Group 3.Ritika Dange.

Mayuri Mahajan.Apoorva Pagar.

Stereotypes-An introduction.A stereotype is a commonly held

public belief about specific social groups or types of individuals.

The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings.

Prejudice is a discrimination, a bias whereas stereotype means ‘to label’

Stereotypes are standardized and simplified conceptions of groups based on some prior assumptions.

The term stereotype derives from the Greek words stereos, "firm, solid" and typos, "impression", hence "solid impression".

Dev Patel, lead actor of Slumdog Millionaire spoke about Hollywood stereotyping, “they give me roles such as a taxi driver, terrorist or a smart geek.”

Credibility(rather, lack of it).Credibility of witness

“credibility varies as to classes of witnesses and classes of events, and also to type of perception”

Hearing, Visual Perceptions, Sense of Timing are defective because of tricks played by memory and incessant imagination.

“A report is the joint producer of the knower and the known, in which the role of the observer is always selective and usually creative” – Professor Hugo Munsterberg in ‘On The Witness Stand’Example: Sidney Sheldon, ‘Rage of Angles’

Credibility takes a downfall if mind is too clouded with stereotypes.Example: Aitraaz

Common Sense.An unfamiliar scene is like the baby's world,

"one great, blooming,buzzing confusion."

Concept of Common Sense

Example: definition of ‘metal’

Reporting of correct fact.Experiment at Congress of Psychology in Gottingen wherein all

‘trained’ observers had gathered.

40 reports in all:A quarter were false In 24 accounts 10% of the details were pure inventions and this proportion was exceeded in ten accounts and diminished in six.Twelve accounts had 40-50% mistakes while thirteen had more than 50% mistakesFourteen accounts had 20-40% mistakesONLY one had less than 20% mistakes in reporting.

Thus out of forty trained observers writing a responsible account of a scene that had just happened before their eyes, more than a majority saw a scene that had not taken place. What then did they see? One would suppose it was easier to tell what had occurred, than to invent something which had not occurred. They saw their stereotype of such a brawl.

Art, Photography and Stereotyping..

“They (photographs) come, we imagine, directly to us without human meddling, and they are the most effortless food for the mind conceivable. Any description in words, or even any inert picture, requires an effort of memory before a picture exists in the mind.”

A distinguished art critic, Bernard Berenson has said that "what with the almost numberless shapes assumed by an object. ... What with our insensitiveness and inattention, things scarcely would have for us features and outlines so determined and clear that we could recall them at will, but for the stereotyped shapes art has lent them."

In case of opposition of these very strong ideas, “we shake our heads at his failure to reproduce things as we know they certainly are, or we accuse him of insincerity.”

Mr. Berenson speaks of our displeasure when a painter "does not visualise objects exactly as we do,"

Example : MF Hussain

Why Stereotype?

Life is Multifarious.

Exhaustive process.

Economy of effort.

Stereotype as defense.Economy of effort

Defenses of our position in society- society builds our stereotypes for us. This is the perfect stereotype. Its hallmark is that it precedes the use of reason; is a form of perception, imposes a certain character on the data of our senses before the data reach the intelligence.

They (stereotypes) are an ordered, more or less consistent picture of the world, to which our habits, our tastes, our capacities, our comforts and our hopes have adjusted themselves. They may not be a complete picture of the world, but they are a picture of a possible world to which we are adapted. In that world people and things have their well-known places, and do certain expected things. We feel at home there. We fit in. We are members. We know the way around. There we find the charm of the familiar, the normal, the dependable.

Consequences.

In some measure, stimuli from the outside, especially when they are printed or spoken words, evoke some part of a system of stereotypes, so that the actual sensation and the preconception occupy consciousness at the same time.

Exception.

Distrustful.

THE BLIND SPOTS AND THEIR VALUES.In stereotype, what we always think it of is not the

‘real world’ , infact reality maybe something altogether different. For some one the world may be cruel or some one it is like heaven.

 Without stereotype we can’t imagine our progress.

The stereotype represents the world like progress and perfection.

 The stereotype of the world and fact. The effect of

stereotype is not always good but there are high chances of it being bad.

Codes and their Enemies.

Every person is different, that is why person to person stereotype changes.

That is why every person has his own code to live life, that’s is the way of to live life.

For eg, politician, doctor. Every code depends on the stereotype.The human nature is so different that not

every time the stereotype will always right.

Detection of Stereotypes.

RuritaniaRe-enforcement of stereotype.Propaganda.Contradiction.

World at War. Inability to take account of space.World map-5000miles.Russia-France-Japan-Germany.True conception of space.Subjectivity.

The conception of time. William James, the first.Court and the will.Human nature and stereotype.

Into almost every social problem the proper calculation of time enters

 Act of union-Famine 1847.Alsace & Lorraine.

Generalization.

Working class.Wrongly derived samples.It is hard when concrete facts

illustrates a hope to weigh those facts properly.

Six people may read the same newspaper for breakfast.

Opinions Cause & Effect.Untrained minds are better than

trained minds.Related connections.