By Jiang Tong

On the evening of April 15, Ms. Bronagh Mooney held a lecture entitled “understanding stereotypes: the good, the bad, and the ugly” in LeYu BuildingC108.

First of all, Ms. Bronagh introduced the origin of “stereotype” to the students, which was a Greek word. It meant a solid impression to the country, culture and gender. But how had the impression developed? Bronagh expounded those social animals needed to be able to distinguish who was a friend and who was not. Research in psychology showed that people needed to categorize the world. Every group had their common habits. After that, Bronagh listed some examples. If people talked about the Irish, they would think the Irish liked drinking. But for British, their habit of talking about weather came to people’s mind. Bronagh told the students that not all the Irish or British liked this. This condition only showed that people had stereotypes on these countries.

Then, Bronagh shared a lot of cartoons about the stereotypes. She analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of stereotypes. On one hand, the stereotypes made us react quickly to situations. On the other hand, it made us ignore the differences between individuals. For example, the stereotypes believed that the girls liked pink and the boys liked blue🐓，but it was not true in fact. Therefore, the way we thought about people might not be true.

The students should think about their stereotypes on some things through this lecture.

Proofread by Zhang Wenhui