Assignment

In my personal life, a situation in which I have been negatively stereotyped has been within my work place. For example, I am a young female who is working within a predominately male environment. When I first started, many of my clients made the comments that they do not feel comfortable doing business with a woman, especially a young one. Although I have the same credentials as the male agents, because I was viewed as a young women, I was thought of a lessor. According to Robbins & Judge "Stereotyping is when we judge someone on the basis of our perception of the group to which they belong". To some clients, I was just a naive millennial who wasn't very well educated and just wanted to earn a pay check. With that being said, I have also been positively stereotyped for being a young female within my industry because I have had clients tell me that due to my age, I am able to keep up with the ever changing field of insurance and I have the capability of adapting to the change verses those agents who are much more stuck in their ways. I think it is very common to view or judge others based on negative stereotypes.

Although I do not condone this action, if I am being honest, I have done so. I think that perception plays a very large part in stereotyping. I think that how you perceive something or how you view it, will determine how you judge it. According to Jussim, "When people have vividly clear, credible, relevant individuating information, they usually (though not always) should rely on it and ignore their stereotypes; when people have ambiguous or only partially informative individuating information, they should rely on both their (accurate) stereotype and the individuating information; and when people have no individuating information, relying on their (accurate) stereotype will maximize the accuracy of their person perception predictions. The scientific evidence is then reviewed, and, perhaps shockingly, it shows that how people integrate stereotypes and individuating information to arrive at person perception judgments approximately corresponds to what they should do to be as rational and accurate as possible." (pp.1).

Robbins, S. P. & Judge, T. A. (2017). Organizational behavior (17th ed.). Pearson Publishing

Jussim, Lee. 2012. Oxford Scholarship Online. Stereotypes an Person Perception.