why are sterotypes unfair?
Answers
Explanation:
A “stereotype” is a cognitive shortcut — that is, it allows your brain to make a snap judgment based on immediately visible characteristics such as gender, race, or age. Your brain is hardwired to make quick calls, and that’s ok. The problem comes when we start to apply those stereotypes beyond that immediate impulse. That’s called “bias,” which is basically a belief that a stereotype is true. For example, the stereotype that girls are bad at math can lead to the suggestion that some innate difference between women and men leads to this discrepancy.
In reality, however, girls and women are just as capable as boys and men when it comes to math. The problem is that we live in a culture that bombards girls and women with the notion that math is hard and that they don’t need to worry their pretty little heads about it. And the well-documented “stereotype threat” means that when you hear that you aren’t supposed to be good at something, you underperform, often unconsciously.
In the AAUW research report Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, my colleagues compiled and analyzed several studies showing that any time students were primed with the directions that men were better than women at a certain skill, the men outperformed the women on the subsequent test of that skill. But when test takers were told that men and women performed equally well in that same skill, the test results evened out. In some cases,
Stereotype is a mistaken idea or belief many people have about a thing or group that is based upon how they look on the outside, which may be untrue or only partly true. Stereotyping people is a type of prejudice because what is on the outside is a small part of who a person is.Stereotypes are generalized because one assumes that the stereotype is true for each individual person in the category. While such generalizations may be useful when making quick decisions, they may be erroneous when applied to particular individuals.