Prejudice, Stereotypes, and Discrimination, Essay Example

Introduction

‘How does prejudice, stereotype and discrimination impact our society ’

This paper will discuss the impacts of prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination in the context of social psychology. It shall start by first defining the term for better understanding. Prejudice is the negative attitude that one has towards something usually a group of people, the attitude may also be unfair, unfavorable or intolerant based on no justified reason. It is passed from one generation to another.

Stereotype is the belief that one has certain perception about people on the basis of them being members of a certain group. Stereotypes are differentiated as positive, negative, or neutral (Atwater & Ellis, 2009, p. 362). The basis of the stereotypes relies on factors like ethnicity, gender, nationality or even the occupation of a person or groups in many societies.

Discrimination is the act of recognizing, observing and through the differentiation of distinguished features; choice is made that shows bias and prejudice. It can be based on hatred of a race, looks, gender, or a certain group because of stereotyping. It can take the forms of racial remarks, humiliation, verbal abuse, intimidation, mistreatment and threats (Atwater & Ellis, 2009, p. 363).

From the definition, I can say that I relate to stereotyping. I once visited my friend’s house when I was small and apparently the father to my friend had been released from jail. The father used vulgar language towards me and from that day I became stereotypic towards people from jail or with criminal records. I also identify with discrimination from an event in the past where my friend whom I was with at the airport was harassed and treated unfairly by security guards due to her dressing, which showed she was a Muslim.

It is known that stereotypes cannot be changed easily due to reason such as people’s perception about something which is influenced by their expectation, another reason being that through selectively recalling of instances that confirm their stereotypes instances, people usually tend to forget about disconfirming instances. Influence that promotes stereotyping is instances when one happens to be in a scenario which disconfirms their stereotypic nature. They tend to assume that it is just a subgroup of the main group they are stereotypic.

The practices of prejudice and stereotype origin can be based on the evolutionary perspective where these psychologists speculated that in the process of human evolution, they also developed prejudice and stereotyping as it allowed them to decide quickly where which person went to which group (Atwater & Ellis, 2009). From here people where identified by society with which group they belonged to. From a person’s, view of perception, any group they belong is an in-group and out-group was the group they did not belong. From here it is easy for them to favour their group and stereotyping others. Social inequities are a cause of prejudice, due to the negative attitude some groups are treated unfairly whereas where there is a competition for resources, in-group and out-group become more hostile to each other. In out-group homogeneity effect, the assumption that all members are similar to one another and not with the out-group members leads to stereotyping. In my community, the most significant category is the norm. We find it a normal thing to prejudice those that are not from the community.

Strategies to reduce prejudice

Through various researches, prejudice can be reduced when: Different groups come together and cooperate in order to accomplish a common goal. Here, they shall have to support each other. Authorities such as the government, workers unions and leaders advocate for equal rights among people. Different types of groups have opportunities to interact formally and also informally with each other and thus, knowing each other better. There is the existence of equality in the society in terms of legal status, political power and economic opportunity for different groups (Atwater & Ellis, 2009, p. 389).

Consequences of stereotyping and discrimination

Stereotyping is known to cause distort reality as many people tend to exaggerate the differences that exist among groups. Others make people see the other groups as homogenous, despite the fact that people can see they belong to are a heterogeneous group. It can lead the focus of people to be rather selective on information that agrees with the stereotype and the information that disagrees with it is discarded. This may make one make the wrong decisions. On the other hand, discrimination (Lindzey, Gilbert & Fiske, 1998, p. 520) may lead to restricted opportunities for other people, limited access to services, reduced individual right, mental illness that results as a from too much stress and finally leads to one loosing motivation in whatever they are doing.

These behaviours tend to affect the group that is experiencing the stereotype and is discriminated upon. This behaviour hurts them both physically and mentally. Ways of which they hurt is through denial of equal rights and treatment, misjudgement, humiliation, false accusations and harassment. I think we are inadvertently creating self-fulfilling prophesies in the society, and it is made clear to people the social and also economic problems that are caused by prejudice, stereotyping and discriminative nature of people (Conaway, 2005, p. 42). In conclusion, one should get to learn others before judging them, and decisions should not be based on prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination.

References

Atwater, A & Ellis, C. (2009). Prejudice, Stereotyping, and Discrimination. ALBQ, Chapter 11, 358-399.

Conaway, C. (2005). A Psychological effect of stereotypes. Regional Review 41-42. Retrieved 30 April, 2012 from <http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/nerr/rr2005/q1/section3c.pdf>.

Lindzey, G., Gilbert, D & Fiske, S. (1998). The Handbook of Social Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.