Don T Let Stereotypes Warp Your Judgment Analysis

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Stereotyping is a form of pre judgement that is as common in today's society as it was 2000 years ago. In his article “Don't Let Stereotypes Warp Your Judgment,” Robert L. Heilbroner discusses some major cause of stereotyping. He says that stereotypes are “a kind of gossip” (34) which help us make sense out of highly confusing world. Heilbroner discusses how prevalent and natural stereotyping is despite how unfairly and incorrectly typecast people. For example Heilbroner asks his readers “can a person’s nationality be pretty accurately guessed from his photograph?” (34) The answer is no and proven with the example about a group of Colombia and Barnard students who were shown 30 photographs of “pretty” but unidentified girls, and asked to…show more content…
Heilbroner says “We begin to typecast people in our childhood year.” (34) Most if not all the influence coming from our families and society. If we were raised to identify certain people as the “bad guys” by factors such as race, skin color, religion, where they live, etc. anyone with that criteria will be stereotyped. In the article Heilbroner writes about an experiment that took place several years ago, where a psychologist privately asked the most “popular” student in an elementary school to make a mistakes in the morning. He later asked the class if any mistakes were made during class, the children did notice mistakes but from the “unpopular” members of the class known as the “bad guys.” I agree with Heilbroner because growing up I was one of the “unpopular” members of my class, I was way to short and skinny for my age and wore huge glasses with a high prescription making it seem like I stick the base of glass bottles into my frame. It wasn’t until after my growth spurt that I started receiving attention and became popular, I worked up the courage to go and talk to my crush but she said I was “too nice and innocent” for her because I wore glasses. There I was judged and put into a category just because my vision wasn’t all that great. I could have been the worst kid in my school but that’s where the danger in stereotyping lies,

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