One bad experience with a person from a particular group can cause a person to think of all people from that group in the same way. This is called stereotyping and can lead to prejudice. The media has a powerful influence on people in the 21st century and can often be responsible for promoting a stereotype of a particular group.
Prejudice and discrimination occur across the globe. As we discussed in the opening story of Trayvon Martin, humans are very diverse and although we share many similarities, we also have many differences. The social groups we belong to help form our identities Tajfel, These differences may be difficult for some people to reconcile, which may lead to prejudice toward people who are different. Prejudice is common against people who are members of an unfamiliar cultural group.
Thus, certain types of education, contact, interactions, and building relationships with members of different cultural groups can reduce the tendency toward prejudice.
In fact, simply imagining interacting with members of different cultural groups might affect prejudice. Indeed, when experimental participants were asked to imagine themselves positively interacting with someone from a different group, this led to an increased positive attitude toward the other group and an increase in positive traits associated with the other group.
What are some examples of social groups that you belong to that contribute to your identity? Social groups can include gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, social class, religion, sexual orientation, profession, and many more.
And, as is true for social roles, you can simultaneously be a member of more than one social group. An example of prejudice is having a negative attitude toward people who are not born in the United States.
Although people holding this prejudiced attitude do not know all people who were not born in the United States, they dislike them due to their status as foreigners. Can you think of a prejudiced attitude you have held toward a group of people? How did your prejudice develop? Prejudice often begins in the form of a stereotype —that is, a negative belief about individuals based solely on their membership in a group, regardless of their individual characteristics.
Stereotypes become overgeneralized and applied to all members of a group. We cannot possibly know each individual person of advanced age to know that all older adults are slow and incompetent. Therefore, this negative belief is overgeneralized to all members of the group, even though many of the individual group members may in fact be spry and intelligent. Another example of a well-known stereotype involves beliefs about racial differences among athletes. As Hodge, Burden, Robinson, and Bennett point out, Black male athletes are often believed to be more athletic, yet less intelligent, than their White male counterparts.
These beliefs persist despite a number of high profile examples to the contrary. Sadly, such beliefs often influence how these athletes are treated by others and how they view themselves and their own capabilities. Whether or not you agree with a stereotype, stereotypes are generally well-known within in a given culture Devine, Sometimes people will act on their prejudiced attitudes toward a group of people, and this behavior is known as discrimination.
As a result of holding negative beliefs stereotypes and negative attitudes prejudice about a particular group, people often treat the target of prejudice poorly, such as excluding older adults from their circle of friends. Have you ever been the target of discrimination? If so, how did this negative treatment make you feel?
However, it is important to also point out that people can hold positive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors toward individuals based on group membership; for example, they would show preferential treatment for people who are like themselves—that is, who share the same gender, race, or favorite sports team.
This video demonstrates the concepts of prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination. In the video, a social experiment is conducted in a park where three people try to steal a bike out in the open.
The race and gender of the thief is varied: a White male teenager, a Black male teenager, and a White female. Does anyone try to stop them? The treatment of the teenagers in the video demonstrates the concept of racism. Why are these aspects of an unfamiliar person so important? Although these secondary characteristics are important in forming a first impression of a stranger, the social categories of race, gender, and age provide a wealth of information about an individual.
This information, however, often is based on stereotypes. We may have different expectations of strangers depending on their race, gender, and age.
Later, the Jews were placed in concentration camps by the Nazis. In Western societies, while women are often discriminated against in the workplace, men are often discriminated against in the home and family environments. For instance after a divorce women receive primary custody of the children far more often than men.
Women on average earn less pay than men for doing the same job. Influences that cause individuals to be racist or sexist, for example, may come from peers, parents, and group membership. Social norms - behavior considered appropriate within a social group - are one possible influence on prejudice and discrimination.
People may have prejudiced beliefs and feelings and act in a prejudiced way because they are conforming to what is regarded as normal in the social groups to which they belong:. Minard investigated how social norms influence prejudice and discrimination.
The behavior of black and white miners in a town in the southern United States was observed, both above and below ground. Below ground, where the social norm was friendly behavior towards work colleagues, 80 of the white miners were friendly towards the black miners.
Above ground, where the social norm was prejudiced behavior by whites to blacks, this dropped to The white miners were conforming to different norms above and below ground. Thus, this article is suggesting that this innate human characteristic forces us to categorize.
Now add the social conditioning. Massey and Denton American Apartheid demonstrate that we USA live in highly segregated communities, so if children are being exposed to people similar as themselves then this tends to feed into the natural inclination to categorize. Next, children and adults are exposed to stereotypes which are generalized and distorted information about groups…this lends to the negative feelings towards the out groups…all these processes work together to support prejudice and racism.
Perhaps that may come subsequently from a child learning values and beliefs from the media, family, teachers, role models, and so forth. Socialization is an imperative vehicle that drives the aforementioned.
Roete asserts that, though categorization is a fundamental human process, the properties that we assign a category are variable to the ideas we hold about its constituents — thus leading to prejudice.
As such, ideology is of only minor significance in the formation prejudice. This seems to me a distinction without any difference.
What are ideas, if not the foundation of ideology? How can one form opinions about complex societies without ideology? Of course, one cannot have an intricate set of prejudices without ideology. Furthermore, the cultivation of positive ideas about something, rather than negative ones, would not be reducing prejudice, but merely rebalancing it — and a fundamentally ideological exercise in itself.
Ideology is not a artificial, superimposed structure, nor a series of deliberate, conscious ideations. But instead a complex web of understandings of the social world, every bit as organic as the need to categorize.
As such ideology and categorization exist in tandem, not in isolation. Humans are selective, biase,and prejudicial. This is categorically true. BUT, there not necessarily racist. These are personal preferences; they only become racist when used to hurt another person or group of people. They are simply uncomfortable with differences contrary to what they consider normal or good.
Prejudices are a natural response and can be both beneficial and damaging depending on the action taken. Racism is elevating ones own race above another simply because other races are viewed, as a whole, less valued and less human.
The comments above are more interesting and reasoned than the actual research!
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