¶ … Stereotypes: Positive and Negative Ones
Truthfully, there is no such thing as a positive stereotype. Stereotypes are inherently limiting and circumscribe the expectations and the perceptions of an individual towards another, a group, or towards entire stratifications of social, religious, ethnicities, and other categorizations for people. A more accurate assessment of the concept of a positive stereotype is to denote that some stereotypes are based on assumptions that are supposed to be complimentary in attempts to solicit "stereotype endorsement" (Okeke et al., 2009, p. 366). For instance, regarding the instructor's remarks about Mary, it is supposed to be a compliment that just based on her ethnicity that she should perform well as a dancer. Nonetheless, even these sorts of stereotypes can produce a noxious effect by creating unreasonable expectations. Mary might actually be a fairly poor dancer; she might have avoided taking dance classes all her life because she wanted to eschew the chagrin associated with the fact that she is a Hispanic female who does not have some sort of innate prowess at dancing. Thus, even though some stereotypes are supposed to be complimentary, they are still not quite positive.
It is natural for individuals...
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