Stereotyping

“ And, therefore, the stereotypes are loaded with preference, suffused with affection or dislike, attached to fears, lusts, strong wishes, pride, hope. Whatever invokes the stereotype is judged with the appropriate sentiment. Except where we deliberately keep prejudice in suspense, we do not study a man and judge him to be bad. We see a bad man. We see a dewy morn, a blushing maiden, a sainted priest, a humorless Englishman, a dangerous Red, a carefree bohemian, a lazy Hindu, a wily Oriental, a dreaming Slav, a volatile Irishman, a greedy Jew, a 100% American. ”

“ In particular, I have long felt that the prevailing tendency to regard all the marked distinctions of human character as innate, and in the main indelible, and to ignore the irresistible proofs that by far the greater part of those differences, whether between individuals, races, or sexes, are such as not only might but naturally would be produced by differences in circumstances, is one of the chief hindrances to the rational treatment of great social questions, and one of the greatest stumbling blocks to human improvement. ”

“ There is a marked identity about their features, person, manners and costume, so unmistakable that it betrays their nationality in a moment. So stereotyped are even the features and form of this singular people, that we cannot fail in their identity in the rudest cut that pretends to represent them. ”

“ Social Movements, Economic Forces, National Interests, Public Opinion are treated as persons, or persons like the Pope, the President, Lenin, Morgan or the King become ideas and institutions. The deepest of all the stereotypes is the human stereotype which imputes human nature to inanimate or collective things. ”

“ Chorus girl, woman lawyer, politician, detective, financier are clean-cut concepts and capable of definition. We all have stereotypes which minimize not only our thinking habits but also the ordinary routine of life. ”

“ Instead of presenting a casual fact, a large screen of stereotypes, and a dramatic identification, they break down the drama, break through the stereotypes, and offer men a picture of facts, which is unfamiliar and to them impersonal. ”

“ In the great blooming, buzzing confusion of the outer world we pick out what our culture has already defined for us, and we tend to perceive that which we have picked out in the form stereotyped for us by our culture. ”

“ If we admit the existence of the temperate character, it ought to find its place here. Can we admit it, or ought it not rather to be looked on as a purely ideal category? Though we may admit that persons are actually to be found in whom feeling, thought, and action are present in strictly equal proportions, ought we not to consider this as the absolute suppression of character, i.e., of any marks of individuality? ”

“ To discriminate, to discriminate endlessly, between types we adore and types we suspect, this is well and wise; but in the long result we are driven, whether it is pleasant to our prejudices or not that it should be so, crushingly to recognise that in the world of human character there are really no types at all; only tragic and lonely figures; figures unable to express what they want of the universe, of us, of themselves; figures that can never, in all the aeons of time, be repeated again ”

“ Each individual would thus have the stereotype of his effective social life cast; each social being would have his effective life formulated, if one may so speak, by relation, always by relations, nothing but by relations—to that of all the rest, but in figures, and yet again, in nothing but figures. ”

“ She weighed this, a forefinger against a cheek.
“The big ways are those which indicate character, aren’t they? While the little ones only make for habits. Men differ as to their habits, but in character they’re all cut on the same pattern—two or three patterns at most.” ”

“ I contend then that certain features of character, it may be in very varying degrees of intensity, belong to the more active and passionless temperament, and certain other features attend on the more reflective and impassioned temperament. If it can be shown that there are two marked groups of elements in character—the more impassioned group and the less impassioned group—and that each group may be inferred to exist if but one or two of its characteristic elements are clearly seen, why even then much would be gained in the interpretation of history and of daily life. ”

“ The subtlest and most pervasive of all influences are those which create and maintain the repertory of stereotypes. We are told about the world before we see it. We imagine most things before we experience them. And those preconceptions, unless education has made us acutely aware, govern deeply the whole process of perception. ”

“ Under what conditions, and by what means, this temperament is engendered in race or individual, we will not discuss at present. It is sufficient to note that it exists, and that there is in us a beauty-sense, separate from the other senses and above them, separate from the reason and of nobler import, separate from the soul and of equal value—a sense that leads some to create, and others, the finer spirits as I think, to contemplate merely. ”

“ I shall never repeat a conversation, but an idea often. I shall use the same types when I like, but not commonly the same stereotypes. A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times. ”

“ From this constant employment of their minds, most people, I believe, without being conscious of it, have stored up in idea the greater part of those strong marked varieties of human character, which may be said to divide it into classes; and in one of those classes they involuntarily place every new person they become acquainted with.
I will readily allow that the dress and the manners of men, rather than their characters and disposition are the subjects of our common conversation, and seem chiefly to occupy the multitude. ”

“ We smile at the simplicity of the men of nature, for their mistaken notions at the first introduction among them of exotic novelties; and yet, even in civilised Europe, how long a time those whose profession or whose reputation regulates public opinion are influenced by vulgar prejudices, often disguised under the imposing form of science! ”

“ I cannot tell how it comes to pass, that society oppresses me; that the forms of politeness are disagreeable to me—that what people talk about does not interest me,—that all that they show to me is either quite indifferent, or else produces quite an opposite impression to what they expect. When I am shown a drawing or painting of any beautiful spot, immediately a feeling of disquiet arises within me which is utterly inexpressible. ”

“ But to be no one of these types to any degree at all is to be no character at all, is to be socially a nonentity, a minus quantity; it is to be determined by the vicissitudes of chance or circumstance; it is to be a succession of vacillations rather than a distinctive self-determined personality. Each of these types, moreover, if not extreme, has its specific excellences, and their various presence lends richness and diversity to social life. ”

“ AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF PUBLIC MOTIVATION IS NECESSARY TO THE WORK OF THE PUBLIC RELATIONS COUNSEL Before defining the fundamental motivations of society, let me mention those outward signs on which psychologists base their study of conditions.
Psychological habits, or as Mr. Lippmann calls them, “stereotypes,” are shorthand by which human effort is minimized. They are so clearly and commonly understood that every one will immediately respond to the mention of a stereotype within his personal experience. ”

“ These are largely matters of temperament or of mood. The attitude of many of us changes from day to day, from book to book; but at heart we all have a preference, a prejudice in favor of certain methods of writing, while others awake our antagonism. ”

“ Strange parody upon the incongruities of our every-day life, costume serving but to typify the moral incompatibilities which are ever at work in our actual existence! for are not the people we see linked together—are not the social groupings we witness—just as widely separated by every instinct and every sentiment as are these characters in all their motley? ”

“ The analysis then turns from these more or less external limitations to the question of how this trickle of messages from the outside is affected by the stored up images, the preconceptions, and prejudices which interpret, fill them out, and in their turn powerfully direct the play of our attention, and our vision itself. From this it proceeds to examine how in the individual person the limited messages from outside, formed into a pattern of stereotypes, are identified with his own interests as he feels and conceives them. ”

“ And these are usually people of a character near akin to his own—of similar tastes, habits, manners, feelings and purposes. It is this similarity of character which draws them together, and renders their society mutually agreeable. Hence we find those who are deeply absorbed in any particular subject—as temperance, peace, abolition, moral reform, and the like—anxious to make the acquaintance and enjoy the society of persons known to be interested in the same subject. ”

“ There is in each set of stereotypes a point where effort ceases and things happen of their own accord, as you would like them to. The progressive stereotype, powerful to incite work, almost completely obliterates the attempt to decide what work and why that work. ”

“ This is true of what we call a bizarre mixture of incongruent elements in mode of attire or in manners; for it is experience and the habits of social life which dispose our minds to regard them as foreign one to the other. Much of our mirthful gratification at exhibitions of the incongruous arises through a perception of the intrusion of something foreign into a situation. ”

“ All the resemblances, of social origin, noticed in the social world are the direct or indirect result of imitation in all its forms,—custom, fashion, sympathy, obedience, instruction, education, naive or deliberate imitation. ”

“ These attributes are not applicable to a human personality; being as a rule judgments of character intuitively and not critically approved, which are projected upon our fellow-beings, inevitably doing serious injury to human relations. ”

“ It is not who we are, how we are dressed, or how we look, whether we are homely or handsome, educated or uneducated, so much as what we are that creates that subtle mysterious atmosphere of personality which either draws people to us or drives them from us. ”

“ I knew from experience that eccentric characters such as yours suffer cruelly from the isolation to which they condemn themselves; for these proud, sensitive, and easily offended natures can not readily assimilate themselves with the rest of mankind,—they are constantly being wounded or taking offence, and they instinctively create for themselves a solitude in the midst of society. ”

“ But the man with the ironical temperament is forced constantly to compare and contrast his experience with what was, or what might be, or with what ought to be, and it is the shocks of these comparisons and contrasts that make up his inner life. ”

“ It is one of the forms in which we naturally give expression to our tastes, our constructive faculties, our reason, our feelings, our habits—in a word, to our character, as a whole. This expression is often greatly modified by the arbitrary laws of Fashion, and by circumstances of time, place, and condition, which we can not wholly control; but can hardly be entirely falsified. Even that arch tyrant, the reigning Mode, whatever it may be, leaves us little room for choice in materials, forms, and colors, and the choice we make indicates our prominent traits of character. ”

“ The feelings of love and hate, and the broader feelings of race-prejudice and patriotism are consequently based first of all in the instincts.
Perhaps the most particular and interesting expression of the general fact of susceptibility is seen in the sensitiveness of man to the opinion in which he is held by others. Social life in every stage of society is characterized by an eagerness to make a striking effect. ”

“ With his gloomy face, sour disposition, complaining habits and inherent lack of good taste and culture, he sees only the shadows of life. People are repulsed by him, never attracted. Brilliant men and women, people of refinement and taste, will have nothing to do with him. ”

“ Among these may be mentioned: (1) the tendency to give neologisms, particularly those of the senseless type; (2) the tendency to give unclassified reactions largely of the incoherent type; and (3) the tendency toward stereotypy manifested chiefly by abnormally frequent repetitions of the same reaction. Fairly characteristic also is the occasional tendency to give sound reactions. Again, occasionally one encounters pronounced perseveration, and at least two of our subjects gave a good many unclassified reactions obviously due to distraction. ”

“ To sum up: the stranger whom we feel to be divergent as compared with ourselves is indifferent or the object of prejudice; the stranger whom we feel ourselves unable to measure by our own standard, whose measure—not his qualities—we feel to be different, we receive with prestige. We look with prejudice on the stranger whom we dissociate, and receive with prestige the stranger who is dissociated. ”

“ Possessed of every quality that could most delight in society,—brilliant, beautiful and of a truly masculine understanding, she was accurate in judgment, and at a glance could penetrate the secrets of others ”

“ For when a system of stereotypes is well fixed, our attention is called to those facts which support it, and diverted from those which contradict. So perhaps it is because they are attuned to find it, that kindly people discover so much reason for kindness, malicious people so much malice. ”

“ Wondrous always to note is this sterility of aspect and this blight of vulgarity, humanly speaking, where a single type has had the game, as one may say, all in its hands. Character is developed to visible fineness only by friction and discipline on a large scale, only by its having to reckon with a complexity of forces—a process which 428results, at the worst, in a certain amount of social training. ”