"Stereotype" may sound like a bad word, but there's nothing bad about it.
For one thing, stereotypes are often accurate.
When you ask people about their concept of stereotypes, they get it pretty much right.
Also, stereotypes are often positive, particularly of groups that we ourselves belong to.
Some of the statistical generalizations may be positive as some groups have reputations for being smart, for being loyal, for being brave, for all sorts of things that are not at all negative.
And so there's nothing inherently wrong about stereotypes.
But there are problems with stereotypes.
For one thing, they're reliable insofar as they're based on unbiased samples.
But a lot of the information we get about human groups is through biased sources like how they're represented in the media.
用户评论