Racism, Sexism and Ageism: The Impact of Stereotype Thinking

Hinton (2000) defines a stereotype as a belief about an individual that derives from rigid attributes made based on perceived group membership, e.g., membership in a certain ethnic group or a certain gender group, or a certain age group. Stereotypes are said to be oversimplified and biased preconceptions of set characteristics of people, situations, or social groups.

For example, Smith and associates define 'racism' as the belief that a particular racial group is inferior to another and that a person's social and moral traits are predetermined by his or her inborn racially-related biological characteristics. Sexism, according to Lun and colleagues (2007) is cognitively the same view except that the inferiority/superiority dimension is viewed in terms of gender. The same way of thinking is true for ageism, except that in this regard the 'inferior characteristics' are associated with membership in a certain age group (Nelson, 2004). As can be seen from their definition, all three of these sociopolitical views represent stereotypic thinking.

When people engage in stereotypic thinking, Hinton (2000) reports that they are engaging in unchanging, rigid, overly categorical, and undifferentiated thought. This kind of thinking is typically inaccurate because individual variation is not taken into account. This paper examines the impact of Racism, Sexism, and Ageism on the development of the culturally diverse person.

Impact of Stereotypic Thinking: The S

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