America in minds

People usually have a mental image of the things they hear. We form pictures of different things in our minds. Sometimes, there are images formed in our minds which may not be real. We may have pre-conceived ideas about different things. In psychology, the term, schema refers to a structure of pre-conceived ideas formed in the mind. These pre-conceived ideas may be different from the reality. One of the examples of schemata is stereotyping. Stereotypes have always been with us and few people really try to stay away from stereotypes. In Iran, we do see stereotypes about people of different ethnic groups which may not be really true but those stereotypes seem to be an indelible picture formed in the minds of people. When it comes to America, I think there are some stereotypes about America in Iran just like the stereotypes about Iran which exist in other parts of world such as the U.S. In Iran, we are only dealing with America’s government and its foreign policy but we do not know much about American people. So, we may think that American people also possess the characteristics of their government officials and they do the things that their government does. Some people may think that Americans are violent oppressors and do not have kindness and sympathy towards other people or may not care about others. However, in reality this is not true and we cannot judge people with a set of pre-conceived ideas that we have about them. The same thing exists in the west and in America about Iran. People have negative views about Iran and its people because of the way Iran and Islam are shown to them through the media. Thus, we have to be careful of stereotypes and do not judge people or countries by a set of fixed ideas formed in our minds which may not be true.