According to Brislin, stereotypes should not be viewed as a sign of abnormality (Brislin, 1993), however, stereotypes can also lead to prejudice and discrimination. Prejudice is a negative attitude toward a social group and discrimination is a negative action toward another individual based on their membership of a particular social group.
The following parts are going to describe how prejudices appear in an intergroup and are going to mention different kinds of prejudices and discriminations.
In the Minimal Group Paradigm, which is carried out by Tajfel et al. (1971), took British schoolboys as participants and took part in ‘study of decision-making.’ They are randomly assigned into one of the two groups and were told that they had been assigned based on their preference for paintings by Kandinsky or Klee. All of them knew only which group they were in (identity of all other in- and out-group members was concealed. Then the children individually distributed money between pairs of recipients identified only by group membership. The results shown that children were favoured in their own group and this experiment points out that simply being categorized as a group member is sufficient to produce in-group favouritism and competitive intergroup behaviour.
There are several kinds of prejudices and discriminations. Firstly, sex discrimination is the most common phenomenon in the society. For example, wage differences in male and female managerial jobs stem from the reality that even when women hold management jobs, they are often in less strategic lower-paying areas of a company’s operations. (Wirth, 2001) Because of the ‘glass ceiling effect’, women still find it difficult to attain the top leadership positions in large organizations, such as Lawyers, Dentists, engineers, etc. However, based on Eagly & Mladinic (1994) – review of scientific research into prejudice against women, it is concluded that there is no longer any tendency to devalue women’s work, that a positive stereotype of women relative to men is emerging, and that most people like women more than men. (Eagly & Mladinic, 1994)
Racism came as another main issue in society. Racism is prejudice and discrimination against people based on their ethnicity or race. Anti-Black attitudes and behaviour in the United States has been focusing by most of the psychological research in racism. Historically, White people’s stereotypes of Blacks in the United States are negative and reflect a general perception of rural, enslaved, manual labourers. (LeVine & Campbell, 1972; Mackie, Hamilton, Susskind, & Rosselli, 1996; Plous & Williams, 1995) Although in many countries, racism and ethnic prejudice has now been seen as illegal and morally condemned, a long history of such prejudices cannot easily be shrugged off even people are intend to act accordingly. Pettigrew noted: ‘Many Southerners have confessed to me…that even though in their minds they no longer feel prejudice toward Blacks, they still feel squeamish when they shake hands with a Black. These feelings are left over from what they learned in their families as children.’ (Pettigrew, 1987)
Apart from that, ageism appears in many cultures. Ageism is prejudice and discrimination against people based on their age. For example, elderly people are thought to be wise because they have more life experiences than others. At the same time, they are generally treated as powerless, unhealthy, less socially skilled, etc. (Noels, Giles, & Le Poire, 2003) Moreover, the young have little to do with the elderly; therefore encounters tend to activate intergroup rather than interpersonal perceptions. This actually reinforcing negative stereotype to avoidance and minimising the intergenerational contact, as a result, the elderly remain socially isolated.
Finally, homosexual has been viewed as deviant and immoral. Prejudice against homosexuals is widespread. In Christianity, social norms regarding sexual behaviour became more restrictive. According to Kurdek’s research, negative attitudes toward homosexuals were assessed in 103 heterosexual college students. On the average, 17% of the sample agreed or strongly agreed with each of 40 negative statements about homosexuals.(Kurdek, 1988) In United States, a survey showed that the majority of people believed that homosexuality was ‘sick’ and should be outlawed. (Levitt & Klassen, 1974) From the above statistics, it can be seen that homosexual are still being discrimination in society.
All in all, stereotyping is still around in our society and although people are willing and intend to reduce the level of prejudices and discriminations in the society, it takes a long time to change. Stereotypes are categorizing people in different groups and it is a shortcut to thinking as people have been assigned into different groups. It covers several areas which including sexism, racism, ageism and homosexual. In sexism, women are seen as less powerful than men but at the same time, women are warm whereas men are not. Racism, which means an ethnicity or race of prejudices, is existing between countries and countries. Even though it has been said of reducing the level of prejudicing towards a group, stereotyping feelings are still in their mind as what they have learnt from their families. Ageism is simply means those who are aging is thought of being wise because of their life experiences, at the same time, they are not expected to be trendy as they are getting old. As time go by, they are lacking of social skills which younger may have nothing to help them, in other words, they have been placed in a situation which they will continue to be isolated. Lastly, homosexual has long been viewed as immoral. It is still not accepting by most of the countries and it is even labeled as ‘sick’. Stereotyping is actually mental representations of real differences between groups and they are sometimes accurate representations of reality. (Judd & Park 1033, Jussim 1991, swim 1994) However, we should not define it as an abnormality of humans.
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