Prejudice results in discrimination. Therefore, prejudice against a certain group, black people for example, suggests prejudging members of that community before you know anything about them or have had any shared experiences with them.
It might not always be the case that you have absolutely no knowledge or experience of a particular person or group of people. You may know bits and pieces about them or may have even met one or two. However, prejudice often involves a process of filling in the gaps in your knowledge or experience, and this is where stereotyping comes in. Stereotyping is where you believe that just because people are members of a particular visible group, they must also share particular traits which you think are characteristic of that group. The reasons you may believe that they share those traits may be because this is what you have been told, or maybe it is what you have experienced. For example, if the first time you meet a disabled person he/she is a wheelchair user who appears heavily dependant upon the assistance of others, you may form the view that such dependence is a common characteristic shared by other members of the disabled community, even though you have no direct experience or knowledge that this is in fact the case.
Prejudice and discrimination in all its forms has its roots in things we can often, if not always, change, provided we are aware of them. The main roots to prejudice are ignorance, power, vulnerability, the influence of upbringing and conformity. There are six main skills that can be used to overcome prejudice and discrimination and these are empathy, understanding, raised awareness, sensitivity, consequences and a desire to be fair.
Adorno et al. (1950) proposed the concept of the authoritarian personality, someone who’s prejudiced by virtue of specific personality traits which predispose them to be hostile towards ethnic, racial and other minority or outgroups. The authoritarian personality is hostile to people of inferior status, servile to those of higher status and contemptuous of weakness. They are also rigid and inflexible, intolerant or ambiguity and uncertainty, unwilling to introspect feelings and an upholder of conventional values and ways of life.
This combines to make minorities ‘them’ and the authoritarian’s membership group ‘us’. Adorno et al. claimed that authoritarians have often experienced a harsh, punitive, disciplinarian upbringing, with little affection. This results in high opinions of their parents but hostility towards them. Minority groups become targets for hostility and they feel threatened by them.
There are some criticisms to this theory, according to Brown (1988), if prejudice is to be explained in terms of individual differences, how can it then be manifested in a whole population or at least a vast majority of that population? For example, in pre war Nazi Germany consistent racist attitudes and behaviour were shown by hundreds of thousands of people, who must have differed on most other psychological characteristics. Also anti Japanese prejudice amongst Americans grew rapidly following the Pearl Harbour attack which was too short a time for a whole generation of authoritarian and prejudiced children to be reared.
According to Taifel et al. (1971) the mere perception of another group’s existence can produce discrimination. When people are arbitrarily and randomly divided into two groups, knowledge of the other group’s existence is a sufficient condition for the development of pro-in-group and anti-out-group attitudes. These artificial groups are known as minimal groups.
Brown (1988) points out that inter-group discrimination in this minimal group situation has proved to be a remarkably robust phenomenon. The mere act of allocating people into arbitrary social categories is sufficient to elicit biased judgements and discriminatory behaviours. However, Wetherell (1982) maintains that inter-group conflict is not inevitable. She studied white and Polynesian children in New Zealand and found the latter to be much more generous towards the out-group, reflecting cultural norms which emphasised co-operation.
Stereotyping was introduced into social science by Lippman (1922), who defined stereotypes as ‘pictures in our heads’. Lippman (1922) described stereotypes as selective, self fulfilling and ethnocentric, constituting a ‘very partial and inadequate way of representing the world’. The process of stereotyping involves assigning someone to a particular group (based on an easily recognisable characteristic), brining into play the belief that all members of the group share certain characteristics and infer that this particular individual must possess these characteristics.
According to Allport (1954) most stereotypes do contain a ‘kernel of truth’, and Lippman had recognised the categorisation processes involved in stereotyping as an important aspect of general cognitive functioning. Allport built on these ideas arguing that ‘the human mind must think with the aid of categories’. Brislin (1993) suggests that stereotypes are natural and that they reflect people’s need to organise, remember and retrieve useful information as they struggle to achieve goals and meet demands. Linville (1989) suggests that people see those who are members of the ‘out-group’ as being highly similar and people who are members of the ‘in-group’ as having all kinds of individual differences. We tend to interact with members of our own group and find differences between them. We have limited interaction with other social groups – so we have simplified views of them.
In conclusion, the principle of equity is that all people should have equal opportunities. This does not mean that everyone should have equal wealth, status and power. This is impossible to achieve in a free society. It does mean that everyone should have the same rights under the law, and the right to services of their need. Individuals should be free from discrimination, prejudice and stereotyping.
REFERENCES
Clements, P and Spinks, T (2000) The Equal Opportunities Handbook (UK, Kogan Page)
Stretch, B (Ed) (2000) BTEC National Diploma: Health Studies (UK, Heinemann)
Adorno et al. (1950) The Authoritarian Personality (New York, Harper and Row) as citied in Gross, R (2001) (4th Ed) Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behaviour (UK, Hodder and Stoughton)
Brown, R.J (1988) Intergroup Relations in M. Hewstone, W. Stroebe, J.P. Codol & G.M. Stephenson (Eds) Introduction to Social Psychology (2nd Edition) Oxford, Basil Blackwell as citied in Gross, R (2001) (4th Ed) Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behaviour (UK, Hodder and Stoughton)
Taifel et al. (1971) ‘Social Categorisation and Intergroup Behaviour’ European Journal of Social Psychology 1, 149-178 as citied in Gross, R (2001) (4th Ed) Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behaviour (UK, Hodder and Stoughton)
Wetherell, M. (1982) Cross Cultural Studies of Minimal Groups: Implications for the Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Relations. In H. Taifel (Ed) Social Psychology and Intergroup Relations Cambridge, Cambridge University Press as citied in Gross, R (2001) (4th Ed) Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behaviour (UK, Hodder and Stoughton)
Lippman, W. (1922) Public Opinion New York, Harcourt as citied in Gross, R (2001) (4th Ed) Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behaviour (UK, Hodder and Stoughton)
Allport, G.W. (1954) The Nature of Prejudice Reading: MA: Addison-Wesley as citied in Gross, R (2001) (4th Ed) Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behaviour (UK, Hodder and Stoughton)
Brislin, R. (1993) Understanding Cultures Influence on Behaviour Orlando, FL. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich as citied in Gross, R (2001) (4th Ed) Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behaviour (UK, Hodder and Stoughton)
Linville, P.W. (1989) Perceived Distributions of the Characteristics of In-group and Out-group Members: Empirical Evidence and a Computer Simulation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 38, 689-703 as citied in Gross, R (2001) (4th Ed) Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behaviour (UK, Hodder and Stoughton)
