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 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 culture. Then, participants were given another survey and told to describe themselves and people they knew from their culture. When the two surveys were compared, the results did not match. In other words, the ways in which participants thought of a typical person from their own culture 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 that way at all. They might see themselves as wild, passionate, or even lazy. Though they understand that a stereotype about Germans exists and might even believe the other Germans act this way, they think they are the exceptions to it. So, next time you want to consider someone from any country to be a certain “typical” person, think again. 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 people.”