The name is absent

334
W

United States). It is posited that, because of the orientation
towards characteristics of groups which have been minority,
depressed groups, it is assumed that stereotyping refers only
to negative characteristics and that it will, in general, reflect
a distortion of reality (Guilford, 1931; Katz and Allport, 1931;
Katz and Braly, 1935; Bayton, 1941; Vinacke, 1949; Allport, 1954).
It is posited here that this assumption was further
strengthened when stereotyping was used to study prejudice.
*

For the purposes of this study, stereotyping will be examined
with regard both to negative and positive traits, as well as
cultural attributes. In this sense, it will approximate Weber’s
notion of ideal types. Weber adds a further dimension to the
concept in that he asserts that ideal types not only serve as a
technical, aid for a ’more lucid arrangement’ of facts to be
studied , but

...under certain circumstances, a construction might
mean more. For the rationality, in the sense of logical
or teleological ’consistency’ of an intellectual-theoretical
• or practical-ethical attitude has, and always has had,
power over man, however limited and unstable this power
is and always has been in the face of other forces of
historical life (Weber, in Gerth and Mills, eds., 1970:323).

Weber thus takes up the notion of social constructs having
a realizing potency. The construction of ’stereotypes’, ideal
types, can act to cause these constructions to be ’realized’ in
actuality. Stereotyping then, following Weber, is given the same
meaning as ideal types; like ideal types, stereotypes may be
either negative or positive in content.

The earliest concept of a stereotype was of
2
A fixed impression which conforms very little to the facts
it pretends to represent and results from our defining
first and observing second (Lippmann, 1922, quoted in
Katz and Braly_j 1935:181).

I-

ɪltalies added,
*

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