stereotyped. This involves paying little attention, failure to observe diversity within the group. There are also desirable features of an individual or a group such as having good leadership and communication skills as characterized by the stereotypes. Therefore, this article mainly emphasizes and focuses on five core areas identified to have common cases of stereotype (Croom, 2015). The identified areas include gender that would focus on man, the college students, whites, the southerner, and the athletes. Ways and cultural nature of the involved stereotypes within the outlined five major areas are described and explained as follows.
Man
According to records from the last thirty (30) years, men form the higher population of people who actively participate in professional education, workforce, and athletics. This is based on the belief that these disciplines were generally meant for energetic men to occupy. However, this stereotype is still being witnessed and experienced within some nation across the globe where men are still believed to possess superiority complex over the women. In the last years, women were not participating in the athletics and other sporting activities since they were believed to be generally weaker than men and would actively participate in their societal outlined position which is looking after the young ones. According Hebart and Baker, (2016), in the years 1971 and 1972, girls would only make 7% of students participating in the high school athletics as compared to the current situation where the percentage has grown to over 40%. Men had the core responsibility for offering protection and food to the family since they were the only people capable to look and qualify for the jobs. Most of the employees would offer employment to men since they stereotyped men to be stronger with greater physiques to effectively perform the work. Men would participate in the car preparation and maintenance as they were believed to have better technical skills. For the current economy, women have been analysed to represent 47% of the employment sector in the united states (Hebart & Baker, 2016). This is an increase as compared to 38% workforce for women during the early 1980s. Currently, there is change in the cultural belief that men cannot stay at their homes and look after their children. In the past, the men found participating in such duties was deemed weak and would not deserve respect. Based on the last several decades, the professional education was basically the role of men. This later followed by the provision of technical courses to men. Other gender would rarely participate in professional education and technical courses. In the year 2012, there were 57% cases of graduation by women as compared to the 1980s where only 40% graduated (Hebart & Baker, 2016).
The College Students
Majority of the students who join college for their first-time experience high cases of stereotypes. They are viewed as cowards by other senior students. Hebart and Baker, (2016), elaborate that this happens since many of the first-year students have no life experience with the college life hence require more time to effectively adapt to their new environment. This article considers this situation as stereotype since many senior students are commonly observed to be naïve based on their individual traits. Most of the college students are highly associated with drug addictions especially alcohol and bhang.at this stage, many college students explore unique things that occur in life. This is due to increased peer influence associated with lack of effective parental care. This is also a stereotype since a lower percentage of the campus students interact with the drugs for their first time in college while some do participate in such behaviors. According to Rivis and Sheeran, (2013), high cases of immorality have been believed to emerge and practiced by a majority of the college students who the public view to be more immoral with lack of self-respect and the society. College students are believed to possess poor manner especially in school and at home. This raises concern on teachers and lecturers who handle such students. The college students have designed specific hairstyles, dress codes, and shoes which are exaggerated by the current generation. The hairstyle, tattoos, use of vocabularies, clothing, and shoe styles are all associated with the general behaviors of the college students who like trending things in the market.
Athlete
Most of the athletes who participate in the distance races are always believed to be the blacks. Most people rely on the assumption that for an individual to become the best athlete, there should be less fats to allow for faster movement of the light body. However, this thesis and other articles find this assumption to be wrong since an individual only needs to be more flexible to become an athlete, and there is no correlation between body size and being an athlete. The stereotype exists that most of the athletes usually participate in several criminal activities. This is based on their ability to effectively commit a crime and immediately escaped without being realized by others. Current research shows that many crime-related cases and stories, 66% are done by the black athletes as compared to 17% of the whites (Davidson, MacKay, & Jergovic, 2013).
The Southerner
Most of the southerners are stereotyped as most familiar in the cultural media and artifacts. They are also considered aggressive, low intelligence, and very wealthy. Most citizens of the southern states are employed with a low level of income (Rivis & Sheeran, 2013). This is characterized by the better career accomplishment than citizens in other nations. Other states consider southerners to be racists who are friendly to people of the same race. The existence of stereotypes that the southerners are all white with no blacks in the states is false since there are more African Americans in the southern states. The southerners are believed to be ignorant of what daily happens on other nations. This is associated with their difficulty to articulate some words, for example, the mention ''cah'' instead of car. The belief that all the southerners practice Christianity due to the presence of many religious churches is false since there is also the presence of the southern Baptists, Buddhist, and neopaganism.
The Whites
The greatest percentage of the military, political, and corporate executive leaders in the United States are mainly whites, while the minority positions are divided among the minority groups. McCann and Keaton, (2013), argue that the whites' stereotype in the employment sectors incorporates self-involvement, failure to understand the survival mechanisms of other groups, lack of proper concern about others. The stereotype that exists in the whites gives a clear reflection of the whites' upper class against other races. The upper-class stereotype by the whites includes hard drug and alcohol abuse, high rates of inbreeding, and citizens watching NASCAR (McCann & Keaton, 2013). Numerous research outlines the whites are highly associated with various activities such as pet kissing, beer pong, cream cheese, and fish pumping. However, there is a great change by the whites from the last decades considering various ethnicities, races, nationalities. The whites have proved to possess unique stereotypes that are associated with their culture. The Italians and Irish are described in negative ways as being infamous in culture by the media as compared to the Latino and Hispanic who are assumed by the mass media of the United States.
Conclusion
The study finds stereotypes to be misleading and false misconceptions about an individual or a group which is rendered immune to encountering the evidence, although not as a whole. This thesis focused on the emergence of stereotypes in instances of the southerner, whites, man, athletes, and college students. There are positive and negative effects of stereotypes. These effects depend on the individual group to which one is related or associated. Some of the positive effects are the person being the best athlete by being black, bright by being white, and being intelligent because one is a southerner. Some of the negative effects include a high rate of racisms, extravagance, and a high rate of crimes.
References
Croom, A. M. (2015). Asian slurs and stereotypes in the USA: A context-sensitive account of derogation and appropriation. Pragmat Soc 2015b, 6, 1-20.
Davidson, D., MacKay, M., & Jergovic, D. (2013). The Effects of Stereotypes on Children's. Applications of Heuristics and Biases to Social Issues, 3, 241.
Hebart, M. N., & Baker, C. I. (2016). Facing up to stereotypes. Nature neuroscience, 19(6), 763-765.
McCann, R. M., & Keaton, S. A. (2013). A cross-cultural investigation of age stereotypes and communication perceptions of older and younger workers in the USA and Thailand. Educational Gerontology, 39(5), 326-341.
Rivis, A., & Sheeran, P. (2013). Automatic risk behavior: direct effects of binge drinker stereotypes on drinking behavior. Health Psychology, 32(5), 571.
