The Ho, Roberts And Gelman Article, Essentialism And Racial Bias

In Paul Bloom’s TED Talk, “Can Prejudice Ever Be a Good Thing?,” he discusses the stereotypes people encounter in their everyday lives. Bloom asserts his personal opinions, along with facts, to show how prejudice and stereotypes begin to form in the human mind at a young age. He states that prejudice can be rational and useful but it can also be irrational, often leading to immoral consequences. He presents studies done by other psychologists that prove the development of stereotypes throughout the lifetime of an individual. Some of the studies show the way people react when they view an African American in relation to a white American. People favor the white Americans over the African Americans because it’s an instinct to choose white over

Society has a way of making assumptions based on one’s physical characteristics. Often at times we categorize individuals to a particular social group. In regard to society’ perception of an individual this however, contributes to the development of social construction of racism. Most people want to be identified as individuals rather than a member of specific social group. As a result, our social identity contains different categories or components that were influenced or imposed. For example, I identify as a, Jamaican, Puerto Rican and a person of color. I identify racially as a person of color and ethically as Jamaican and Puerto Rican. According to Miller and Garren it’s a natural human response for people to make assumptions solely

In a study conducted by Ford and Tonander (1998), it was hypothesized that when one’s social identity was threatened by a group who is largely different from them, that individual is likely to form stereotypes. This is based

Prior to taking this course, I was taught, and therefore was under the impression, that prejudice is a preconceived notion about a group and that racism is essentially the same thing, except that racism also encompasses the idea that the group is lesser. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva states that “for most whites, racism is prejudice; for most people of color, racism is systemic or institutionalized” (Bonilla-Silva, 2010). Quotes like this force me to reflect, both on how I see myself and how others see me. Reading that quote, I felt like I related more to ‘most whites’ because I believed that racism was essentially prejudice for so long. I remember once while doing a cross the line activity, I hesitated before moving when the facilitator said “step forward if you are a person on color.” Technically, yes, my skin is pigmented in a way that would qualify me as a person of color but there is a connotation with that phrase that I felt didn’t relate to me. My first reaction to that phrase is the thought of someone who has struggled, someone who faces racism on a regular basis, someone who is treated differently because of the color of their skin. In my opinion, the more others acknowledge a part of your identity, the more apparent that part of your identity is to you, and I don’t often feel that people acknowledge my identity as an Asian American. I’ve been called a coconut more times than I can count. Brown on the outside but white on the inside. Sure I look brown, but I don’t ‘act

Prejudice, discrimination, and stereotyping are important topics at the cause of debating within social psychology. A stereotype is a generalization about a group of people, in which certain traits cling to all members, regardless of actual individual variation (Akert, Aronson, & Wilson, 2010). As humans, people assign objects and individuals into categories to organize the environment. Individuals do this for not only organization, but also survival. Is stereotyping inevitable? That is the question; according to Devine (2007), it is, but Lepore and Brown (2007) have to disagree. Devine believes that “stereotyping is automatic, which makes it inevitable.” On the other hand, Lepore and Brown are not convinced that stereotyping is

Generally we want to approach decisions with placing ourselves in another’s shoes, however, seeing past how we view ourselves within our own racial group can again lead to stereotyping behavior.

Few people are going to openly admit to being prejudice against people of other races, gender, and religions. However that doesn’t stop many of us from having unintentional racist thoughts. In 1979, Henri Tajfel, a social psychologist, proposed that “the groups which people belonged to are an important source of pride and self-esteem. Groups give us a sense of social identity: a sense of belonging to the social world.” This ideal of categorizing and subconsciously labeling ourselves is better known as “Social Identity Theory”. Tajfel continues by saying “In order to increase our self-image we enhance the status of the group to which we belong. For example, England is the best country in the world! We can also increase our self-image by discriminating and holding prejudice views against the out group (the group we don’t belong to). For example, the Americans, French etc. are a bunch of losers! Therefore, we divided the world into “them” and “us” based through a process of social categorization (i.e. we put people into social groups). This is known as in-group (us) and out-group (them). Social identity theory states that the in-group will discriminate against the out-group to enhance their self-image.” We all unintentionally discriminate against others that are in the “out-group”, and by doing this we are excluding ourselves from certain religions, cultures, races, and even genders. This ideal of labeling ourselves can be traced back to childhood and factors such as where we

Over the winter, my dad wanted to visit some family members in Canada so my whole family decided to go together as a little vacation. At first, as we were going through the security checkpoint, we were laughing and messing around in Farsi, but all of a sudden we were stopped by a few security guards. They asked my father to step to the side so that they could do a random screening and my dad, although he gave no reason to be considered suspicious, agreed. However, this “random screening” began with the guards asking my dad where he was born, how long he’s lived in the United States, and what were his religious affiliations all the while looking at him as if they already knew he was dangerous without even allowing him to prove them wrong. As I was watching their exchange, I realized that society does not truly accept Middle Eastern people and their culture. Ever since the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, racial bias has become more prominent against Arabs and Muslims and as a born American citizen with a Middle Eastern heritage, this bias is very clear to me, especially since I do not appear to be from a country in the Middle East. When I am alone with my friends, I am treated as an everyday American, not even given a second glance. However, when I am with my dad or any of my aunts and uncles, we are constantly given wary looks, as if we might be hiding something. This brings me to my main question, What can be done in order to make society more accepting of people

The first experiment conducted by Devine and colleagues conducted a well thought out experiment in terms of their technique. In all three studies the authors’ randomly assigned the participants to the experiments increasing the ability to generalize this sample to a larger population. In addition, the participants were asked to freely respond to the question, providing a more accurate knowledge of stereotypes because no cues were provided to influence the subjects’ knowledge. The anonymity of the participants also allows subjects to freely provide information without being judged resulting in an easier access to their private thoughts. Alternatively, in all three studies the authors recruited a number of white participants. This may produce bias in their results as stereotypes and prejudice towards blacks have historical roots in their culture. In the first study, the list of traits do not completely capture

The main concept of the article “Definition of systemic racism in sociology” is that systemic racism makes it difficult for people of color to fight against discrimination and injustice. According to the article it states that- “The white backlash that typically follows resistance, like countering "Black Lives Matter" with "All Lives Matter" or "Blue Lives Matter," does the work of limiting the effects of resistance and maintaining a racist system” This piece of evidence is the most important evidence that helped me understand the main concept of this article. This piece of evidence explains that Racism has existed throughout the history. It makes it difficult for people to fight back because racism makes people think that they are less worth

Stereotyping occurs when individuals form cognitive conceptions of out-group members, associating certain characteristics with that group (Smith and Mackie, 2007; Hamilton, 1981), whereas prejudice is a positive or negative evaluation directed towards an out-group (Smith and Mackie, 2007). Current research depicts them as independent constructs, comprising different behavioural responses. An interrelation is indicated by considerable indirect evidence, specifically that prejudice is an inevitable consequence of stereotyping.

However, these cognitive short cuts sometimes have negative effects. Within United States culture, because people tend to associate African Americans with violence and crime, White participants identify guns faster under black face priming than white face priming (Payne, 2001). White participants also tend to respond faster to White faces paired with positive words (e.g., playful, humorous, charming) than Black faces paired with positive words, and Black faces paired with negative words (e.g., poor, violent, lazy) than White faces paired with negative words. These findings suggest that negative stereotypes of African Americans may implicitly influence White participants’ social judgments of African Americans (Wittenbrink, Judd, & Park, 1997).

It is necessary to consider the position of essentialism in affecting identification. Essentialism stresses on the notion that difference is fundamental. People bond to each other based on the so-called commonalities, such as race, gender, nationality and so on. However, individuals can be devalued and avoided because they belong to certain groups (Young, 1990). Also, people loathe members from their own groups or other oppressed groups through emphasizing on a sense of difference (ibid). Taking the situation of black queer people to examine the idea that ‘I was born black, you choose to be gay.’ First, the notion of born as black expresses that blackness is a fixed or a given identity, which sets a boundary to exclude black queer people from

There has been decades of research examining what it referred to as “automatic categorization” (Nelson, 2005. p. 207). Researchers describe this as an essential trait in humans that is a primal response to physical characteristics, such as race, gender, and age, that automatically prompts emotional responses and prejudices. This type of categorization sets the

There are three mechanisms that clarify why generalizations still exit even when people are given stereotype-inconsistent information. These mechanisms are illusory correlation, confirmation bias and last one is subtyping. Illusory correlation can prompt generalizations even within the sight of disconfirming data, because of the propensity of individuals to see a connection between occasional occasions and negative occasions. Since generalizations are frequently about minority gatherings and in light of the fact that negative occasions are normally rare, this type of connection can prompt the upkeep of negative assessments of minority gatherings. The supposition that there is a connection between two variables when there is either none or