Stereotypes - weapons, tool of racism, propaganda and terrorism

The stereotypes in the perception of people from different countries have always existed and continue to exist. In many cases, they harm the mutual understanding and following them leads to sad consequences.

Jack Nachbar and Kevin Lause ', the authors of the study "Popular Culture: An Introductory Text", pointed out that the stereotypes are an integral part of popular culture. They can be formed on the basis of age ( "Young people listen only rock 'n' roll"), sex ( "all men want from women only one"), race ( "the Japanese are indistinguishable from each other"), religion ( "Islam - the religion of terror "), profession (" all lawyers - rogues ") and nationality (" all Jews - greedy "). There are also stereotypes geographical (eg, "living in small towns safer than in metropolitan areas"), ware (for example, "German cars - the highest quality").
Stereotypes in most cases are neutral, but when they transfer from person to person a group of people (social, ethnic, religious, racial, etc.) are often acquired a negative connotation. It is based on stereotypes such phenomena as racism, sexism, Islamophobia and others.

Saera R. Khan, Professor of University of San Francisco published an article in the journal Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, which claims that trust is extremely dangerous stereotypes. Stereotypes have cognitive and motivational functions. From a cognitive point of view, the stereotype is a double-edged sword - it provides information in an easy and digestible form. However, this information is very far from reality and is able to mislead man. From a motivational perspective, stereotypes are even more unreliable. A man to base their decisions on a massive representations rather than on facts, a serious risk. Probably the most capacious falsity stereotypes formulated basketball star Charles Barkley, who said: "Do you realize that the world is not what you thought when you learn that the best rapper - white (referring to Eminem), the best golfer - black (Tiger Woods is), the highest basketball - Chinese (NBA superstar Yao Ming, the growth of 2 m 29 cm), and the Germans did not want to fight in Iraq, "...

Fred E. Jandt, professor CSU San Bernardino, author of the book "An Introduction to Intercultural Communication: Identities in a Global Community", notes that, in most cases, stereotypes are not used for good purposes. Stereotypes are often the weapon of propaganda of racism and xenophobia. For example, the anti-Semitic propaganda, based on stereotypes, actively conducted in Germany in the 1920s-1930s - as a result, the German people quite indifferent, and even approvingly took to the destruction of 6 million Jews..

In the United States a long time in the media prevailed negative stereotypes about blacks (such views can be traced in many works of literature and film - for example, the modern African Americans have extremely negative attitude to the image of the protagonist of the famous novel by Harriet Beecher-Stowe "Uncle Tom's Cabin" ). Therefore, the struggle of blacks for civil rights and the struggle was accompanied with the usual stereotypes: Martin Luther King actively opposed the prejudices against her race prevailing in American society. His secret opponent, director of FBI J. Edgar Hoover, on the contrary, tried to reinforce negative stereotypes of blacks.

Columbia University published the results of its study on the application of the death penalty in the world. As it turned out, the courts initially biased towards certain groups of people. For example, the death penalty in North America and Europe, often rendered in those regions where a higher percentage of the black population. Chance black American to be sentenced to capital punishment higher than that of white, committed a similar crime. One of the reasons for this are considered to be racial stereotypes jury.

Benjamin Barber, author of "Jihad vs. MsWorld" books, believes that the current wave of international terrorism is largely caused by stereotypes. West perceives the Islamic world as the world of materialism, consumerism, narcissism, immorality and so on. Naturally, such views are a breeding ground for the emergence of terrorists.

Psychology anarchy life philosophy of terrorism