Angela Wee Kah Man

0322970

Social Psychology

Journal 3
Date : 21 Sept

Entry 1 : Stereotype
What is Stereotype ? In social psychology , stereotypes are beliefs about people
based on their membership in a particular group. Stereotypes can be positive, negative, or
neutral. Stereotypes based on gender, ethnicity, or occupation are common in many
societies.Sometimes when once a schema is formed, it is hard to changeIt may be difficult
for people to "let go" of these types of schemas.
Why is this happening ? This is because when people encounter instances that
disconfirm their stereotypes of a particular group, they tend to assume that those
instances
are atypical subtypes of the group.For example,when we first thought of gay,all of them
were usually being unathletic,dressed up like a women or sometimes their attitude were
just like the women as well.Before I met one of my gay friends,I did not really expect that
he was a gay because his attitude was just like a normal boy.He likes sports especially
soccer,he played a lot of game,fool around ,playful and naugthy just like what a boy
would normally do,so I thought that he was just like a normal boy but he actually told all
of his bestfriend which included me that he was actually a gay,he liked boy.I was
shocked.After knowing the truth of him,I assumes that heis not a typical representative of
gay people.But as time goes by,i found out that not all of the gay were like what I thought
before,some of the gay can be actually just like my friend ,sometimes they can
Be muscular and athletic too .Besides that,i could remember that there was a girl name Jia
Yee in my class during my form 4 years who bahave really rude to the other.She liked to

order the others to help her out without thinking of their feeling.Other than that,she cared
too much of the others which sometimes she liked to give lesson to others based on her
life experince.So I assume that she is the only child which pamper a lot by her parent.But
there was a week she did not attend to school,so all of us start curious about where she
has been.Therefore,we went to ask our class teacher.Our class teacher told us that she was
actually taking care of her mother in the hospital who have suffered from cancer and yet
she had to do so because she only have an aunt who could help her.Her dad died of
accident when she still was a kid.This was the incident that all of my classmate did not
really heard of,my assumption towards her was wrong.Since that day onwards,we kept all
of our bad impression of her and helped her as much as we can.
Other than that,it is hard to changed a scheme when it was formed because
peoples perceptions are influenced by their expectations.For example,my sister thought
that elderly people as mentally unstable. When she sees an elderly woman sitting on a
park bench alone, talking out loud, she thought that the woman was talking to herself
because she was unstable and had no any family member especially she was wearing a
untidy outfit. But after a period of time of observation,the old woman was actually
talking
on a cell phone and waiting for her child.
Beside that,it is hard to change certain formed schema because people selectively
recall instances that confirm their stereotypes and forget about disconfirmin instances.For
example,I had a stereotype of Indian as academically unmotivated. As evidence for my
belief, I cited instances when some of my Indian classmates failed to read required class
material. I failed to recall all the times My Indian classmates did complete their
assignments but also had a better grade in academy than me.Other than that,I had a

streotype of Indian that most of them are athleta and they could run really fast too.But
afte few times of competition that I have joined,I found that who actually won a gold
medal was not always Indian but thay can be Malay and Chinese too.
Lastly,stereotype can have advantages and disadvantages too.The benefits of
stereotyping enables us to respond rapidly because we may have some experience
before.Thus our reaction will be more rapid and imediate.On the other hand,stereotyping
also have some disadvantaged too. For example,it cause people to exaggerate differences
among groups and lead people to focus selectively on information that agrees with the
stereotype and ignore information that disagrees with it.It tend to make people see other
groups as overly homogenous, even though people can easily see that the groups they
belong to are heterogeneous.So we have to always clear of our mindset and do not
stereotype all of all the things we see because sometimes what we believe are actually
just oppose from it and this actually will lead to most of the misunderstanding.