Prejudice: Causes, Consequences, and Cures (Part 1 of 3)

Prejudice
– A hostile or negative attitude toward people in a distinguishable group, based solely on their membership in that group
• Social psychologists use the word prejudice primarily when referring to negative attitudes about others.

– But we can have positive attitudes too.

Prejudice is ubiquitous. It affects us all!
• Prejudice often flows from the minority group to the majority group.
– Can also flow in the other direction

Many aspects of your identity can cause you to be labeled and discriminated against:
– Nationality – Racial and ethnic identity – Gender – Sexual orientation – Religion – Appearance – Physical state – Weight – Disabilities – Diseases – Hair color – Professions – Hobbies

Prejudice is dangerous.
– It can escalate to extreme hatred, torture, murder, and even genocide.
– Even when murder or genocide is not the result, the targets of prejudice will suffer in less dramatic ways.
– One frequent consequence is diminution of one’s self-esteem.

Prejudice is an attitude with three components:
– Affective (emotional) component
– Behavioral component • How people act on emotions and cognition's

– Cognitive component • Beliefs or thoughts that make up the attitude
Stereotypes are one type of cognitive component.
– A generalization about a group of people in which identical characteristics are assigned to virtually all members of the group, regardless of actual variation among the members.
• Once formed, stereotypes are resistant to change on the basis of new information!
– Stereotyping does not necessarily lead to intentional acts of abuse.
– Stereotyping is a technique we use to simplify how we look at the world.
• We all do it to some extent.

What’s Wrong with Positive Stereotypes?
• Potential abuse of stereotyping can be more subtle—and might involve a stereotype about a positive attribute.
-Ethnicity and sports ability stereotype denies the person the individuality that they might not live up to the skill attributed to their ethnicity

Minority groups are distinctive so we remember their behavior but this creates an illusory correlation between the group and behavior we encounter.

Overall we all have prejudices and they express themselves in various forms. I seek to write about this topic because we steemit.com users are possibly being prejudice towards each other ever day. Maybe we up vote something more just because of the amount of followers someone has or Steem Power they have. Maybe if we didn't see what someone was worth we might make a more intrinsic decision.

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