Everyday people use identity to get a sense of meaning and belonging in their lives. However, by identifying with certain groups come ascribed and avowed identities. The positive outcomes are mutual avowed identities that results in the creation of certain ideologies. The negative outcomes are the stigmas and stereotypes of those ascribed identities. By stereotyping people we somewhat categorize the group as a whole which can end bias views. But if we know that ignoring individualism in a group of people is ignorant, then why do we still do it? I will answer this question by analyzing Kory Floyd and Susan Fiske’s concepts of stereotypes while applying them to the growing co-culture of cannabis users using a High Times magazine article as my …show more content…
The answer is interpersonal perception. We feel the need to make meaning from the people in our environment and relationships as a form of comfort. According to Floyd, stereotyping is a three-part process. He claims, “First, we identify a group we believe another person belongs to. Second, we recall generalization others often make about the people in that group. Finally, we apply that generalization to the person” (Interpersonal Communication 116). In other words, this method mainly focuses on primacy or the tendency to emphasize the first impressions over later impressions. Many people use this process of stereotyping to reduce their amount of thinking to simplify meeting people in their social world (McLeod, Stereotypes). In short, instead of actually getting the chance to know someone’s personality people rather assume the person’s qualities. They tend to see the qualities they expect to see in someone which could become negatively bias by distorting views of so person. Although I agree with Floyd up to a point, I cannot accept his overall generalized view of stereotyping because it is a fallacy of weak induction. A fallacy of weak induction means that the conclusion in one’s argument is not well supported by the premises. Therefore, people who use Floyd’s process of stereotyping as their argument will entail a weak invalid argument. Due to this reason, Floyd’s process can be socially …show more content…
However, more commonly it has become the quite-looking, straight A student that never said a word in class. By applying Floyd’s method to my artifact, I will establish the generalized view on marijuana. When researching cannabis stereotypes, High Times claims the most common ‘myths’ were lack of ambition and motivation. As stated earlier, many people use primacy as a form of stereotyping cannabis users. An example of primacy is that the first cannabis user you meet is lazy and lacks ambition therefore you assume any other cannabis user is lazy and unmotivated like that first cannabis user you met. Nevertheless, High Times, The Huffington Post, and I can beg to