Stereotypes

**Author's note: more about categories. I wrote this a while ago and found it after I published the "Categories" post. Can you tell I think about it a lot? This one is more serious/less sleep deprived.

As an anthropologist, I observe people and their material culture. I try to decipher what their material culture says about them. (Read in normal speak: I judge people based on their things.)

In my neighborhood, there is a house that has a huge five wheel RV, a big ol' truck to pull it, a four wheeler, and a sign with the family name accompanied by a deer/mountain scene. Last fall (the first fall we were in the neighborhood) someone mentioned that they would be gone for the hunt. I noted, I don't know if it was to myself or my husband, "Oh that brown house should be going too." I kid you not, a very short time later, the camper and RV disappeared. I've never met the people that live there, but I made assumptions about the people that lived there based on their belongings. That, my friends, is stereotyping. In this case, the stereotype fit and was accurate.

Another example, in my ward (or church congregation defined by a geographical area) there are residential agricultural lots. A couple weeks in a row the same family sat behind me. Their son wore cowboy boots; the dad had cowboy style shirts and a mustache; and the mom had big bangs. I noted to myself, "I bet they live on 600 South (the street where most of the agricultural lots are)." Again, I was right.

I'm sure no one likes to admit that they stereotype, but we all do it. I think we do it because there are truths behind the stereotypes (for good and bad). I'd like to believe that if they were always wrong, we'd stop doing it (maybe I'm being optimistic there). The stereotypes have roots somewhere. In a way, it is a way to develop categories.

In one of my anthropology classes, Professor Richard Buonforte talked about how our brains need categories so we do not get overwhelmed processing information. If every time we walked into a classroom, we had to process every thing we saw, we would take much longer to process everything. If, however, our "stereotype" of the classroom said that we could expect to see a clock, desks, a teacher, a whiteboard, students, learning implements, then our brain doesn't have to spend too much time/energy processing. We already know what we will find so we can start thinking about something else. It'd be like we had to relearn and relearn constantly. I'm still working on how categories help us understand people.

 Even if the stereotypes are accurate, though, they can still be dangerous. I think the danger of stereotypes comes from seeing a person as a flat, one-dimensional character, seeing them as nothing more than the stereotype and not allowing the stereotyped person to become more than the stereotype, an individual.