Why we have prejudices

The Nature of Prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley; Published December 19, Fiske ST. Interdependence Reduces Prejudice and Stereotyping.

In Oskamp S, ed. Reducing Prejudice and Discrimination. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum; ; Linville PW. The Heterogeneity of Homogeneity. Plous, S. Plous Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for VerywellMind.

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We and our partners process data to: Actively scan device characteristics for identification. I Accept Show Purposes. Table of Contents View All. Table of Contents. Reducing Prejudice. A stereotype is a simplified assumption about a group based on prior experiences or beliefs. Was this page helpful? Thanks for your feedback! Sign Up. What are your concerns? Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles.

Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy. Related Articles. We seek to resolve threats individually and at the in-group level. This often happens by blaming an out-group for the problem. Scapegoating is the act of blaming an out-group when the in-group experiences frustration or is blocked from obtaining a goal Allport, Improve this page Learn More. Skip to main content.

Social Psychology. Search for:. Why do Prejudice and Discrimination Exist? Learning Objectives Explain reasons for the existence of prejudice and discrimination such as scapegoat theory, ingroups, and outgroups, and the self-fulfilling prophecy. Link to Learning Watch the following clip to learn more about stereotype threats. Try It. Think It Over Give an example when you felt that someone was prejudiced against you.

What do you think caused this attitude? Did this person display any discrimination behaviors and, if so, how? Give an example when you felt prejudiced against someone else.

How did you discriminate against them? Why do you think you did this? Physical objects and events certainly occur in the world, but the meaning we give the events exists only in our minds , not in the world. A few years ago Leeza Gibbons devoted the entire hour of her daytime talk show to an investigation of the causes and cures for prejudice. I had been on the show before talking about how beliefs cause most of our thoughts, feelings, and behavior, so she asked me to come back to discuss the relationship between beliefs and racial prejudice.

Before the show, we went into the audience looking for a volunteer who would acknowledge having prejudice and who also would like to get rid of it if possible. Let me tell you about the conversation I had with Chad before the Leeza show went on the air.

What happened that led you to that conclusion? Areas, where Blacks lived, were very dangerous—a lot of crime and killing. The news was full of it. Most of our friends had the same negative attitudes about Blacks. I heard this constantly at home and at school.

I also remember driving my car once and saw a Black man get into an accident that was clearly his fault. What else could the same events mean? It was immediately clear to Chad that his beliefs about African-Americans were only one arbitrary interpretation of what he had heard about African-Americans as a child, and not the truth.

But that fact could have a lot of different meanings. You just gave me four of them. I just saw certain people saying things to me. I guess I made up those beliefs about Blacks. It was after this short interaction with me that Chad announced on national TV that his prejudice was gone. The beliefs are not facts.

They are not the truth. Please write your comments below. These weekly blog posts also exist as podcasts. Sign up for the RSS feed or at iTunes to get the podcasts sent to you weekly. Especially years ago before tv or radio, but nowadays people have caught on to those slick politicians but still vote for the same party because of family tradition!! Just like some men are loyal to certain brands of trucks!! Like the one their parents had!! As a white heterosexual American, I wonder from where in your background you trace this obvious prejudice?

Humans are irrational for the most part even though we have the largest brains of all animals, and consider ourselves the most intelligent species on earth.

Just think about how humans want to rub everyone who looks good against their bodies or outright want to have them as in sex, for example. It actually sounds so stupid once you start analyzing this particular aspect of human behavior. Or hording money and objects, for instance, followed by unbridled devastation of resources is considered an attractive attribute by humans and earns respect and recognition.

This is the kind of life form we are dealing with. There are exceptions to this, of course. You can defy human nature. Some people are prejudiced because they are desperate for value. And impressing is something that is really crucial to these people because by impressing others, these people get what they want from others — sex, profit and other advantages.

This phenomenon occurs as a result of millions of years of evolution. Biases do stop people from doing wrong things. Thus, having biases against the right things that are wrong helps you discriminate between good and bad, right and wrong. But when it comes to things like race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation and other superficial attributes, they are not uniformed and clean-cut, and can not serve as predictors of moral character.

Dissecting people by the superficial attributes is useless. I am strugling with suddenly feeling predjudice towards African Americans at moments… and I have no idea why. It shocked me until I was nearly 30… these feelings hit me suddenly, and I cannot attribute them to anything other than the depression and self-hate I felt toward myself at that time. I feel awful about it. I really want it to go away, but I know that pushing it away or shoving it to some unreachable place within me will not work.

Removing prejudicial beliefs seems like a prime area for your Beliefs System work. Have you considered writing a book about it? Yes, this would be a good topic. I also want to put all my blog posts into a book at some point. I realised that because I had taken a few examples of bullying and generalised them out to the population of these people as a whole, my thoughts were stereotyping. As I realised that not ALL these people were problem causers the last vestiges of my prejudice vanished.

I will keep thinking this over.