stereotype

thumb|upright|An 18th-century Dutch engraving of the peoples of the world. thumb|A stereotypical caricature of a [[villain (i.e. generic melodramatic villain stock character, with handlebar moustache and black top-hat), particularly popular in early-20th-century silent films and melodramas and popularized by Snidely Whiplash]] thumb|Police officers buying doughnuts and [[coffee, an example of perceived stereotypical behavior in North America]] In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example, an expectation about the group's personality, preferences, appearance or ability. Stereotypes make information processing easier by allowing the perceiver to rely on previously stored knowledge in place of incoming information. Stereotypes are often faulty, inaccurate, and resistant to new information. Although stereotypes generally have negative implications, they are not necessarily so; they may be positive, neutral, or negative. They can be broken down into two categories: explicit stereotypes, which are conscious, and implicit stereotypes, which are subconscious.

==Explicit stereotypes== An explicit stereotype is a belief about a group that a person is consciously aware of and knowingly uses to judge others. If a person judges someone from a group for which they hold an explicit stereotype, their decision bias can be partially mitigated through conscious control. However, attempts to offset bias due to conscious awareness of a stereotype often fail to be truly impartial, as they may either underestimate or overestimate the bias created by the stereotype.