Okay first of all, what I understand about Stereotyping is, it is when someone make a bad assumption towards others. Stereotyping is happen when someone oversimplified something. Stereotype is simply a widely held belief that an individual is a member of a certain group based on charcteristics. Due to the process of overgeneralization within social perception, stereotyping leads to a great deal of inaccuracy in social perception.
Sex, race, age, sexual orentation, religion and physical ability are various catagories which exist in stereotyping. The most prevalent and controversial forms are sex and race.
There is three main factors that lead towards stereotyping. Firstly, stereotypes are functional, as a human we are always receive much more information than we can process. Then our tendency is to reduce our problem and try to go as simple as we can. We try to make it simple, which can lead to inaccuracy and we are often unaware of this deduction. Secondly stereotypes are results of selectivity in social perception, we tend to see what we expect to see, and we have a tendency to change and distort the characteristics of others until it fits our stereotype of something. Third factor is stereotype is prejudice: This is the most influential factor in stereotyping. Our perceptions are highly subjective, and many people subscribe to insult other ethnic groups. Unfortunately the selectivity of a person's perception result in people seeing what they expect to see when they come in contact with members of an ethnic group they view with prejudice.
But, I think with learning this subject someone can reduce their tedency to stereotype on something. When they try to think with an empathy towards others.
