Stereotyping is not a simple process and contains a number of assumptions that can be challenged. Tessa Perkins (1979) identifies five such assumptions:
· Stereotypes are not always negative (e.g. “the French are good cooks”).
· They are not always about minority groups or the less powerful (e.g. “upper class twits”).
· They can be held about one’s own group.
· They are not rigid or unchanging (e.g. “the cloth cap worker of the 1950s became the 1980s’ consumerist home-owner who holidays in Spain”).
· They are not always false.
Stereotyping has tended to suggest that it is wrong to see people in categories. Yet in the field of social psychology it has long been recognised that categorisation is a fundamental process necessary for humans to make sense of the world. Humans need to impose structure on events, experience, and people.
To What Extent Do You Agree With Tessa Perkins’ Five Assumptions?
To some extent I do agree with the assumption that stereotypes aren’t always negative because several stereotypes do look at the good in others. For example, “all Asians are smart”. However, I don’t entirely agree with the assumption that stereotypes aren’t always negative because most of the time people tend to look at the negative side of situations, especially within the media. For instance, in The Simpsons Apu is discriminated highly as a South Asian immigrant with a noticeably different accent compared to all the other characters in the show, and during his first few episodes of the show he was known to be an illegal immigrant. This goes against the statement that “all Asians are smart” because then people would expect Asians to not live in a country illegally, so would expect them to have sense to take action to move into a country lawfully by going through the necessary immigration procedures.
I agree to a certain extent that stereotypes are not always about minority groups or the less powerful because upper class people can be seen as stuck-up, such as some of the characters in Downton Abbey. Their body language and speech portrays that they have a strong sense of pride. On the other hand, I don’t agree fully with the assumption that stereotypes aren’t always about minority groups or the less powerful, as stereotypes that are heard about today are mostly to do with minority groups due to ethnicity and race. For example, “black people are thugs” so are more likely to commit crimes and violent actions.
I completely agree with the assumption that stereotypes can be held about one’s own group because they are usually related to a particular race, ethnicity, social group, age, or gender. For instance, teenagers are thought as being rebellious, badly behaved, unappreciative, and not hard-working, such as Lucy Beale who was in Eastenders. She didn’t show an appreciation to her parents and was very argumentative. Also, Lucy didn’t revise well for her GCSEs and consumed alcohol with the wrong crowd of people. Furthermore, many people (mostly students as they are in the kind of environment where there are different social groups) use labels such as ‘chav’, ‘emo’ ‘goth’, etc.
I totally agree that stereotypes aren’t rigid or unchanging because as times have moved on, people’s views of others have changed. For example, women aren’t seen as being weaker than men – today men and women are seen as equal because they have equal rights, such as the right for women to vote. Whereas in the olden days, the society was patriarchal and women didn’t have a say in hardly anything.
To a certain extent I believe that not all stereotypes are false because it depends on whether if the stereotype is positive or negative. A positive stereotype of African Americans is that a lot of them can sing or dance quite well and I believe that this is true in most cases. For instance, Mercedes Jones in Glee, which is a musical drama series, has a very strong singing voice and can also dance. However, negative stereotypes for some people aren’t true, such as “all Middle-Eastern people are terrorists” because a lot of Middle-Eastern people are disgusted with terrorism from people of their ethnicity.
