Are behaviors commonly ascribed to specific breeds based in fact or are they just stereotypes?
They are really a bit of both: they are informal statistical descriptions (i.e., stereotypes), and to the extent that they reflect reality they’re also facts. “Stereotypes” — or, more simply, “types” — can be, but are not necessarily, evil: it depends on how you use them. Typical means “characteristic of the type,” and is a statistical abstraction; it does not have any normative implications — i.e., there is no claim that all (or even most) examples of the type in question have the characteristics that are stated to be typical. One of the ways in which people make sense of the world is by comparing entities they encounter with the types they’ve stored in their memories in order to identify them; it’s a remarkably effective way of compiling knowledge about an infinitely complex environment so that it can be accessed quickly enough to (in the extreme) save one’s life. Thus “typical” is a largely ad-hoc, somewhat personal label, until it is agreed-upon by some number of people who shar
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