Reflective Essay Sample on Stereotypes

Stereotypes, a force that affects me and you’s everyday life. A force that could lead to society’s next step. Created by humans ourselves, it has effects from fashion to governments, from in-school influence to social media events, changing our lives all the time. It has caused great damage to society and great damage to humankind for centuries. The word "stereotype" is first mentioned in 1820 and first used in 1922. According to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Neuroscience, stereotypes form due to the brain responding to things like sex, race, and emotion by judging with assumptions. Humans interpret people's faces before the visual information even reaches our conscious minds. For example, the first well-known type of stereotype - racism, a type of stereotype against black people, started around the 16th century, close to when slavery started. Started because white Europeans believed that white is more "advanced" than black skin, meaning they are more supreme than people with black skin. After years of that stereotype existing, it caused people to think of “poor, dirty, rude, etc” when they saw a black person. Gender stereotype is the stereotype that judges people according to their birth gender. This stereotype was normally formed by parents, guardians, peers and social media influence in the 2000th. The stereotype is a classic judgement that had been formed long ago. But it still has enough power to lower people’s self-esteem. Proving people judge without knowing the entire person, instead, they judge the person based on, in this case, their gender. Scientists have been exploring the field of stereotypes since 1920. Some had theories about stereotypes being an inevitable part of human nature. “We hear and apprehend only what we already half know,” by journalist Walter Lippmann. If this theory is correct, then stereotypes have existed since this part of the human brain was developed, and are formed because humans judge with half-known knowledge, the judge before knowing the “whole story”. Stereotypes are formed by human judgements without enough information. Possibly part of human nature. It affects the direction of society greatly. And has a long history in human history. Stereotypes are formed by human judgements with biased opinions based on the group's identity. Stereotypes can be formed at any age, some psychologists believe that stereotypes are most commonly acquired in early infancy, under the influence of parents, teachers, friends, and the media. They have enough power to cause big events that influence the government, including politics. It is not a good way to judge just from an entity's identity. The new generation has started protests against the government due to stereotypes, the generation that will influence the world in the near future. Meaning future politics will be affected by stereotypes and anti-stereotypes. Stereotypes have enough power to influence which direction the world the reader is in will go.