During a diversity management session, a manager suggests that stereotypes are a necessary part of working with others. “I have to make assumptions about what’s in the other person’s head, and stereotypes help me do that,” she explains. “It’s better to rely on stereotypes than to enter a working relationship with someone from another culture without any idea of what they believe in!” Discuss the merits of and problems with the manager’s statement.

This question raises the fundamental dilemma that stereotyping is both a necessary and a troublesome activity in the perceptual process. On the one hand, the manager is correct that stereotyping helps us to fill in missing information, such as the non-observable characteristics of a person that only become apparent after a long time. Also, stereotyping helps us to organize information more efficiently by placing people into predetermined categories.

Although most stereotypes have some truth to them, there is also plenty of error and distortion which could lead to employment discrimination. It is unlikely that someone perfectly fits the stereotype category, so we tend to assign traits that are untrue. Stereotyping makes it difficult for people to alter their beliefs about a person regarding traits that conflict with the stereotype.

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