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  • Essay / Aren’t stereotypes inevitable? - 1026

    Stereotypes are not inevitableA very controversial topic in the field of social psychology is the debate over whether or not stereotypes are inevitable. When it comes to the concept of stereotypes, the idea of ​​prejudice comes up often, making it very important to understand the definitions of stereotypes and prejudice. A stereotype is “a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of ​​a particular type of person or thing.” In other words, it is a prototypical pattern of a person or group. When defining prejudice, the definition is "a preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience", so it can be considered as an unjustifiable/irrational opinion that a person holds. Since there is no definitive definition, this has allowed people to write down all the stereotypes they know about African Americans. The results showed that the low and high prejudice groups wrote similar stereotypes and therefore there were no significant differences between the groups and any category. “People with strong or low prejudice also know cultural stereotypes (Devine, 1989). » Although this is the case for both people with low prejudice and those with strong prejudice, it does not mean that awareness of a stereotype equates to the influence and inevitability of prejudice. “The inevitability of prejudice approach, however, overlooks an important distinction between knowledge of a cultural stereotype and acceptance or approval of the stereotype” (Ashmore & Del Boca, 1981; Billig, 1985). Knowing and actually believing in stereotypes are two very different things: “Beliefs may differ from knowledge of an object or group or from a person's affective reaction to the object or group (Pratkanis, in press ). » Therefore, even if stereotypes are automatically activated, the beliefs must be conscious. In Study 2, participants with strong prejudice formed a more negative and less positive impression of the target person after subliminal priming of the Black category than participants in the nonprime condition. People with low bias tended in the opposite direction. (Lepore and Brown, 1997). In Study 3, both high and low prejudice individuals increased their negative evaluations when the stereotypically valued content was also primed. (Lepore and Brown, 1997). The general objective of these three studies by Lepore & Brown was to evaluate the possible flexibility between categorization, stereotypes and prejudices. Study 1 by Lepore & Brown (1997) was consistent with Devine's (1989) study. The low and high prejudice groups shared the same knowledge of stereotypes. Cultural stereotypes are widely shared and do not indicate the level of prejudice. (Lepore and Brown, 1997). Study 2 examined how endorsement or priming of category activation leads to differential strengths in stereotype characteristics and group node activation. The links here need to be activated more to be stronger. The result is that participants with higher prejudice have significantly higher negative representations of the categories. (1997). Study 3 shows that Devine's (1989) result that prejudice has no effect