THE HARMFUL STEREOTYPE

It is not rare for us to accused someone because of their look or appearance. We often to gossiping them before we know who they really are. For example, when we see a man that has a feminine figure, automatically most of us think that he is gay, he likes the man. In reality, he just has that kind of figure because of his environment or other aspects, and he still loves women. This kind of thinking is what we called prejudice. Prejudice exists because of there are stereotypes. Stereotypes are grouping someone based on their looks, their origin, their behavior, et cetera. In daily life, we used to stereotype someone (in a negative way) without realizing it that it is not right.

There are two kinds of stereotypes, in the positive way and negative way. Positive stereotypes usually content a compliment about good things that some people or group has done like we respect Japanese people because they are hard workers and they appreciate the time. We also think that most of the Japanese people are like that. On the other hand, negative stereotypes usually related to gossiping somebody in a bad way, like prejudice someone without knowing them or talking about their shortcomings. We should avoid this negative stereotype because this kind of behavior is very rude to other people. 

Stereotypes can be right, can be wrong. Besides that, stereotypes will hurt others. There are some threats behind the stereotype according to Claude M. Steele from Stanford University and Joshua Aronson from the University of Texas. In 1995, their experiment showed that their college students who had black skin got worse score test than the white skin students did when their race was under pressure. So, from this case, we know that when someone gets stereotyped by others, their focus will be scattered. Otherwise, if their race did not have the problem, they would have a good result for their test like the white skin students. The result of this experiment showed that performance in the academic context can be hurt by the awareness that one's behavior can be seen through racial stereotypical lenses. Some research that conducted by Aronson and Steele with Michael Lustina and Kelli Keough, from the University of Texas at Austin, along with and Joseph Brown of Stanford University in 1999, also showed that stereotypical threats can "hurt" the academic performance of white students when they are confronted with the scourge of Asian superiority in mathematics.

There are hundreds of experiments on the impact of stereotypical threats that have been made in this last two decades, according to tirto.id. The result of those experiments was similar that someone who gets stereotyped by other will have a problem with themselves. So, now we know that stereotyped other it is not right and it brings negative impacts. Let’s try to avoid it, learn how we can get rid of stereotypes. Do not forget to tell other people about the stereotypes, that it can harm people or hurt them without us knowing it.