Stereotyping
Pre-existing beliefs may cause many difficulties to a human. For example, they affect our logical reasoning because it is uneasy to convince somebody to change his attitude when this person has already formed his/her own stereotypes. Moreover, somebody’s reasoning can entrench the person in his/her own position (Ditto, n.d). In addition, people perform worse when they feel that are being stereotyped. Furthermore, this effect has lingering character, which means that the person has difficulties even after finishing the situation. For instance, he/she is more aggressive and unable to think clearly. Besides, the person starts eating more than usually and has difficulties with making rational decisions. Psychologists distinguish such common stereotypes as gender, age, race and religion prejudices. However, this list is not full because humans may have many beliefs that do not reflect reality (Kemick, 2010).
One of my biggest stereotypes is that young doctors are worse specialists than old ones. Therefore, when I choose a doctor, I give priority to doctors who are over 40 year old. There are several reasons that support this belief. Firstly, young doctors clearly have less experience. Consequently, their skills and abilities might be worse. Besides, they may feel unsecure and worried, especially working with difficult cases. On the other hand, there are few mistakes in this argument. For instance, young doctors can have more motivation to work harder due to several reasons. Firstly, they spend less time treating people, so they are less bored than more experienced doctors because of curing the same diseases year after year. In addition, they have to build their career that is why they should demonstrate everything they can in order to gain an excellent reputation. Besides, specialists who graduate from their universities more recently may possess better techniques, because medicine develops constantly and innovations emerge all the time. Finally, my stereotype affects not only my choice, but doctor’s performance, as well. When doctors feel that patients do not trust them, they may perform their work worse. In addition, this stereotype affects my self-esteem too because I am young specialist as well, so I feel unsecure thinking and evaluating my skills and abilities. As a result, I am sometimes aggressive towards older specialists. Besides, this prejudice affects my ability to estimate objectively somebody’s job performance without considering age.
Another stereotype is that women are worse drivers than men are. This belief clearly affects women that drive me in their car. If they feel that I cannot feel secure when they are behind the wheel, it clearly makes them more aggressive. Besides, they may be afraid of driving in their usual manner. However, there are objective reasons that support this belief. Firstly, women are less focused on the road when they drive because they often perform other tasks such as painting their lips, talking on the phone or watching the scenery outside the window. In addition to that, it is known that women are good at performing many tasks at the same time, whereas men are better at doing one specific assignment. Therefore, concentrating only on the driving is more natural for male drivers. On the other hand, I know many female drivers who drive very well. Some of them even became professionals. Besides, male and female roles changed very much. As a result, both genders posses the personal qualities of each other. For example, women are much stronger and secure than few centuries ago. On the contrary, some modern men are weak and timid. Therefore, the gender lost its importance and individual features of a person became dominant.
Lastly, one of my biggest prejudicial beliefs is about Afro-Americans. I believe that they are good at sport. I clearly feel guilty about judging people by their race. Nevertheless, it sometimes affects my decisions, and this can definitely hurt those who have other color of skin. However, media and society are imposing this stereotype very much. That is why stereotype about Afro-Americans may appear subconsciously from the childhood. Nevertheless, there are arguments that support this belief. To begin with, there are many famous Afro-American sportsmen, who demonstrate good results in boxing, basketball and running. Besides, many people assume that people of this race are more endurable than others are. On the other hand, there are several mistakes in this argument. For example, many of American sportsmen are white, whereas a large a number of Afro-American are not fit enough and physically weak. Furthermore, this stereotype may make Afro-American believe that they can succeed only in sport. Therefore, they start doing sport at an early age and make many efforts in order to build successful sport career. However, they may pay less attention to other spheres like getting qualitative education.
To sum up, my major stereotypes are connected with gender, race and age prejudice. All they distort my logical reasoning. For instance, even objective reasons will not convince me to change my beliefs. Moreover, they will strengthen by stereotypes. Besides, I feel that when I am stereotyped due to my gender, race or age, I perform tasks worse than without any bias. For instance, when I am at work, and somebody reminds me that I am young, and young workers cannot provide good service, I become aggressive. Besides, stereotypes of other people penetrate in my head. That is why I lose my ability to think logically and overeat in order to reduce stress and uncertainty. Another interesting feature of stereotypes is their lasting negative effect. In addition, it is important to remember that stereotypes distort perception of reality of people who stereotype somebody and those who are stereotyped. However, stereotypes usually have some facts that support them. For example, young doctors really perform worse, than experienced specialists do. On the other hand, it is unreasonable to judge people by common patterns because all people are different.
