HU 1115: STEREOTYPES
Connections between "the Work of Representation"
and the Creation and Reading of Cultural Stereotypes

Brief History of the term "stereotype"
1798 - coined by French painter Didot to describe a printing process involving the fixed use of casts of material to be reproduced

late 1800s/early 1900s - psychiatrists begin to use the term "stereotypy" to denote a pathological condition characterized by behavior of persistent repetitiveness and unchanging mode of expression

1922 -  Publication of W. Lippmann's Public Opinion brought the term "stereotype" to the attention of social scientists

Lippmann's approach and key notions surprisingly central to the definition of "stereotype" today, including the ideas that stereotypes are:
1) pictures in our heads;
2) involve some degree of construction and "fiction," that is, the notion that humans do not respond directly to external reality (i.e., the world outside), but rather to a representation of the environment which is in lesser or greater degree made by individuals [constructed] themselves
3) cognitive structures that help individuals process information about the environment;
4) not necessarily neutral in any sense of the term.

A differentiating approach to this concept considers all aspects that constitute this term, the positive and the negative, the transparent and the more obsure...

Problems Defining "Stereotype"
Comprehensive surveys of the ethnic stereotype literature to date suggest that that definitions of the stereotype disagree on at least one point, on the value judgments of stereotypes as negative.

Stereotypes have been defined as bad or negative for the following reasons, and problems have arisen accordingly:
1) a stereotype seen as a set of beliefs that is incorrectly learned, overgeneralized, factually incorrect, or rigid and bad-- results in overlooking that while so much of this is true and specifies what a stereotype constitutes, adding a value judgment (as "bad") tends to negate the definition entirely; 
2) defining stereotypes as bad also leads to inferences that stereotypes and stereotyping refer to cognitive structures and processes that are deviant, bizarre or pathological; this view tends to isolate stereotype research from areas of psychology and sociology that deal with "normal" processes involved in the perception of individuals and groups (e.g., person perception, social stratification);
3) the stereotypes-as-bad notion has not only cut off stereotype research from possibly relevant basic research and theory, it has also led researchers to assume rather than examine and explore the reasons for stereotyping's negativity.

Stereotype:
A core definition consists of the following: A stereotype is a structured set of beliefs about the personal attributes of a group of individuals or a group of people. "Structure" here is important, since in theoretical and empirical analysis of the stereotype, stereotypes are overwhelmingly considered to be cognitive structures that shape perceptions of people. 

Ethnic Stereotypes:
* a cognitive construct
* a generalization about or impression of an ethnic group
* set of beliefs associated with a specific target group
* denote not just a single trait ascribed to a group, but a full set of attributes

Orientations to the Study of Stereotypes:
Sociocultural
Psychodynamic
Cognitive