What Is A Prejudice? Theories That Explain It, And Examples
In general, When it comes to prejudices, everyone agrees that they are something negative and that it is wrong to have them
Whether due to social pressure or greater sensitivity and empathy towards other people, the majority of society agrees that prejudging others is not okay, and that an effort should be made to try to overcome them.
However, we do not realize that everyone has them and that, in one way or another, prejudices, which is what we are going to talk about in this article, play a role.
Let’s see what prejudices are, how they originate, what function they fulfill and some relevant theories on the subject.
Prejudices are predetermined beliefs about a person, object or situation These beliefs may be true, although, in most cases, this is not usually the case, in addition to being very exaggerated. Assumpting what a person is like based on different characteristics, such as their sex, race, nationality or sexual orientation, is something that occurs unconsciously and, as a general rule, involves negative feelings and attitudes.
One of the most notable figures within social psychology who has addressed the phenomenon of prejudice has been Gordon Allport. This psychologist, who worked at Harvard University, defines prejudice in The nature of Prejudice (1954) as the negative labeling that is made based on beliefs acquired through people and situations important in the development of the individual, especially during childhood and through the family.
The functionality of prejudices lies in the fact that they allow, in a certain way, to simplify the world. We are exposed to a large amount of information and are required to make decisions quickly, without allowing ourselves to reflect on it. Categorizing people based on their most striking features, instead of delving into what they really are, avoids fatigue and saves effort.
Prejudice can arise from convenience. In the most serious cases, prejudging aims at the submission of a specific group. They commonly originate from negative attitudes towards a group about which there is little real knowledge
It can also be the result of a generalization based on a past negative experience. That is, the person who has a stereotypical view about, for example, Romanians, can defend it due to the fact of having been robbed in the past by one of this nationality.
Cultural factors take on great weight in the generation of prejudices. It is common for in the family or in a specific culture to promote wrong comments and beliefs about certain people, which can be seen as ‘correct’ or which could be included within the expression of ‘think wrong and you will be right’. Furthermore, almost by inertia, criticizing others is encouraged rather than taking an empathetic view and trying to put oneself in the other’s shoes.
How do they influence us?
Prejudices, based on stereotypes, are nothing more than generalizations about something about which we do not have much knowledge. In this way, the world is simplified, even if it is done in a way that could be very wrong and cause harm to others.
Prejudice does not only affect people who are part of the stereotyped group, such as women from sexism or refugees from anti-immigration movements. They also influence those people who are not part of the stereotypical group, causing them to express themselves in a more hostile or cautious way when they see people from the other group.
So that, prejudices tend to foster negative biases, although, as we have already mentioned before, there may also be situations in which there is a false but positive belief about a certain group. For example, assuming that all Finnish people are very smart because Finland has one of the best educational systems in the world is, in effect, prejudging, and may involve overvaluing their intelligence.
Although many people say otherwise, prejudices significantly interfere with our daily lives. They involve a multitude of attitudes, thoughts, predispositions and feelings that can make us change our behavior in a striking way. For example, changing the sidewalk when there is a black person approaching us, speaking more slowly to a person who has an unusual or foreign-sounding name, or not touching a person with HIV for fear of contagion or disgust.
Theories about this phenomenon
When we talk about prejudices we cannot leave aside the concepts of outgroup homogeneity and ingroup heterogeneity It is common to believe that people who are from another group are more similar to each other, while people from their own group are more distinguishable from each other.
This phenomenon can be better understood with an example. A Christian may have the mistaken belief that all Muslim people are violent and abuse women and children, while when talking about the problem of pedophilia in the Catholic Church they have a greater tendency to differentiate between good Christians and bad Christians.
The Robber’s Cave Experiment, by Muzafer and Carolyn Sherif (1954)
In this experiment, more than 20 11-year-old children were taken who signed up to go camping. The children were divided into two groups and stayed in camps that were far apart, in order to avoid any initial contact between both groups.
After a few days, the researchers brought the groups into contact through sports competitions and other activities in which they faced each other group against group. These contacts generated friction, making both groups hostile to the other.
This hostility was so high that the Sheriffs had to accelerate the last phase of the investigation in which they encouraged contact between the members of both groups, making it so that, to achieve some goals, they had to collaborate as if they were a single team.
In the same way that the researchers had generated tensions between both groups, they also generated friendship and sympathies in the last phase, demonstrating that, if people who do not know each other well collaborate to benefit each other, the barrier of stereotypes can be broken.
Contact hypothesis: can prejudice be reduced?
Without a doubt, having negative beliefs about others is something bad and can cause harm, for this reason, trying to overcome these stereotypes is beneficial both for those who believe them and for those who are victims of them.
The contact hypothesis maintains that the prejudices and stereotypes that people in the ingroup hold regarding the outgroup could be reduced through continuous contact between members of both groups. For this to happen, six factors must be met:
Thus, if these conditions were met, people belonging to two groups could learn from each other, cooperate together to achieve the same objectives and understand that they are not as different as they might think.
The aspect of having the same social status is very important, since it facilitates greater empathy. For example, a white worker and a black worker understand that both may be equally oppressed by their respective bosses or that cissexual women and transgender women are oppressed by heteropatriarchal society.
