Ethnocentrism is often accompanied by stereotyping, a strong tendency to characterize people of other cultures unfairly, collectively, and often negatively. This generalization is applied to every individual in a cultural group ("All US-Americans are materialistic" or "All British are reserved"), or used to generalize based on experience with only a few people from the group ("All Americans must be materialistic like Nancy" or "All British are reserved like Nigel"). Stereotypes are often infused with emotion, either negative ("They" are all lazy so don’t hire one) or positive ("X" is a wonderful culture because it teaches everyone to care about the environment).

Stereotyping can be defined as the uncritical (and often pejorative) application of a generalization to every person in a cultural group; or, extrapolating cultural characteristics from only a few people in a group. This is usually based on race, religion, ethnic origin, nationality, gender, socio-economic status, or affiliation. Often employed by a dominant group to denigrate or stigmatize less powerful groups, stereotyping substitutes "a prejudiced attitude" for "an objective analysis."