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In an attempt to order a complex world, humans develop mental shortcuts for processing information. Evolutionarily speaking, if you had to stop and think every time you encountered an object or a person, by the time you figured out if they were dangerous or not, you could be dead. So we put things into mental categories, and when we encounter something similar to what we've encountered before, ZIP! it goes into its proper file in our consciousness.
Raeanna, I think what you're talking about is less "stereotyping" per se than this kind of mental shortcutting, although there's a fine line.
Positive or negative shortcut depends on the context and on the audience. If you say the word "American" it conjures up a different picture depending on whether you live in the U.S. or in, say, Yemen. If you say the word "hero" it brings up a different archetype depending on whether you're male or female, Western or Eastern, etc. "Blonde" might conjure up a ditz to some people, but it also might conjure up for me memories of my beautiful blonde girlffriend, or conventional notions of beauty and purity. Chances are it's both/and, not either/or.
I think the thing to note is that, as ART says, this kind of stereotyping/shortcutting is nearly inevitable given the poor metaphor that language is for actual experiences/objects. Unless you can somehow short-circuit the process of automatic mental shortcuts (it's possible, just difficult: see the concept of "reframing") it's inevitable that people are going to take the path of least mental resistance.
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"If ten million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."
- Anatole France
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