In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example, an expectation about the group's personality, preferences, appearance or ability. Stereotypes are sometimes overgeneralized, overanalyzed, and inaccurate, and resistant to new information, but can sometimes be accurate. A stereotype does not necessarily need to be a negative assumption. They may be positive, neutral, or negative.
Explicit stereotypes
An explicit stereotype refers to stereotypes that one is aware that one holds, and is aware that one is using to judge people. If person A is making judgments about a person B from a group G, and person A has an explicit stereotype for group G, their decision bias can be partially mitigated using conscious control; however, attempts to offset bias due to conscious awareness of a stereotype often fail at being truly impartial, due to either underestimating or overestimating the amount of bias being created by the stereotype.
Implicit stereotypes
Implicit stereotypes are those that lay on individuals' subconsciousness, that they have no control or awareness of. "Implicit stereotypes are built based on two concepts, associative networks in semantic (knowledge) memory and automatic activation". Implicit stereotypes are automatic and involuntary associations that people make between a social group and a domain or attribute. For example, one can have beliefs that women and men are equally capable of becoming successful electricians but at the same time many can associate electricians more with men than women.
In social psychology, a stereotype is any thought widely adopted about specific types of individuals or certain ways of behaving intended to represent the entire group of those individuals or behaviors as a whole. These thoughts or beliefs may or may not accurately reflect reality. Within psychology and across other disciplines, different conceptualizations and theories of stereotyping exist, at times sharing commonalities, as well as containing contradictory elements. Even in the social sciences and some sub-disciplines of psychology, stereotypes are occasionally reproduced and can be identified in certain theories, for example, in assumptions about other cultures.
Etymology
The term stereotype comes from the French adjective and derives from the Greek words (), 'firm, solid' and (), 'impression', hence 'solid impression on one or more ideas/theories'.
The term was first used in the printing trade in 1798 by Firmin Didot, to describe a printing plate that duplicated any typography. The duplicate printing plate, or the stereotype, is used for printing instead of the original.
Outside of printing, the first reference to stereotype in English was in 1850, as a noun that meant 'image perpetuated without change'. However, it was not until 1922 that stereotype was first used in the modern psychological sense by American journalist Walter Lippmann in his work Public Opinion.
Relationship with other types of intergroup attitudes
Stereotypes, prejudice, racism, and discrimination are understood as related but different concepts. Stereotypes are regarded as the most cognitive component and often occurs without conscious awareness, whereas prejudice is the affective component of stereotyping and discrimination is one of the behavioral components of prejudicial reactions. In this tripartite view of intergroup attitudes, stereotypes reflect expectations and beliefs about the characteristics of members of groups perceived as different from one's own, prejudice represents the emotional response, and discrimination refers to actions.
Although related, the three concepts can exist independently of each other. According to Daniel Katz and Kenneth Braly, stereotyping leads to racial prejudice when people emotionally react to the name of a group, ascribe characteristics to members of that group, and then evaluate those characteristics.
Possible prejudicial effects of stereotypes are: Justification of ill-founded prejudices or ignorance Unwillingness to rethink one's attitudes and behavior Preventing some people of stereotyped groups from entering or succeeding in activities or fields
Content
Stereotype content refers to the attributes that people think characterize a group. Studies of stereotype content examine what people think of others, rather than the reasons and mechanisms involved in stereotyping.