Tall, White, Young Male People often come up to me and ask me if I play basketball. Even my PE teacher at school assumed I was a good player despite all evidence to the contrary, and put me on the school team. Most people regard stereotypes like this as being neutral, with no negative effects. I have to say that the rest of my school basketball team wouldn't agree with them. But this is not the only stereotype people have about tall people. Researchers from the University of Sydney and Canberra's Australian National University have found that many people perceive tall people as being better at their jobs and that as a consequence, they earn more money than people of average height. If this is true, then I must be the exception that proves the rule. Although the effect of this stereotyping can be positive for tall people, and I cannot deny that I do hope to benetit from this one day, the flip side is that shorter people are being unfairly discriminated against. And of course it doesn't stop there. People attribute other groups of people with characteristics based solely on the way they look. They may, for example, assess a person's ability to do their job based on their race, age or gender, Just as my height doesn't affect my ability to do my job, neither does the fact that I am white, young and male.

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