Prejudice Essay - Higher Psychology

PREJUDICE ESSAY

“Prejudice is an attitude- usually negative- towards members of some groups, based solely on their membership of that group.” Baron & Byrne (1991).

Prejudice is a pre-judgement, having an attitude towards something or somebody that is not necessarily based on accurate assessments of the subject or person. Like all attitudes it has: cognitive, affective and behavioural components. Cognitive being the way we think about things, affective being how we feel about things and behavioural being how we treat members of the group.

Stereotyping involves characterising people into groups based on visible cues, such as gender, nationality, race, religion, bodily appearance...etc. It is also assuming all members of a group where the same characteristics or assigning individuals to these groups and presuming they poses the same characteristics.

Stereotype in the cognitive component of prejudice is simple, generalised beliefs about the members of a social group. Stereotypes can be positive or negative.

Out-group homogeneity effect is a tendency to assume that there is greater similarity among members of out-groups than in-groups. In-groups are groups we identify with whereas out-groups are groups we don’t identify with. The greater the perceived homogeneity, the more likely we are to overestimate the number of members fitting the stereotypes. Stereotypes cause us to be quick to generalise from one individual to the whole group. Stereotypes cause us to overlook diversity within categories and to form mistaken impressions of specific individuals.

La Piere (1934) toured USA with a Chinese couple, visiting 250 hotels, restaurants etc. Despite prejudice against Chinese at the time they were only turned away from one place. When the establishments were later sent a questionnaire asking whether or not they accepted Chinese people. Over 90% said they would not. This is classic discrimination. The definition being: The behavioured component of prejudice-...