Is Stereotype Harmful?

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With these three reasons, I can proudly say that stereotypes and stereotyping is really harmful. It is very evident that it brings lots of bad consequences and negative effects not only socially but also mentally to someone. Maybe stereotypes can be useful in terms of new situation where we need quick judgments and fast decisions, but this is far enough compare to its negative effects. I would say that let’s just believe on our saying that, “Don’t judge the book by its cover”, which means don’t judge a person in his/her appearance and let him show his/her personalities. Women aren’t as smart as a man; Black people as law breakers; Gays as promiscuous; and garbage collector as uneducated. These are just a few of a wide number of common stereotypes that we usually use to generalize people. Stereotypes are the perception we make about a person or group of people based on our experience, the media and influence of friends and family. I absolutely believe that stereotypes are harmful because it has negative impact on behaviour, causes discrimination and leads to prejudice. Stereotype has negative impact on behaviour. According to research by Professor Michael Inzlicht, a psychologist in University of Toronto Scarborough, people perform poorly when they feel they are being stereotyped. For example, the stereotypes that women are poor in Math can be harmful to a woman’s performance in Math because she feels that people thinks that she is poor in Math. The stereotype makes her confidence weak which affects her behaviour on doing Math. Stereotypes really affect a person’s performance on doing things. Stereotype causes discrimination. We all know that people easily believe on things just because majority are believing about that even without any evidence. Like in stereotypes, people easily being influenced by stereotyped person because we see stereotyped person as part of

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