Stereotypes – collective or individual?

· Reflection: In terms of what’s reflected most of us are willing to wear positive generalizations to get with pride, but argue with those who criticise us. Positive generalization could also be insulting e.g. black runners being the best and only highlighting them as in a small minority. The problem with the traditional view is that stereotypes reflect culture. Religion is another key factor of reflection as it is almost central to the way millions of people base the way they live their lives. For example Christians will God as all loving where as atheists who have no faith at all will immediately dismiss this view as it challenges their beliefs and also they stereotype God as being non existing or hateful for example. Stereotypes can either be fair or unfair, for example in skins they possibly represent unfair stereotypes such as sex and violence whereas not all teenagers will act in that particular way.
· Intentional: Social forces can influence the way that we describe things influence to use culturally derived stereotypes in conversations. This can include political factors, satire and political correctness. Often the stereotypes we here about encourage or discourage behaviours by certain people and groups within society. We’re not only told what to think, but we are also taught for example in secondary school and on work courses. There is also the factor of prejudice. Prejudices are important to intentional behaviour description as we all have the tendency to prejudge people and also many different important issues without knowing all of the facts first. We also can use stereotypes intentionally when we are being bullied for example and the feelings such as fear and hatred act as the social forces for a counter attack on the bully , for example for a bully saying how they are stupid and also maybe in the heat of the moment may make insulting comments about the bully’s family. In skins for example hormones can make stereotypes intentional and also through social forces such as mistreatment in school.
· Constructed: Most stereotypes are uniformly held so evidence for collective representations are weak. The role of culture in our everyday lives helps to construct some particularly strong social stereotypes, such as the irresponsibleness of teenagers in Britain through consequences, such as teenage pregnancies and teenage drivers being reckless. Other factors include cultural legitimacy and consensus. Powerful cultural messages about stereotypes can be expressed publically and under other conditions as well. Stereotypes are usually very well structured, because they are based around a strong issue in society and those particularly political and social ones have many attributes to support them. An example of this is from the time of George Bush being president of USA and people stereotyped him as being corrupt, having low intelligence and also having a poor grasp of reality and everything that was going within the world both politically and socially. Skins represents constructed stereotypes with mainly the worst of British teenage culture shining through.