preview

Assess The Role Of Prejudice In Research

Better Essays
Open Document

We live in an imperfect society where people judge each other because we do not live up and meet other people’s expectations. This then leads to erroneous perception towards certain aspects of our life which could results to prejudice. Brown (1995) defined prejudice as negative attitude towards members of ethnic minority groups. This has been a major social issue in ethnically diversed countries like America, Australia and England. Of course, prejudice can take both positive and negative forms. Severson (1943) states that people usually view prejudice as consisting of some bias, stereotyped beliefs and tendency to discriminate against other groups in many forms of behaviours. He also emphasises that to fully understand prejudice, we need to clearly express that standards may change so that some behaviour may be defined as prejudice and at another time as proper and moral behaviour. For example, women smoking in certain groups have no indication of prejudice, but for some group, women smoking is defined as prejudice against women. Also, in our society anti-Semitism is an act of prejudice, but Hitler claimed that he is doing the will of God while opposing to Jews (Severson, 1943). Prejudice are often based on incorrect beliefs about a group …show more content…

Of course, the child negative emotions such frustration, anger and hostility towars the parents cannot be released by them, therefore they try to release it towards the weak and lack of power, such as the minority groups (Nesdale). Children’s prejudice reflects the community’s attitude and behaviour, which are usually displayed by the parents. Therefore, children start learning attitudes toward the minority by observing and imitating their parents or reinforcing this kind of behaviour for rewards (Kinder and Sears,

Get Access