Attitudes of Prejudice

Attitudes of Prejudice

A common stereotype is that all French people smell of garlic.

We know that French restaurateurs typically use large quantities of

garlic in their cuisine so we assume that they probably do so in their

everyday cooking at home and therefore we conclude that ‘all French

people smell of garlic’.

The three parts of prejudice are:

· Cognitive – which is having stereotype beliefs about members of a

group.

· Affective – having strong feelings or emotions towards the members

of the group, these feelings are usually negative.

· Behavioural – which is the act of discriminating or acting against

the said group or its members.

It is human nature to divide people into categories by use of

stereotyping. We notice certain characteristics about people and

ignore information that does not quite fit the group so we can slot

them into a specific category, these categories are not always correct

and accurate. The term cognitive miser has been used to refer to this

shortcut in getting to know someone as an individual and grouping them

with others.

· The first theory I will address is the Social Identity Theory – An

Interpersonal Explanation.

One of the basic cognitive processes is categorisation. Several

psychologists believe that we group things into either an ‘in-group’

(us) and an ‘out-group’ (them) Tajfel ’71 called this social

categorisation and it is the first step in the stereotyping process.

He showed that we discriminate against people in the out-group.

* We favour the in-group over the out-group – we discriminate. We

think members of the out-group are less attractive, l...

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... been looked at and research shows that higher status members of groups

tend to initiate things, they are listened to and views are more

likely to be followed. To reduce prejudice through joint tasks, those

who are the victims of prejudice must be of higher status in order to

change the attitudes of those who are prejudiced. I think a number of

employers now use the ‘team-building’ exercises and weekends as ways

to overcome potential prejudices by giving them opportunities to get

to know participants who may in work be of a lower status but in this

‘artificial’ situation each member plays their own important role to

achieve a goal. This will hopefully make people be seen as

individuals and give an opportunity for their strengths to shine

through, rather than them being just someone from ‘X’

department.