Question

Do you think that social perception and the stereotyping of drug users and drug dealers is influenced more by the media, social status and culture, or actual facts and tangible data?

Answer 1

Stereotyping and social perception are types of processes of formation of attitudes about certain situations, people or groups. While social perception indicates a composite pattern of cognitive structures which allow us to develop heuristic thoughts, and adaptive responses to our envionement, thy can also prove debilitating because they tend to endure in light of negative feedback from the external environment. To this end, the affect laden content of mainstream media, rumours in social conversations are an influential mode through which people acquire stereotypes and form negative evaluations about people. Steortypes such as those about substance users and drug dealers are to large extent influenced by media portrayals such as the negative roles and aggressive behaviours which are presented in association with teenagers especially African American individuals and drug use in movies. While there is some statistical evidence that may be in congruence with the stereotypes about drug users and dealers such as their greater accessibility to weapons to sustain the trade by illegal means, or the predisposition of teenagers to substances due to peer pressure, by and large, steorytping a person based on their consumption of substances and perceiving them as socially dangerous are rather exaggerated cognitive schemes and these are more of a result of the representation of the group in media as socially deviant and dangerous rather than actual real life facts.