Prejudice can be defined as ' a negative judgement of a group and its individual members'. (Myers 2002) In addition to prejudice, there is stereotyping. Some psychologists say that these two words are interlinked.
You cannot explain prejudice without explaining stereotyping and vice versa. A stereotype is 'a belief about the personal attributes pf a group of people, sometimes over generalised, inaccurate, and often resistant to new information. ' (Myers 2002) There are many reasons why people from prejudices. One might say that it's down to human nature and Darwinism.Others might say it's because of past unpleasant experiences or just a part of society that will not fade away.
There are three sources of prejudice; social, emotional and cognitive. Social sources of prejudice include religion, conformity and the social identity theory. Religion is deep rooted in prejudice. For example, there is much prejudice in Northern Ireland between the Catholics and Protestants. Conformity is another reason why people are prejudice. People want to be accepted by their peers and if their peers are prejudice against a particular group, they too will follow the beliefs even though they do not agree with it.
The social identity theory also helps explain why people form prejudices. It is thought that people form prejudice making people feel inferior thus increasing their own self-esteem. This is also called ingroup bias. We favour our own group (ingroup) and compare them to other outgroups with a favourable bias towards our own group. Emotional sources of prejudice include frustration/aggression theory and the realistic group theory.
One example of frustration/aggression theory can be seen during the economic downturn in 1882-1930.People were feeling frustrated by the poverty surrounding them and in turn took out their frustrations on those around them. This resulted in an increase of lynching. This is also named the scapegoat theory. When they cannot find an answer to their problems people will find another way to deal with it.
Another emotional source of prejudice that is not very common involves a person being attacked by another person of a different race. The victim may form a prejudice against that person. The realistic group conflict theory states that prejudice arises as a result of competition between two groups for resources.Cognitive sources of prejudice include categorisation.
This is the theory that people place others in categories resulting in the formation of stereotypes. The Fundamental Attribution Theory is another cognitive source of prejudice. It is the idea that we attribute negative behaviour to another person's behaviour and personality whilst attributing negative behaviour of ourselves due to the circumstances surrounding us. Therefore all positive behaviour is attributed to us and dismisses positive behaviour of others as due to circumstances surrounding them. How can we reduce prejudice effectively?Some social psychologists believe that educating people will play and important role in reducing prejudice.
For example, Staub (1975) greatly believed in teaching about prejudice and intergroup hostility and how to combat them. In addition, educational systems can help reduce prejudice by teaching children about it and making schools more culturally diversified as it has been proven that education itself reduces prejudice. Glock et al (1975) believed that prejudice arises from lack of knowledge. Therefore if children are educated from a young age about prejudice then there will be less prejudice.
People can be taught that everyone is different from the way they talk, dress and look. However this does not necessarily mean that you should categorise them. Another way of reducing prejudice is attacking the legal system. 'Eliminating or reducing such inequities has a number of important effects such as helping group boundaries less salient and lessening negative stereotyping and victim-blaming tendencies.
' (Duckitt, 1994) This has also shown to be effective when Social psychologists assisted in law making after the American civil war. By protecting target groups, prejudice has reduced significantly.Social psychologists have also put forward the theory to change an individual's attitude through counselling sessions. (Bageley, 1979). However, this has been met with much hostility, as people do not wish to air their prejudices with those they do not know.
In addition, by changing one persons attitude does not necessarily mean that its whole ingroup will change. Unfortunately, some of theses changes have been met with hostility and unsupported. In addition, some of the change are very difficult and may seem beyond the abilities of the social psychologists.
