 So, welcome to today's presentation on media stereotypes. This is one word that we hear very often about stereotyping and stereotypes. And today we'll talk about how this word came into our academic field and how as media persons or as the media and communication students, we must be aware of the things surrounding stereotype. Why do we adopt all these mental shortcuts as we'll see? So, stereotypes basically are generalizations about others generally, about members of other groups. So, they are not based on our own firsthand experience, but based on some certain generalizations that we've learned about others from the mass media, not exactly about them from our meetings with them or people of that particular group. So, as we said, there are two very important things. It's about an out group, people belonging to some other group. And we learn about them through generalizations from the mass media, two important things to remember. The word has its origin in this printing technology, which is, if you can see on the screen, this is called a stereotype. So, basically it's a printing plate which allows mechanical reproduction of the same material again and again and again. So, this is what led to the word being coined by Walter Lippman, we'll just see in a moment. So, it's a rigid mold which allows us to reproduce the same printed content again and again. The rigid mold is again a very important term there. So, Walter Lippman wrote this book Public Opinion in 1922 and this is a very important book on public opinion, on propaganda and all these things. So, I'm just quoting Walter Lippman because he was the person who coined the term stereotype for us. So, that's where the study about stereotype, it's basically more in the field of psychology but it's very, very important for our field in media and communication as well. So, Walter Lippman says, for the most part we do not first see and then define, we define first and then see and that's very important. That the definition of people of that odd group that comes to us first and in the great confusion of that outer world, we pick out what our culture has already defined for us. Our culture means basically the kind of way, the life that we lead. So, the mass media and all these things, they have already defined for us that what and other means. So, basically we take that other as a given and then we define or we see that person based on that particular framework. So, based on what our culture has picked out in the form of a stereotype about the other person. So, this is what Walter Lippman says and Walter Lippman also provides two or three important reasons why we accept these stereotypical images. First of all, it does not require a lot of effort because we already have a familiar idea about what that person could be or what that person coming from that particular area is like and then we do not have to expend a lot of mental energy there. So, for example, if you have an idea about what a Chinese person would be like, then whenever we come across a Chinese person then we visualize that person with the images that we already have in mind. So, it leads to an economy of effort and it is also a defense which Walter Lippman says. Why is it a defense? Because it makes us feel very comfortable in our own world. It's like a kind of a cognitive resonance because we expect certain people to do certain things and when we see it is happening like that, we feel more at home. So, we expect certain people to be villainous if I can use that word and if he or she behaves like that then we feel more at home and you can see television employs that in a big way. So, if a person for example is supposed to be a vamp then he or she looks like certain things or has that kind of image and then we expect that person to behave like that. And when they behave like that, we feel more at home. So, that is more of a, you know, in Lippman's word, more of a defense of what we already believe in. So, it's a guarantee. This is what he says. It's a guarantee of our self-respect. It is a projection upon the world of our sense of our own value. So, these stereotypical images, they have feelings attached to them. So, these are like traditions for us. So, if a person has an image of that particular kind among us then it's just repeated and reinforced as we will see. There's another thing which Lippman talks about, which is about the blind spot, which I will talk in a moment's time. The study about stereotypes basically talks about it generally in negative terms. So, this is from Dominic Lasar and this is what he suggests that stereotype is a category-based cognitive response. So, I have categorized people into certain categories and I identify that person into that particular category. And the effective counterpart means how I feel about that, those categories is prejudice and how I behave is discrimination. So, generally this is about stereotyping in an race and we'll see more about that when we talk about blacks, then we see them to belong to certain categories or even in certain cases, even gender roles are stereotyped and xenophobia. So, if you see people of other nationalities, this leads to some kind of intolerance because we have certain preconceived notions about what they are or what they could be. So, this is basically a negative response of the effect is generally seen in terms of all those negative types of stereotypes. We'll see that the media uses it for some other purposes also. We'll see that as we go along. So, for example, Perkin suggests that there is a male stereotype, the human stereotype and also the upper class stereotype and which is a leader stereotype. And the other stereotypes are defined in terms of opposition to these kinds of stereotypes. So, if he is not male upper class, then he is this and that is why he is other or he is inferior in certain cases or whatever. Or that is what a lot of stereotyping is about. So, stereotypes are learned early. They are learned early because mass media provides us with these images again and again. So, they are reinforced because they are repeated and they're encountered repeatedly and that is why it is automatic. We'll talk about mental shortcuts that we employ and that is why these stereotypes are very automatic. And why are they automatic? Because most of our social encounters are superficial. We do not expend a lot of energy or mental energy in trying to find out about those people. So, they belong to those categories. So, that is why because we have been through this process of stereotypes through repetitions and such things, that is why whenever I see a person belonging to that particular category, I immediately think that, okay, these are the characteristics of that particular person. But if we think deeply and I will talk about these two thinking systems in my presentation today, but if we think more elaborately and more systematically, then we can see beyond the stereotypes. Then a black person will be not a stereotype, but he will be something else. Then a woman will not be a stereotype, then something much more than that. So, this is about the ways of thinking or why we see certain things in stereotypes and why we do not see other things as not stereotypes. We'll talk about that in the details as well. And stereotypes can occur in a lot of environmental contexts. As I said, it can occur in terms of gender roles. It can occur as an out group. And it is also a reflection of power, which we will suggest in our presentation today as well. So, in the next part, so the first part was about the historical perspective in stereotypes and what are the various ways of looking at it. Now, let's start talking about how stereotypes are used by the media in the media and what are the purposes that that media puts stereotypes to. So, first of all, we've seen earlier that media are a very powerful tool to develop, reinforce and validate these stereotypical beliefs. So, in Indian cinema, for example, the stereotype of South Indian was what Mahmood would play in film after film about somebody who was good with music or who would speak with certain accent and so on and so forth. So, every time a South Indian had to come to these Hindi movies, the image was just reinforced and validated. And that is where our response to those people or our ideas of those people would be based on these images, particularly when our personal experience with those people is very limited. We are not going to meet those people in our everyday life more very regularly. So, that is why these media images are extremely important in developing these stereotypes. And my ideas about that particular group or that particular category to which that person is put into as a stereotype. So, why does media have to deal with these stereotypes? One of the very simple answers is that it assists them to build that narrative without expending a lot of resources. So, if a person has to be identified as a villain, it's very easy to just give him a particular type of costume, give him a particular type of dialogue delivery and these kind of things. And without putting a lot of things into the story, just by looking at that person, people can very easily identify that person as a villain. So, it helps the media conveniently provide information about social groups into simplistic identifiable images which are easily accepted by people and which are also easily understood by people especially when they have no personal experience of meeting such people. So, to reach the broad audience, the media employs these attributes of it could be ethnicity. So, if a person has to belong to the Middle East, he or she is shown to have certain attributes. It's there in Hollywood also in a big way. So, if we've seen the Big Bang Theory where Raj Kutrapalli was the Indian stereotype there, very often he was a person who would love snakes and who would eat certain kind of food or speak a certain kind of language and that's where it's very easy to put out the message that, okay, he's an Indian just through these attributes or even gender or class or employment or even religion or even mental or physical disability. So, every mental patient in Hindi movies would have that particular characteristic with that kind of guffawing laughter and different kind of violence and all those kind of things. So, every time it had to be a filmy mental disorder, that person would be just into that particular image or those few images. So, these are automatically activated whenever we encounter these symbols in the mass media. Whenever we see a mad person who they want to show on the screen, just by those simple cues, they can put their message across that, okay, we are saying that he or she is a mad person or things like that even with age and disability and all that. So, whatever these attributes are, they are trying to put them into more simplistic images for us. And they also act as self perpetuating expectations because we expect, so we expect Chinese to have these attributes. We expect people from the other group to have these attributes and we only pay attention to those attributes which are consistent with their stereotypes. So, if I have an image of a Chinese person being of a certain kind and if I get information which is not consistent with that image, then I will mentally disregard that image or I will mentally ignore that kind of an image or I will mentally discount that image. So, the images that I have in mind, I have been exposed to over a period of time, generally through mass media and through other avenues, these are the images that I hold about those outgroup as I have suggested and if I get information which is not consistent with that kind of image, then I might disregard that information. And in television commercial, this is from an American example by Nicole Faris and if you see the gender stereotype, how women are portrayed. So, this is as I repeat, this is from an American example, but you can find a lot of resonance in Indian advertisements as well. The woman is always portrayed to be somebody who is cooking or washing or doing household work or even serving food or serving breakfast or dinner or things like that. Or even when they are talking about diet products, they are about women and all. So, this is a very kind of a dangerous stereotype because you are expecting these gender roles whenever you talk about women. And this is what has been seen and although there are some very good exceptions, but generally, and this is just maybe 10, 20 years back, but this is what was the stereotype about women at that point of time. And the stereotype of blacks also, and this is from Master and Greenberg in their journal article of 2001, the blacks were often seen as lazy and untrustworthy and unintelligent and largely demeaning kind of roles just to entertain the white audiences and they were shown to be living in ghettos and slums and all that. So, this racial ethnic stereotype is also very common in American media as well. And here also, we have different communities being exposed to some different kind of stereotypes. So, when a person belongs to that particular religion, he is supposed to belong to a particular category of stereotype. One way in which this can be countered is by depicting counter-stereotypical content. And this has been seen in educational programming as well that when children's negative stereotypes are broken through content, which is not stereotypical, so they could be showing a black doctor or a black engineer or a black scientist, for example, then there are positive attitudes towards, then there is a positive attitudes towards these ethnic minorities. So, this counter stereotypical content is also very important or has an important role in breaking those stereotypes. So, we have also seen that these stereotypes have very important repercussions in how we view them in real life as well. So, if I have a particular stereotype of a particular category of people and when I actually meet those people in real life then probably those evaluations follow me or those are the evaluations that stay with me. So, if I have had a negative ethnic imagery for people of a particular nationality and if I see them in real life then those evaluations are also negative at that point of time. So, there is an explanation for that and this is from the field of psychology and I have a different lecture on this on cognitive dissonance, but still when we are talking of stereotypes we have to talk about these two systems of thought that operate within us and this is how we can explain stereotypes as well. So, the first system operates automatically and quickly. So, the moment I see a person, I immediately create some kind of an impression about him or her. So, that is where my mind is working in the fast system as I can say and the other is the slow system or which is known as a slow thinking. Where we allocate more attention and where we do a lot more of you know, we provide a lot more of cognitive effort, we provide a lot more thinking about those situations. So, say for example, I give you, I just show you an image of an angry man. The moment I show you the picture you will not think a lot about that person. You will immediately think that okay this is the background, this is what he is doing or this is what he might do so on and so forth. But if I do give you a long multiplication or division that is where you are not going to use your fast thinking. That is where we use our slow thinking. So, these are the two systems that are within us and our brain decides when to take that fast thinking and when not to take that fast thinking. So, as you can understand when we are talking of stereotypes, we are suggesting that that is where the fast thinking of the brain is in operation. And I will tell you how if we use slow thinking then we can break free of those stereotypes. So, this is again from the work on fast thinking and slow thinking and from the field of psychology basically. So, the first system which I told you it is fast, it is non-conscious, it is reflexive most of the times, it is automatic. So, we don't put in a lot of thought in that way of thinking. And the other thinking is the slow thinking which is conscious, which is controlled and which is based on rules and all such things. So, the first process is intuitive and in intuitions we go for stereotypes and all those mental shortcuts. The other is the reflective where we expend a lot more of cognitive effort. That means we spend more effort on thinking and that is where we go in for more sophisticated understanding. And generally we as humans operate as cognitive misers. Means whenever there is a complex situation or whatever we want to conserve our scarce mental resources we depend on those mental shortcuts. So, when that stereotype is already in my mind I will create an impression about that particular person. So, if the stereotype in my mind is about to say for example, dishonest politicians, the moment I see a politician that is triggered and I without going into the background of that person and the work of that person or whatever, my mind immediately says okay, the politician could be corrupt. Because we are always looking for these mental shortcuts because we have to make these judgments regularly and that is when we apply these mental shortcuts about stereotypes for example, that this person belongs to that category so he must be like that. Since he is behaving like that just throwing the peanut shells everywhere so he must be this kind of a person. So, we make all those impressions based on just one or two seconds of interaction. We do not go into details about those kind of things. So, as I said about this earlier as well, when we are into a system of stereotypes, we put more attention to the facts which support the stereotype. That way it is self-perpetuating because when I see a person and I have given that Chinese example and one of the reasons is that we see them as other, they are not belong to in group and they belong to an out group. So, whenever I see a person and some of those things which I thought was true about Chinese and if I meet this person which is seen to be true then we will say that okay, this is true. We will not even give credit or we will discount the information which contradicts from the stereotype. So, that is how these stereotypes are perpetuated and reinforced as well. As I said, we resort to stereotype whenever we are using this fast thinking process. So, these both processes are within us. So, stereotype thinking is a way of fast thinking process and it is very natural because when these problems appear familiar and based on that information, I can get a reasonable image or I can get a reasonable understanding of that particular person then I go for fast thinking. I do not go for any other kind of thinking. And the other thing is that this is also how the power balance plays out because it is the powerful who pay less attention to the powerless. So, the poor people, they are seen more as in stereotypical forms and that is why because we do not pay attention to the details. That is why there is a fast thinking and that is why the stereotyping also helps maintain the status quo. You do not get into the details and that is why you cannot see the problem. So, very often you cannot see the problem of the other group because you are seeing them as stereotypes. Why are they protesting? Because it does not seem true but because you are seeing that as a mental shortcut, you are seeing them through these stereotypical lengths and whenever you can expend more thought into those people and that is where the slow thinking comes in because if you spend more energy thinking about those, if we spare more cognitive resources, I have just said that we are cognitive misers but if we do more thinking into those things then we can go beyond the stereotypical images and then we can see the non-stereotypical parts of the person. And in the second last slide here, I am going to talk about four different kinds of stereotypes. So, this is based on the research in the field of psychology and they see people in terms of two different, as I can say, one is the criterion of warmth and the other is the criterion of competence. So, if I see another person with less warmth and I see that that person is less competent, then the stereotype I have about that particular category is contemptuous because there is less warmth and I do not regard those people as being competent. So, anybody who receives welfare or poor people, they are often seen as a contemptuous stereotype. So, I think of them as a stereotype and I don't even think very highly of them. I think of them as something to be with contempt. If the other people you are talking about, there is low warmth about them but you regard them as of high competence. So, generally there are certain and you can see that this is generally in terms of the American society. They see Asians as people of high status and competitive but again, the warmth is not there. So, that is why this is known as the envious stereotype. So, whenever you see people of high status and who are competitive means whom you regard as your competitors, that's where you have the envious stereotype. So, there are a lot of envious stereotypes we have in our place as well. So, many people they regard the business community with some kind of an envious stereotype because the warmth for them is not much but we regard their competence as high. Then the other kind of stereotype is the paternalistic stereotype, where the warmth for that community or that group is high but we regard their competence as low. So, when they are elderly people or housemakers or disabled people then we regard that as a paternalistic stereotype. The other is that of the admiration stereotype. So, that generally is between in group. So, you have a high warmth for them and you regard them as people of high competence. So, you will regard that there are a lot of people within who you think that they belong to your group or they are your allies then you have an admiration for them. So, how you react to stereotypes also depends on these two different factors. Finally, one way in which we can counter stereotype is by realizing that all of us are susceptible to that kind of thinking that we can always fall into that particular trap because this category of fast thinking is inherent and it's there with everybody. So, if we are aware of these stereotypes then we can address a lot of negative problems associated with stereotypes. So, this is how and this is where I end my presentation.