Stereotypes are a form of information, just so low-grade that it more resembles misinformation. Most Americans don't have stereotypes about, say, Mongolians, b

Stereotypes are a form of information, just so low-grade that it more resembles misinformation. Most Americans don't have stereotypes about, say, Mongolians, because most Americans have had zero contact with Mongolians. Maybe something about Genghis Khan? But go to, say, Beijing, and people there will probably have all kinds of stereotypes about Mongolians. Stereotypes may or may not have a basis in reality: they can simply be a unsubstantiated prejudice (group A says goup B is dangerous and criminal; group B is actually very friendly to outsiders). They are frequently rooted in a history of social conflict (slavery, colonialism, &c). They lie within a specific social context/relationship (group A sees group B as lazy, group B sees group A as arrogant and overbearing). They are about social categories that don't have analytical basis outside the social context (national or racial groups). The bigger problem is that they form an ecological fallacy—the assumption that something that may be true about the group is true about the individual.