Prejudice And Stereotyping : A Social Psychological Perspective

I survey the body language, facial expressions and the possible words or phrases that can be interpreted more than one way. Because of this course I am more tolerant to people who are prejudiced. The most personally influential chapter to me was chapter two in the assigned textbook. The chapter introduced me to how stereotypes are formed and the consequences of categorizing people. Studies show that in order to simplify the workload of the brain, we place people into social categories based on previous experience and peer learning. “Social categorization involves thinking about people primarily as members of social groups rather than as individuals” (Blaine, 22).I found that I engage in this practice, but the automatic groups do not usually have negative stereotypes attached; When I meet a negative exception, they are then sorted into a subgroup.The second most influential chapter …..Chapter four of the textbook details the components of prejudices. the stereotypes and instances of prejudice enabled me

Stereotyping and discrimination are very deeply ingrained in American culture. Even though there have been movements taken to combat stereotyping and discrimination such as the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Rights movement, and the Black Lives Matter Movement, it still exists. This raises the question of, how do we end it? While there is no definite answer there is a way to avoid stereotyping and discrimination. The three essayists Bharati Mukherjee, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Brent Staples and show that by learning about stereotyping, people can also learn how to change themselves to avoid discrimination based on stereotypes. By comparing and contrasting these essayists experiences as well as outside research to show the theme of why people

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.

Prejudice is a hostile or negative attitude toward people who are in a distinguishable group that is based solely on their membership within that group. It has three components: cognitive, affective, and behavioral. The cognitive component of prejudice consist of stereotypes, generalizations about a group where characteristics are believed to be shared by all in the group. Examples of this would be believing that all Muslims are terrorists, all Asians must be smart, and all Americans are lazy. While stereotypes are used to save time and energy, they are sometimes wrong for the group and often wrong for individuals. The affective component involve the emotional/judgmental aspect of prejudice. It is based only on group membership and is typically negative. It is exhibited in fear, envy, pity, or disgust. The behavioral component consists of discrimination, which is when people are treated differently only because of their social group.

Prejudice and Discrimination are an all to common part of our cognitive social being, but many social psychologists believe that it can be stopped, but only with the help of social conditioning.

Despite global increases in diversity, social prejudices continue to fuel intergroup conflict, disparities and discrimination (Amodio, 2014). What exactly is prejudice tendencies and how can one avoid it? One of the most common types of prejudice is racial. Racial prejudice is based upon negative preconceived notions of select racial groups with the assumption that all members of a particular racial group can be categorized with the same negative characteristics (Gassner & McGuigan, 2014). To better understand prejudice I took the “Test Yourself for Hidden Biases” questionnaire on race. I have to say that I was not impressed with how this test was used to find out if you have unconscious prejudice towards African Americans. The test

Stereotyping leads to prejudice. If I am walking in a park and I see a group of people walking towards me (lets say all are white males) and they are dressed up and look very nice. I do not panic, now another group is walking towards me and now this group is all men (African Americans) and they are dressed and conduct themselves just the same as the first group, but I panicked with this group. Why because I stereotyped the second group and if I was prejudice no matter how they dressed or acted I would be afraid of them because they are black. I judge them based on skin color and not on individuality.

The psychological perspectives concerning prejudice is assuming someone or something is a certain way before actually knowing and having facts. The sociology book gives a few examples of theories on prejudice. It is often to hear an assumption rather than the facts when something or someone is referenced. I believe people judge to quickly. Anymore we are so focused on first impressions we tend to forget who we are. Also, it is typical to try something out once and if you were not pleased we often not give it a second chance.

One of the concepts that the researchers must learn in how prejudice influence in the society. John Cacioppo wrote in Discovery Psychology: Science of mind that the meaning of prejudice is a prejudgment, usually negative, of a person on the basis of his or her membership in a group. (Cacioppo, p. 630). The easy understanding concept is where each of demographic characteristic from each people or group have similar characteristics that make people think that all people with same traits will be just the same with others. This concept usually accompanied with term stereotypes and discrimination, which it actually can

3) Choose 3 characters from the movie and describe how discrimination, prejudice, or stereotyping affected or defined their character. Stereotyping: Tito (Gabriel Chavarria), a Hispanic student, displays an act of stereotyping Jamal, a black student, by drawing a picture of Jamal as having big, fat lips. The stereotype being that all black men have big fat lips.

The general populace is guilty of articulating prejudicial remarks to one another. While there are people who are fully aware of the derogatory remarks they make, others act with ignorance or with the intention of humor. The existence of insensitivity towards a crucial subject is the continuous acceptance of discriminatory behavior against minorities. Consequently, the resentment is reciprocated by the minorities back to the middle and working class people. This is the culture families implement and learns to live with and as a result, prejudicial attitudes pass on from one generation to another. The primary cause of prejudice is a sociological perspective of a person under predominance of the socialization process, economic competition, and conforming to social norms.

What is the cause of prejudice? This is one of the few questions of interests in the field of social psychology. This essay will evaluate the social psychological approach to understanding prejudice.

Discrimination comes in a number of forms. We have age discrimination, employment or job discrimination, racial discrimination, gender discrimination, reverse discrimination, sexual discrimination, and others. Prejudice is a negative attitude toward a socially defined group and toward any person perceived to be a member of that group (Burgess, 2003). The purpose of her research was to talk about discrimination and prejudices and the affect they have on our day to day lives. She also defines prejudice and discrimination and takes a look at their relationship to stereotyping and racism. According to Burgess, stereotyping often leads to prejudice and discrimination, with its definition almost mirroring that of prejudice. Stereotypes or characterizations are generalizations or assumptions that people make about the characteristics of all members of a group, based on an image, often wrong, about what people in that group are like. We are told that it does not allow for individuals to be different, but names them all as one group (Burgess, 2003). Much as her research does, I’d like to discuss the different types of discrimination and prejudice and how we might eliminate it.

Implicit stereotyping and prejudice are both considered key components of discrimination. Both represent distinct concepts as defined by social psychology. Stereotypes are considered to be an individual’s cognitive representation of the traits that define a social group. This influences behaviours such as judgements and forming impressions. Whereas prejudice or evaluation is an affective based response. In this instance individuals are judged purely according to the social group they belong to. Which in turn controls the emotions others feel toward them and how they behave around them. An example of this is the social distance one chooses to maintain with an out-group member. Indirectly measuring these two constructs has been particularly prevalent as it can foster strategies to reduce the pervasive presence of implicit racial discrimination in our society. (Gawronski & Payne, 2010)

Although prejudice and stereotype seem similar, they actually have two different meanings. While stereotyping involves the generalization of a group of people, prejudice involves negative feelings when “they” are in the presence of or even think about members of the group. “Prejudice comes from direct intergroup conflict, social learning, social categorization and other cognitive sources” (Ferguson). Not all stereotypes are negative; there are also positive and neutral stereotypes. Some stereotypes do not slander a race, culture, gender, or religion, but nonetheless generalize a group of people that may or may not be true. For example, some people say that all Asians are smart or good at math. Though people of Asian descent may often be more studious, not all Asians do equally well in school (Floyd, 62). Another common example of a positive stereotype is that all black people are good athletes, dancers, and singers. Though these are positive stereotypes, when people believe them, they don’t take into account that every person is an individual and different. A neutral stereotype