Prejudice

What Is the Nature and Power of

Prejudice?
• Prejudice is a bias or a preconceived opinion, idea, or belief about something.
• A preconceived negative judgment of a group and its individual members.
• Prejudice is an attitude, an attitude is a distinct combination of feelings,
inclinations to act, and beliefs.
• It can be easily remembered as the ABC of attitudes:
• affect (feelings),
• behaviour tendency (inclination to act),
• cognition (beliefs).
• A prejudiced person may dislike those different from self and behave in a
discriminatory manner, believing them ignorant and dangerous.
• Like many attitudes, prejudice is complex.
Some Similar concepts
Stereotype
• A belief about the personal attributes of a group of people. Stereotypes are sometimes
overgeneralized, inaccurate, and resistant to new information.

Discrimination
• Unjustified negative behaviour toward a group or its members.

racism
• (1) An individual’s prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behaviour toward people of a given race,
(2) institutional practices (even if not motivated by prejudice) that subordinate people of a given
race.
sexism
• (1) An individual’s prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behaviour toward people of a given sex, or
(2) institutional practices (even if not motivated by prejudice) that subordinate people of a given sex.
Prejudice: Subtle and Overt
• We can have different explicit (conscious) and implicit (automatic)
attitudes toward the same target.
• Many studies have confirmed that prejudiced and stereotypic
evaluations can occur outside people’s awareness.
• Some of these studies briefly flash words or faces that “prime”
(automatically activate) stereotypes for some racial, gender, or age
group.
• Without their awareness, the participants’ activated stereotypes may
then bias their behaviour.
 Racial Prejudice
• In the context of the world, every race is a minority.
• Nature doesn’t cluster races in neatly defined categories.
• It is people, not nature, who label Barack Obama, the son of a White
woman, as “Black”.
• Which is right: people’s perceptions of high prejudice in others, or their
perceptions of low prejudice in themselves?
• And is racial prejudice becoming a thing of the past?
• Explicit prejudicial attitudes can change very quickly.
• Example: 1942, in USA separate buses and trams for whites and blacks.
Racial Prejudice

SUBTLE FORMS OF PREJUDICE

• Subtle prejudice is the domain of unjustified assumptions, , and plain
failure to make the effort to include people who are different from
ourselves, or who don't fit our expectations.
• One word for the expressions of subtle prejudice is 'micro
aggressions'.
• Prejudice in subtle forms is even more widespread.
• Some experiments have assessed people’s behaviour toward Blacks
and Whites.
Racial Prejudice

AUTOMATIC PREJUDICE
• In a Swedish study, a measure of implicit biases against Arab-
Muslims predicted the likelihood of 193 corporate employers
not interviewing applicants with Muslim names.
• Like in UK Muslims salesmen using Facebooks with European
names.
Gender Prejudice
• We consider gender stereotypes —people’s beliefs about how women
and men do behave.
• Norms are prescriptive/inflexible /strict; stereotypes are descriptive.
1. GENDER STEREOTYPES
2. SEXISM: BENEVOLENT/Caring AND HOSTILE
3. GENDER DISCRIMINATION:Being male isn’t all roses. Compared to
women, men are three times more likely to commit suicide and be
murdered. They die five years sooner. And males represent the
majority with mental retardation or autism.
Prejudice and now days
• To conclude, overt prejudice against people of colour and against
women is far less common today than it was in the mid-twentieth
century.
• Nevertheless, techniques that are sensitive to subtle prejudice still
detect widespread bias.
• And in parts of the world, gender prejudice makes for misery.
• Therefore, we need to look carefully and closely at the social,
emotional, and cognitive sources of prejudice.
What Are the Social Sources of
Prejudice?
Social Inequalities: Unequal Status and Prejudice:
• A principle to remember: Unequal status breeds prejudice.
• Some people notice and justify status differences.

Socialization
• Prejudice springs from unequal status and from other social sources, including
our acquired values and attitudes.
• The influence of family socialization appears in children’s prejudices, which
often mirror those perceived in their mothers.
• Even children’s implicit racial attitudes reflect their parents’ explicit prejudice.
What Are the Social Sources of
Prejudice?
THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
• A personality that is dispose to favor obedience to authority and intolerance of outgroups and
those lower in status.

RELIGION AND PREJUDICE

• We can see this in religious sects. As well as towards schools vs madrassa. There are three
possibilities as per researches:
• 1. There may be no connection at all.
• 2. Perhaps prejudice causes religion, by leading people to create religious ideas to support
their prejudices.
• 3. Or perhaps religion causes prejudice, by leading people to believe that because all
individuals possess free will, impoverished minorities have themselves to blame for their
status.
What Are the Social Sources of
Prejudice?
Institutional Supports
• Social institutions (schools, government, the media) may bolster
prejudice through overt policies such as segregation, or by passively
reinforcing the status quo.
• Similarly, political leaders may both reflect and reinforce prevailing
attitudes.
What Are the Motivational Sources of
Prejudice?
1. Realistic group conflict theory
• The theory that prejudice arises from competition between groups for scarce resources.
• Competition is an important source of frustration that can fuel prejudice.
2. Social Identity Theory: Feeling Superior to Others
• The “we” aspect of our self-concept; the part of our answer to “Who am I?” that comes from our
group memberships.
• Turner proposed social identity theory. Turner and Tajfel observed the following:
• We categorize: We find it useful to put people, ourselves included, into categories. To label
someone as a Hindu, a Scot, or a bus driver is a shorthand way of saying some other things about
the person.
• We identify: We associate ourselves with certain groups (our in-groups ), and gain self-esteem by
doing so.
• We compare: We contrast our groups with other groups ( outgroups ), with a favourable bias
toward our own group.
• While often happens in-group biasness (tendency to favour one’s own group)
3. NEED FOR STATUS, SELF-REGARD, AND BELONGING
Motivation to Avoid Prejudice
• Motivations not only lead people to be prejudiced but also lead
people to avoid prejudice.
• The motivation to avoid prejudice can lead people to modify their
thoughts and actions.
• Aware of the gap between how they should feel and how they do feel,
self-conscious people will feel guilt and try to inhibit their prejudicial
response.
• What race is this
person?
 What Are the Cognitive Sources of
Prejudice?
1. Categorization: Classifying People into Groups
• Stereotypes represent cognitive efficiency.
• They are energy-saving schemes for making speedy judgments and predicting how
others will think and act.
• A. SPONTANEOUS CATEGORIZATION
• We find it especially easy and efficient to rely on stereotypes when we are
• pressed for time
• preoccupied
• Tired
• emotionally aroused
• too young to appreciate diversity
• B. PERCEIVED SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES
• outgroup homogeneity effect: Perception of outgroup members as more similar to one another
than are in-group members.
• own-race bias: The tendency for people to more accurately recognize faces of their own race.
What Are the Consequences of
Prejudice?
• Prejudice and stereotyping have important consequences, especially when
strongly held, when judging unknown individuals, and when deciding policies
regarding whole groups.
• Once formed, stereotypes tend to maintain themselves and resist change.
• They also create their own realities through self-fulfilling prophecies (a
psychological phenomenon that occurs when a person's expectations or beliefs
about a situation lead to actions that make those expectations come true).
• Prejudice can also undermine people’s performance through stereotype threat,
by making people apprehensive that others will view them stereotypically.
• Stereotypes, especially when strong, can predispose how we perceive people
and interpret events.
What Are the Consequences of
Prejudice?
• 1. Self-Perpetuating Stereotypes
• Self-Perpetuating means capable of continuing or renewing
oneself indefinitely.
• "Self-perpetuating stereotypes" means stereotypes that keep
going and affecting how people think and act because they are
repeatedly reinforced.
• When these stereotypes are constantly confirmed, it becomes
difficult to change or break away from them. It's like a cycle that
keeps stereotypes alive.
• Prejudgments guide our attention and our memories.
• Prejudgments are self-perpetuating.
What Are the Consequences of
Prejudice?
2. Discrimination’s Impact: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
• "When people are unfairly treated or discriminated against, it can
create a self-fulfilling prophecy.
• They might start behaving in ways that confirm the negative
stereotypes imposed on them, reinforcing the initial
discrimination.“
• A self-fulfilling prophecy" is when a belief or expectation, even if
initially untrue, leads people to act in a way that makes it come
true. In simpler terms, thinking something will happen can
influence behaviour in a way that makes it actually happen.
What Are the Consequences of
Prejudice?
3. Stereotype threat
• This is when someone feels nervous because they think others
might judge them unfairly based on a negative idea about their
group.
• It’s different from a self-fulfilling prophecy because it happens
right away and makes the person feel stressed in the moment.
• Example:
A girl might feel anxious during a math test because she worries
people believe that girls are not as good at math as boys. This
fear can make it harder for her to focus and do her best, even if
she's really good at math.
What Are the Consequences of
Prejudice?