The use of social stereotypes is a necessity of social interactions and one of the features of interpersonal relationships. As a result, they free a person from making individual decisions in typical situations. The aim of the study was to study the phenomenon of social stereotypy, which grows out of collective ideas and is based on them, to identify the features of social stereotypes of adults, and to detect factors that determine the degree of stereotyping of their thinking. In the format of a pilot study, a written survey and experimental work were conducted, in which 34 people took part. The average age of the respondents was 36,7 years. It is established that collective judgments about other people produce a social stereotype of a projective type; the features of social stereotypes tend to traditionalism and conventionalism; in the study of social stereotypes, the cognitive and value-emotional level of collective representations is important.