Title:

 

Thinking in Stereotypes

 

Abstract:

 

Stereotyping is a long standing research topic in psychology and anthropology. But these are not the only disciplines to study this phenomenon, there is also a lot to say about it from a logical and methodological point of view. Logically, a prejudice like "Dutchmen are greedy" behaves as a default rule, rules that can have exceptions. Given this, just pointing out that there are many counterexamples will not make people change their mind. The question is: what will? Stereotypical thinking often leads from a property of a majority ("most people are heterosexual") to a norm for everybody ("homosexuality is wrong"). This ambiguity between a statistical fact and a norm is also found in the word “normal”. One wonders how this comes about.