Stereotypes exist because the mind needs to generalize for flash decision making. If you stop and think about whether the big-cat-thing is a lion and will eat you, you may find out the hard way. It's not a human thing to stereotype. Animals do it all the time. I'm sure you know a dog or cat who reacts negatively to men, women, people in a white hat, etc...etc... They do so as a defense mechanism due to some event. You see it with all sorts of animals. You can parse the scenarios between humans animals to make it look different, but is it really?

don't get me wrong. I don't think we should just smile nod and go "oh it's only NATURAL to stereotype" and let it lie. I totally agree with you that the only reason why SPECIFIC stereotypes continue is because people have a great deal of confirmation bias regarding a given stereotype, and I think people need to move past their stereotypes. But I don't think that's the reason why stereotypes exist in general.

Heh. I'm watching Angel and this example just occurred to me. If I didn't know who he was and ran into him all vampy in an alley, it'd be pretty rude of me to assume he was going to drink my blood...but would it be a bad idea? Would anyone blame me? Obviously that's an extreme example It just occurred to me due to my television and I felt compelled to share