---
title: "Stereotipleştirme ve Kişileştirme"
url: "https://merterbil.com/papers/stereotiplestirme-ve-kisilestirme/"
author: "Mert Erbil"
pdf: "https://merterbil.com/papers/stereotiplestirme-ve-kisilestirme.pdf"
---

# Stereotipleştirme ve Kişileştirme

English title: Stereotyping and Personification

A literature review by Mert Erbil, from his Ph.D. studies, Advertising & Public Relations (dropped out), Bahçeşehir University, Istanbul. Written in Turkish.

## Abstract

This paper puts two ideas side by side that look unrelated at first. Stereotyping is how we put people into boxes, and personification is how we give human traits to things that aren't human. But both are shortcuts the mind takes, and advertising leans on both.

It starts by separating stereotype from two words people mix it up with. A cliché is an expression used for so long that it lost its effect (the word actually comes from journalism and printing). Prejudice, on the other side, is a negative attitude toward a group decided in advance.

Stereotype was a printing term too, until Walter Lippmann compared it in 1922 to the pictures that form in our heads. Because the real world is too big and rich to collect enough data about, he argued, we simplify. Then the paper covers why we stereotype, its social and cognitive functions and its effects.

The second half is about personification. It goes back around 40,000 years to the Löwenmensch, a lion-headed human figure carved from ivory, and then moves through religion and mythology to psychology and advertising.

Lakoff and Johnson call personification one of the most common metaphors, because simple human experience makes many different things easier to explain. So it's no surprise that brands give their products a face and a voice. The Michelin Man is one of the best-known and longest-running examples.

I wrote it in Turkish during my Ph.D. studies, as a literature review built on sources from Allport to Kahneman.

Full text (PDF): https://merterbil.com/papers/stereotiplestirme-ve-kisilestirme.pdf

All papers: https://merterbil.com/papers/