text: when are human stereotypes useful?   you can have fun playing with them, so long as everybody knows you are playing.  some have roots in fact. for example, haggling is popular in some cultures. non-hagglers tend to say the people in those cultures are cheap. the label is probably because the hagglers pay less money and non-hagglers are just jealous.  it can be handy to know the stereotypes and their roots (the stereotype alone is often worse than useless). also, people are individuals - that makes stereotypes generalizations which may be interesting, but not may not be helpful (and even cause you trouble) in one-on-one interactions.