Predjudice and Discrimination as a Part of Our Cognitive Social Being

In today’s society, we face prejudice every day in many forms. Most people in today’s society have either been victims of prejudice or are guilty of exhibiting prejudice towards others.

Prejudice has presented itself in the world since the beginning of time. During the years leading up to the Second World War, the US and Germany

The ease of modern technology that lets people communicate globally, the access to extraordinary mobility, and the well roundedness of people today has produced the biggest population in history that prides itself in being egalitarian and fair-minded. Psychologists have found evidence in recent studies that, although people are not as outwardly racist and discriminatory as they were in the past centuries, there is an underlying bias that can lead people to act in ways opposing their beliefs. In their book Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good people, psychologists Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald explore the ideas of unconscious identity, the judgment and treatment of others based on stereotypes and the phenomenon of association, and our inability to simply stop being biased as opposed to outsmarting it.

The definition of prejudice may vary among the different psychologist but most will agree that prejudice has something to do with prejudgment, typically negative, about a group. (Fiskie, 1998; Jones, 1997; Nelson, 2002 ). According to Plous (2003), Prejudice is not exactly considered an opinion, but an attitude which includes feeling such as hating the group, rather than believing they’re bad. Within psychology, we can link prejudice with discrimination and stereotyping (Plous, 2003). Although each may go together, they can be done separately. Prejudice and discrimination are most likely absent in a positive stereo type (Plous, 2013). For example describing an ethnic group as “family oriented”. Stereo typing does little to no harm without discrimination or prejudice. A generalized form of prejudice may lack discrimination and stereo types, such as being against foreigners.

The proposed study aims to investigate the relationship between implicit prejudices and their effect on perception and judgment of others. Individuals generally hold specific prejudices towards their ingroups and outgroups and these can be deliberately or subconsciously expressed through explicit or implicit attitudes, respectively. Learning more about the relationship between the subconscious prejudicial attitudes people hold and how these affect perceptions of others is important if a better understanding of intergroup relations is to be made. More specifically, and relevant to the study at hand, investigating implicit prejudices White individuals have and how these affect their

Racism can be “defined as the hatred of one person by another or the belief that another person is less than human because of skin color, language, customs, place of birth or any factor that supposedly reveals the basic nature of that person. It has influenced wars, slavery, the formation of nations, and legal codes” (“What”). The face of racism over the past 50 years has changed but yet, some still stay the same. People made laws against racism and it is not as blunt anymore. But opinions and stereotypes will remain which will cause others to still be treated differently.

In this modern world, prejudice is still a universal problem we still have yet to overcome. Although it is true that our society is much less prejudiced than it was 40-50 years ago, we are still struggling to create racial harmony in a world that is so diverse in terms of racial group, sexual orientations, ethnicity, nationality, religions, and so on. I think the core of prejudice comes from stereotyping, which is the generalization of motives, characteristics, or behavior to an entire group of people. In the world where media propaganda is ubiquitous, often times most stereotypes are not formed on valid experiences, instead they are based on images publicized by the mass media, or even created within our heads after seeing and hearing examples from many different sources, like movies, or even hearsay. Stereotyping is more powerful than we think, because it allows those false pictures to control our thinking that leads us to assign uniform characteristics to any person in a group, without consideration of the actual difference between members of that particular group.

Thesis: The belief of prejudice and discrimination occurs in our society in the past and present. Each of these notions is a way to demonstrate the supremacy of one group over another.

If we take a look at prejudice, which can be defined as socially shared judgement or evaluation of the group including feelings with judgement (Fiske, 2010). Prejudice is one that addresses both explicit and implicit nature (Crisp & Turner, 2010). It can also be based upon a number of factors that are effective from a social perspective as well. Some of the factors that can lead to prejudice is sex, race, age, and also sexual orientation. Some of the issues that occur may be pertaining to racism, sexism, classicism, homophobia, nationalism, and also religious prejudice as well. It can occur when stereotype is put into motion, which leads to a negative outcome. It can be looked at as an attitude, thus has affective, cognitive behavioral component as well. Prejudice has the ability to affect all of us, which include majority group members as well as minority. Gordon Allport discusses prejudice and stereotypes, emerges in part as a result of normal human thinking.

For centuries, racism has become the universal epitome of culture, despite the efforts of various civilizations, such as the Western and European to combat these indifferences among people. A race is specific social group that can be differentiated through various ways, from facial features and hair textures, to social norms and habits that constitutes to that group. These differences contribute to our uniqueness and humanity. Because people can be grouped by any number of differences, Man, lead by his ignorance, perpetuated the issue once social-hierarchies began to develop, splitting society to its various groups. As a result, social disparity from one’s upbringing became the common tendency to look down, or look up at people of other

The psychological approach to prejudice is to examine an aspect of individual’s behavior specifically focusing on the concept of frustration. Frustration is the result of relative deprivation in which expectations remain unsatisfied (Parrillo 48). According to the book: Strangers To These Shores, “relative deprivation is a lack of resources, or rewards, in one’s standard of living in comparison with others in the society.” This implies that when one has not earned or achieved something they feel they are in entitled to, they become frustrated and because of their frustration they result in taking their problem(s) out on others, through acts of racism and

Prejudice is not something new to our society, and it has been able to gain foundation from different sources depending on if it is, sexism, classism, ageism, etc. One of the most prominent forms of prejudice impacting society is racism. Racism presents itself both explicitly and implicitly and in some cases, both, like in stigmatization, which was talked about in chapter 5 of the textbook, “Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination”. To explain it from a stigmatized person’s point of view, it is being consistently characterized as inferior by a group or individual. Furthermore, it is being villainized by another person or group, all based on that individual belonging to a specific group, or identifying/presenting a certain way.

To begin, socialization or having one’s upbringing (family, media, etc.) teach and perpetuate prejudice. According to social cognitive theory, through direct instruction, modeling, and other social influences on learning, prejudice is viewed as an attitude that is formed as other attitudes are formed. For instance, the media,

Prejudice is a topic of interest to social psychologists and society as a whole. Prejudice can be defined as ‘an attitude that predisposes a person to think, feel, perceive and act in a favourable or unfavourable way towards a group or its individual members’ (Secord and Backman, 1974, p). Prejudice is often the cause of negative behaviour such as bullying and aggression. Discrimination such as; racism, ageism, sexism, nationalism, classism may occur as a result. Jane Elliot’s study: A Class Divided (1968) attempts to highlight prejudicial behaviour in children. Elliot divided her class into groups of eye colour. She told the children that blue eye colour defined people to be more intelligent and superior to those with brown eyes.

The study of prejudice, stereotyping, and racism has been a major theme in social psychology reflecting concerns of society (Jost & Kay, 2010). History of colonization contributed to Europeans’ prejudice against people of color (Tuffin, 2004). For centuries, racism was used to justify the advancement of European nations. In the 18th century, the