We all know that Americans are loud and friendly, the French are romantic, and Japanese people are quiet and polite. But hold on a minute. These common stereotypes, which many people around the world believe, are actually untrue.   Recently, a new study has shown that although national stereotypes are widespread, they are usually incorrect. The results of this study were published in the journal Science. In the study, 4,000 people from 49 cultures received surveys instructing them to describe a typical person from their own cultures. The same group of people were later given another survey and told to describe themselves and people they knew from their cultures. When the two surveys were compared, the results did not match. In other words, the ways in which these people thought of a typical person from their own cultures and the ways in which they thought of themselves were quite different.    Germans, for example, are often thought to be orderly and efficient. However, as the study shows, most Germans don’t believe that they themselves are organized at all. They might even seem themselves as wild, passionate, or even lazy. Though they understand that a stereotype about Germans exists and might even believe that other Germans act this way, they think that they are the exceptions.   From the example above, we can see just how unreliable stereotypes are. So, the next time you want to use stereotypes to describe someone as a “typical” German or Japanese, think twice. Perhaps one of the researchers from the study said it best: “National stereotypes can provide some information about a culture, but they do not describe individuals.”
【題組】26. ( ) What is the best title for this passage?
(A) What Everyone Believes Might Not Be True
(B) The Best Way to Tell Where a Person’s from
(C) How People Think of Their Own Culture
(D) The Comparison Between Two Surveys