Prejudice

Overview

Prejudice or “Prejudgement” is a preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience. It is a silent form of discrimination that many people may not even be aware they are eliciting. There are positive and negative prejudice, positive prejudice means that the attitude towards a group is favourable whereas negative means the attitude towards a group is not favourable. When we meet a stranger, we often prejudge the person base on various factors such as race, outfits, gender, age, language or physical ability.

Causes

Threat-management theory

The cause for the occurrence of prejudice can be explained historically by the evolutionary threat-management approach. The threat-management theory states that as humans evolved, many inclined toward sociality as in doing so people can gain many tangible benefits such as better survival rate, higher chance of reproduction, sharing of resources and protection. However, it also comes with costs that lead to vulnerability such as increased chances of infectious diseases, violence, and theft. Therefore, with the preferable lifestyle of living dependently as a society, people have adapted to become hypersensitive to those they are living closely with in order to avoid the risks as much as they can. Especially when facing people of the out group, a social group which an individual is not identified, prejudice becomes more pronounced due to unfamiliarity. Also, when contextual cues connote vulnerability to threat is made salient, people are more prone to making prejudice attitudes toward others, again, even more so to those of the out group. Depending on the context, if the threat to disease infection is made salient, people are much more sensitive and become intensely prejudiced against those who have abnormal appearances but are absolutely healthy. Similarly, if the economic is in a devastating state, people are easily aroused and prejudiced against those who they see as a potential competitor.

Social dominance orientation

Also, as society started to establish in human history, different social level, social rights, and power also started to appear and people are motivated be high in social hierarchy and have more power. The differences in social levels causes people to become prejudiced. For example, in a hierarchal society people who have higher status are more than likely to hold prejudice towards lower status group. Especially for group that wants to be dominant and superior than other group, which is known as “social dominance orientation”. This orientation can be explained by a person's self-image as it associates with the prejudiced attitude held toward others. If an individual's self-image is affirmed through self-affirmation procedure, the person elicits much less prejudiced attitude. On the other hand, in circumstances where an individual's self-image is threatened or denied, this person is more likely to elicit negative stereotypic or prejudice attitudes toward others who are members of stereotypic groups in order to re-affirm one's self-image by derogating others and feel better about oneself. People who are high in the social hierarchy may be prejudice against people on a lower hierarchy level to feel their superior existence and people on a lower hierarchy may also elicit prejudiced attitude towards those of the minority groups to help re-affirm their self-image which have been threatened by those in the higher hierarchy.

Forms of prejudice

The phenomenon of prejudice can be divided into two categories, traditional overt expression and contemporary form. Traditional overt expression prejudice are impressions left by human history as racism and sexism continuously to occur in many countries which led to wars and revolutions. As a result of changing norms and the Civil Rights Acts passed in 1965 in enforcing equality among individuals of different race, gender, and ethnicity, overt expressions of prejudice have declined significantly. However, contemporary form of prejudice continues to exist. Contemporary form of prejudice can be automatic, unconscious, and unintentional.

Consequences

Consequences of negative prejudice are reflected in many ways in the short term and long term effects. The short term effects include cognitive function on various activities such as math task, memorization task, and recall tests. For example, even members who excel at math but are in a group that has the stereotype of "bad at math" will likely to perform worse on math activities when they are aware or being notified of this prejudice against them. Long term consequences include the physical and mental state of the individual who is prejudiced against such as psychological stress and cardiovascular stress which further leads to possible dangers such as heart diseases, cerebral atrophy, and memory loss.

Solutions

Macro level

Depending on the type of prejudice the strategies of combating prejudice differ. One powerful method to reduce prejudice and discrimination is to establish laws, regulation, and social norms practice equality and fair treatment. Hundreds of organizations are working on improving and help the society to become anti prejudice on both educational and mass media scale such as Center for Social Inclusion, The Community of LGBT centers, and UNESCO.

Micro level

On a personal level, to combat contemporary form of prejudice first involves individuals to become aware they hold prejudiced attitudes. In order to eliminate these implicit attitudes individuals can engage in group activities with people from various backgrounds which allows every individuals in the group to know each other on a personal level instead of just a broad generalization of what that individual’s general ethnicity, race, gender, or social status reveals. In addition, working as a group towards a goal changes the perspective of the different individuals of Us v.s. Them to We v.s. Goal.