Stereotypes, I agree, are as a whole detrimental. What many fail to understand and distinguish is the value of generalizations. Many find generalizations to be uncomfortably close to stereotypes, especially when concerning race, sex or other identity groups. This has led, unfortunately, to the tendency of many to renounce generalizations altogether, citing the harm caused by stereotyping.
This, I believe, is a great mistake, and one that defies progress and efficient living. Doing away with generalizations would be a grievous mistake; however, it is still essential to distinguish between a generalization and the harmful stereotype.
Stereotypes, according to sociologist Joel Charon, can be distinguished by six main points: stereotypes pass judgment; stereotypes leave little or no room for exceptions; stereotypes create categories that often dominate all other features of a person, not allowing for other characteristics to be seen and appreciated; stereotypes do not tend to change, even when proven wrong, which supports the idea that it is not backed by empirical evidence after all; stereotypes are also not formed by said empirical evidence to begin with, but instead through anecdote or otherwise and, lastly, stereotypes do not help people understand their differences.
Generalizations, on the other hand, take a mountain of data and produce a convenient pattern with which we can quickly and efficiently process little mounds of dirt resembling those mountains. Let me develop the metaphor. Quartz is known to be a clear, common crystal. Therefore, is it not logical to assume when someone claims to have found a piece of quartz, that is probably going to be a clear crystal, or if they found a clear crystal, that it is probably going to be quartz?
For example, Hispanic societies have a high degree of machismo, or, in Middle Eastern cultures, women have a lesser status than men—these types of generalizations are helpful when engaging with people of those cultures.
But in all cultural interactions, culturally intelligent leadership requires you to recognize that generalizations do not apply to everyone within a cultural group. Previous Section. Saying that women do more washing up perpetuates the stereotype that women are associated with domestic labour. Saying that Irish people like Guinness or tell good jokes is said to perpetuate stereotypes. If we try to censor these in order to fit our own politics and values, we would rightly lose any credibility for our scholarship.
For this to be acceptable depends on two key differences between a generalisation and a stereotype. By contrast, we as anthropologists are responsible for investigating the historical and cultural reasons for the observed association. Secondly, a generalisation must never become an assumption about any particular individual. A qualitative observation, as also a statistic, bears on some, but not all, of a population.
It may be entirely untrue of that person and so should not be assumed of them. This can be illustrated with the eye contact frame, which includes continua for eye-contact length short to long and for use of eyes in conversational turn taking strong to weak.
In a cultural contrast between U. Americans and people of some northern European countries such as Holland or Germany, Americans tend to make medium-length eye contact before looking away, and they use a longer, direct gaze as a cue for changing speakers. Germans and Dutch people tend to make longer and more direct eye contact, and turn taking is more likely to be cued by looking away. There are several potential misunderstandings arising from this difference in nonverbal behavior.
Many Americans interpret strong eye contact as indicating either sexual or physical aggressiveness, depending on the situation. Germans, on the other hand, tend to interpret weaker eye contact as indicating lack of interest or attention. These misinterpretations are likely to be exacerbated by Germans intensifying eye contact in an attempt to engender attention, while Americans may weaken eye contact to reduce the perceived threat.
Things may get even worse, since the shifting American eyes send unconscious cues to Germans that it is always their turn to talk, while the steady gaze of Germans sends the same message to Americans. Consequently, both participants in an intercultural interaction may go away convinced that the other was trying to dominate the conversation.
Communication Style. There are several forms of this frame, many of them based on Edward T. The high-context side of the continuum is where a lot of meaning is derived from the surrounding situation rather than from what is said explicitly.
Populations that are mainly distributed on the high-context side may have various language use patterns e. In contrast, people on the low-context side rely more on explicit statements to convey meaning. Such people may also be either talkative or relatively silent, but they will usually look to whatever is actually said for the real meaning. On this continuum, people with European roots tend to be low context, as compared to the high-context style used by many people of African, Latin American, and Asian roots.
European Americans may wait for Asians to request something explicitly before they offer it, leaving the Asians to wonder silently at American insensitivity and obtuseness. Some Asians, on the other hand, may create relational confusion by reading unintended meaning into European American behavior. In the face of confusion, European Americans are likely to become more direct and explicit, which may lead people who use a higher-context style to become more indirect and circumspect, thus creating a spiral of increasingly incompetent exchanges.
Cognitive Style. This domain of this frame is patterns of thinking, or how people process perceptions. The basic continuum runs from concrete , where people use more description and physical metaphor to capture their perceptions, to abstract, where people are more likely to use theory and explanation to organize perception.
On this continuum, people in many Asian cultures tend to be concrete, stressing accurate description and direct experience of events. In contrast, people many Northern European cultures tend to be abstract, stressing coherent explanation and historical contexting of events.
Americans tend to be midrange on this continuum, stressing action-oriented procedures that are neither particularly accurate nor particularly coherent. Given their position along the continuum, U. Americans tend to be impatient with both theory and relationships, preferring to focus on tasks. Within the U.
Cultural Values. This is one of the best-known intercultural frames. Its domain is how people assign goodness to ways of being in the world.
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