Stereotyping is not a waste of time. Pretty much all humans do it. It is part of human instinct.
Stereotyping can be correct sometimes, but other times it can be completely wrong.
Through experience or conditioning an individual associates certain images, sights, smells, and so forth with pain and happiness. E.g. you may notice on TV that people with tattoos tend to be violent people and the violent people on TV scare you.
If you are outside on the streets and you know little about someone then you will judge that person based on what you know. You have subconsciously through conditioning associated tattoos with fear and so seeing a tattooed person evokes fear in you.
If in fact tattooed people are more dangerous than non-tattooed people then your probaility of survival increases but maybe the TV was wrong.
Another problem with human instinct is with sample size. The brain may be exposed to too few tattooed people to accurately predict whether the next tattooed person you meet is dangerous or not. This is the fallacy of hasty generalization.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasty_generalization
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