Genuine question, if stereotypes are not true then why do stereotypes exist in the first place?

[gettingoldisshit]

Firstly i am definitely not being goady or trying to start an argument about certain people in the community. However I keep thinking about this. I work a lot with a certain community ( im not saying who because I don't want to start a pile on) and in my experience the stereotype of them is very very accurate. Obviously there is the exception to this but in general its very accurate. Its got me wondering where stereotypes come from if they are not a true reflection? I can't really comment on other communities/people because I don't have enough interaction with them to make a judgement.

In group and out group homogeneity and conformity to groups. ‘Othering’ in other words!

Stereotypes do not generally arise from the actual real-life actions and mannerisms of a specific community.

They are usually generated by hostile / unfriendly media, whether that's news articles, representations in films, TV, or advertisments, in books etc. This media feeds into our cultural psyche and the circle continues.

Generalisations are always dangerous, as they're unfair to individuals.

So yes, though they might hold true to a reasonably a significant proportion of a particular group, they don't represent everyone, and they might not even represent a majority.
As soon as you start seeing individuals from a community through the lens of a stereotype, they are at risk from you, as you've stopped seeing them as individuals with their own personalities/moral codes/skills etc.

There generally is a truth to them - but the problem is the stereotype absolutely won’t apply across the board, and the lack of nuance is a problem.

To take a relatively harmless example - I’m stereotypically white in that I can’t handle spicy food at all. But I know loads and loads of white people that can, and they would be annoyed at being lumped in the same category as me!

If you'd only ever met one family of 5 aliens from the planet Zog, and they were all green, had three ears and liked jam on pizza, you would assume that all Zogians were like that.
If Zogians became aware that humans think they like jam on pizza they might start playing up to the idea.
Maybe 95% of Zogians are like that, and the 5% are very odd. Maybe the numbers go the other way. But until you meet more, you've no way to tell. And if you serve jam pizza to every Zogian you meet, your assumption would be strengthened. Even if it was just that the Zogians didn't have the langauge to tell you they hated it, or were too polite.

I would also like to point out that when i say that most of the people i meet from this community are very stereotypical i mean this in positive ways as well as negative! I should have put that in my op.

Are you referring to stereotypes or cultural practices in the community you work with, though?

So I'm thinking that a community like the traveller community tends to follow quite set cultural practices and I don't think that's the same thing as a stereotype.

Stereotypes exist as a quick way of deciding whether people are likely to be friend or foe - they are a survival mechanism. That's why people wear the colours associated with their groups - be they uniforms, football scarves or 'luxury basics' - they let people see at a glance who they are.

Once we've made that initial decision we can move towards getting to know the individuals and work out how far they conform to the stereotype. Some will and some won't.

Yes this.

Some stereotypes are made up crap, but quite a lot are based on true in some way. Exactly as Mushroo says, it can fit many but not all eg spice.

Stereotype for example, arabs are loud and sound angry. 🤷 Can't argue with that one tbh. It took meike year to get used to now DH and mates, or his family having a banter and recognise they are NOT arguing🤦 They have great laugh about it! They are just very emotional people.
But, I met some quiet gentle souls too who absolutely don't fit it.

I think they are generally true, but what is harmful is to assume someone fits the stereotype before you know that they do - as there will always be outliers.

For example, it’s stereotypical to say women wear dresses, high heels and make up and have long hair. A lot do, but the women who don’t are no less of a woman - they just don’t fit the stereotype. The non stereotypical woman might then feel othered or excluded because she doesn’t meet the tick list of a woman. So it’s important that more diverse women are showcase and represented so everyone feels included.

Sweeping generalisations can be very harmful but yes there is a vein of truth in them.

It's an especially valid question, because most people will have encountered stereotypes that are say, about 80% accurate. So to be told that what they have witnessed with their own eyes is bad and false can seem jarring and counterintuitive.

And when humans are told that these very primal, intuitive survival mechanisms are wrong, then they naturally revolt.

Stereotypes aren't generally wrong, but they're both a) subject to abuse by malicious media and politicians, and b) only ever going to be a little useful in telling you about an individual person even when they're right.

If you are an educated person then you may well be aware that Ireland has always been a civilised and cultured society. Despite never having been part of the Roman Empire they adopted Christianity and kept to it when the English were illiterate pagans. Ireland sent missionaries to educate not just the English but other northern Europeans. In more recent times Ireland is known for its writers and poets.

If you are uneducated and you meet Irish labourers, as was often the case for the Victorians and Irish navvies, then you would probably develop a stereotype that Irish people are stupid.

Stereotypes become a straight jacket for individuals so they don’t get viewed for their own characteristics.
Stereotypes are often imposed to further other purposes or to justify poor treatment.
My father was Irish and there are plenty of stereotypes about “thick” Irish people - but where do people like Joyce, Yates, Wilde, Beckett etc. fit in to those?
Who came up with that stereotype and what purpose did it serve?

This.

Because humans are innately tribal. It's deeply embedded in evolutionary pyschology. "Them" and "us" groups were part of maintaining the social cohesion necessary for survivial in social groups without formal social structures, laws, etc. Be expelled by the tribe and you die. Hence also the tendency to conformity and outrage when it is flouted. It is hard to overcome evolutionary biology with rationality and ethics. Hence the need for laws.

Group identity is a natural part of humanity.

Stereotyping has helped our survival and success as a species.

What isn't appropriate or legal in some instances now is to discriminate based on stereotypes.

Agree with @PassTheSnacks

They did serve a purpose. However it’s important to be aware of stereotyping and don’t act on it so it becomes prejudice.

Or if your experience were Irish refugees escaping the famines of the 1840s for Liverpool, indigent, starving, diseased, traumatised, speaking only their own language and struggling to adapt to a foreign country, you could either conclude that the (1) Irish were a subhuman population, disgusting, animalistic, superstitious and incapable of self-government or (2) that your own government's colonial policies might have had a smidgen to do with creating the situation which brought them so low and prompted the 1848 rebellion and successive ones...

Lots of interesting research on the changing stereotypes of the immigrant Irish in the US throughout the long 19thc.

I don't think stereotypes hold up to actual knowledge. I lived in different parts of England for over a quarter of a century, and I can't think of a single English stereotype that holds water, just some largely valid sociological observations.

'The English are tea-obsessed, uptight, emotionless, bad-toothed, dog-loving eccentrics likely to be found doing the Lambeth Walk dressed as Pearly Kings and Queens or doing the church flowers in a Home Counties village wearing a floral frock' is a stereotype, and a silly one.

'English people on the whole are likely to be more indirect communicators than some other cultures, leading to more common use of insincere social apologies, token invitations and a perception that more direct or less smiley cultures are "rude"' is a sociological observation.

It's also to do with the way the human brain functions in general. It is extremely good at pattern recognition because this was a huge evolutionary benefit. However, it also leads to false deductions and recognition of patterns where none exist as an unfortunate by-product. This is also why so many people confuse correlation with causation: they react to what they see in a primitive way making connections between things that may have no relationship at all, without stepping back and using scientific method, data, logic.

In a natural environment the benefits of this brain structure outweighed the costs. We are now seeing very plainly that this doesn't hold true in all circumstances especially when problems are complex and nuanced. The limitations of our biology are behind many of our most serious current problems as a species. Many people actively resist looking at data and statistical analysis and think their anecdotes overrule this which is obviously totally irrational and will lead to bad outcomes.

I am increasingly leaning towards thinking it is exactly this issue - combined with the selfishness of the survival instinct which makes collective responsibility on a wide scale outside well-known individuals within a close family/ community group very difficult - may be the "great filter" of the Fermi paradox.

Anything that doesn't consider individuals as individuals is disrespectful. A lot of people conform to a lot of stereotypes, but you can't assume that any given individual will.

OP you said:

In my experience the stereotype of them is very very accurate. Obviously there is the exception to this but in general its very accurate.

Here are some stereotypes:

English people all dress as morris dancers and either talk in cockney accents (aright guvnor) or are very posh. They live in London. They drink tea and all english food is terrible.

Scottish people all wear oor jimmy hats and kilts. They say och aye the noo and eat haggis and deep fry everything. They are totally tight with money.

Welsh people shag sheep and are very good singers. They live on farms and drive tractors. They all say Alright Boyo at every opportunity. All their dads were miners.

Irish people are all a bit thick. Their head is red, they are drunks and they eat a lot of potatoes They are violent. They are very religious. They tell lies.

Now I could go on but do you really think that these are accurate? Very, very accurate?

Agree with this.

It depends how they've arisen imo. Some stereotypes come from a simple numbers game, but some are closely associated with discrimination and societal prejudices.

E.g. men are better leaders than women. Men have spent decades barring women from leadership positions, so of course in the collective subconscious, they're not as capable. It takes a long time to change attitudes.

To justify oppression by demonising people, and making people think it's okay to hurt and exploit them.

I did an undergraduate degree in anthropology, and one of the things you first study in anthropology is how anthropology was originally used to justify racism and slavery.

There's a very famous anthropology book where a scientist measured the heads of lots of different people of different races, and wrote a book stating that science (ie head measuring) proved that black people are less intelligent than white people, so white people have to be in charge to protect black people from themselves.

Black bodies were of tremendous financial value as free labour (slave trade), but most people are at least a little bit innately uncomfortable with the idea of kidnapping people (and kidnapping children), repeatedly physically brutalising them, forcing them to do hard manual labour, and killing them if they resist.

But companies and people stood to make huge amounts of money from slaves this obviously was a problem that had to be fixed, so a huge amount of work was done (via propaganda, pamphlets, books, so-called "science", and mainstream media and entertainment such as minstrel shows) to portray black people as violent, angry, animalistic, and stupid. Because if all you ever see or hear is that black people are violent dumb animals, you don't have the same emotional reaction to seeing a black child whipped that you would a white child being whipped.

And then confirmation bias kicks in. If you've been kidnapped, had your kids stolen, been whipped every day, then of course you're going to be angry. Every single slave who lashed out violently was used to further the myth that black people are inherently violent and angry, and therefore need white people controlling them, to keep their naturally violent nature in check.

Generations of black slaves had no access to education, and again this created a situation where their circumstances reinforced stereotypes that black people are less intelligent.

All so people could make money off of black bodies.

(Clearly that is a massive, massive oversimplification. But it's important for people to realise that money and capitalism plays a huge role in how and why people create and push stereotypes, and how many stereotypes came about originally from very deliberate, planned and organised propaganda campaigns.)

It's the exact same thing with Jews. The history of antisemitism is rooted in money. In the Middle Ages, Christians weren't allowed to be money lenders, so that job often fell to Jews, or Jews were actively forced into those jobs. That resulted in a situation where lots of Christians (who were the powerful majority) owed Jews (a powerless minority) money, and obviously they didn't want to pay, so it was in their own financial interest to invent lies and slander about the people they owed money to to justify not paying the debts they owed. Instead of paying their debts they started to call the Jewish people they owed money to money-obsessed and money-hoarding, which are stereotypes that exist to this day.

And then Jewish people all over Europe were expelled from their homes, there were genocides and mass expulsions, and violent oppression. Many Jewish people became refugees. So Jews started keeping their money in gold rather than in banks, so it would be portable and something they could use in any country. (This is true of my own family to this day.) Jewish people who were owed money insisted those debts be paid. And so the stereotype of Jews being money-hoarding was reinforced.

After WWI, Germany was broke and people were starving (due to the harsh penalties forced on Germany in the Treaty of Versailles). How did the German government react to the fact they couldn't afford to feed their own citizens, due to the fact they lost all their money fighting a failed war? Did they take responsibility for their own actions? Did they blame the countries that signed the Treaty of Versailles? No, they blamed it all on Jews living in Germany, and that led directly to WWII and the Holocaust.

And then many Jews all over Europe wound up as refugees, having fled or survived the Holocaust, so there was a huge movement to give Jewish people their own country (which was pushed mainly from European countries wanting to get rid of Jews), which led to the creation of Israel, and that obviously has not exactly ended well.

The exact same thing with women. For centuries men have tried to paint women as hysterical, as weak, because we have what they want (basically, vaginas, and the capacity to have babies). Most of the stereotypes around women were created by men as an excuse to control us.