Stereotypes-a survey

It’s common that stereotypes have become a negative phenomenon nowadays. A stereotype is a held popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings. Stereotypes are standardized and simplified conceptions of groups based on some previous assumptions. On the other hand we can point out that their percentage has been eliminated the latest years. People, generally, and especially students have already faced them through all their phobias about foreigners. Some stereotypes still exist but they are not serious enough. A survey, that we conducted between the students of our school, at the age of 16-17, shows that there are lots of pupils who don’t even know what stereotypes are.

What is more, it has been found out that they do have some special beliefs about specific nationalities. For instance they believe that the most romantic ones are the French. Additionally, the most humorous are the Italians; who have also taken the first place in cuisine.

On the contrary , the first place in seriousness belongs to Germans, a fact that seems predictable as long as they also have the first place in discipline. As far as is concerned the question whether the stereotypes have any relation to racism or not, the minority was negative while the majority attributed the phenomenon of stereotypes to personal beliefs and xenophobia.

Furthermore, most students have a belief that stereotypes vary from nation to nation.

Even more, according to our results, it’s obvious that somebody is to be described mostly from his personality rather than from his nationality.

And finally everyone’s personality depends mainly on his/her education and of course his/her peers. So in a nutshell we can extract the conclusion that we don’t have to face serious problems related to stereotypes. The ones mentioned above are reasonable to exist.

Anna, Efi, Sofia (2nd class)