Humans of St. Norbert:

“[One of my classes next year] is a class on stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination. It is going to primarily be focused on the stereotypes part of that. So understanding some of these generalized beliefs that we come to know about people with different backgrounds and how that affects the ways we feel about those groups. In social psychology, this research has tended to focus on gender and race stereotypes so that will be the primary focus of the class, but we will talk about all sorts of stereotypes.

“It’s really interesting to hear students’ perspectives on things because I’m only one person and I’ve only experienced life through the groups I have identified with and my own life experiences so, although I know a lot of the research on these different topics, I don’t have the first-hand experience of what it feels like to be treated differently based on a certain identity or the experiences that other people have. But students often have some of those wider backgrounds that I am not familiar with. What’s really cool for me is getting to see how we can apply what we know from research to help them better understand their experiences in ways that I may not have thought about before by virtue of me just being one person with one set of experiences.

“The type of growth I like to see [from my students] is an awareness that although these topics, at first glance, don’t seem like they apply to some people, they really apply to everyone. They apply to all types of experiences and differences between people. I think awareness is a big part of it because when you hear the word ‘stereotype’ or ‘prejudice’ or ‘discrimination’ a lot of people think that maybe that doesn’t apply to them. Maybe they feel like there aren't negative stereotypes about the identities that they hold or the groups that they belong to, but there are beliefs about all types of groups.” – Danielle Geerling, assistant professor of psychology