By: Jon Tritley
In some shape or form, prejudiced thoughts affects every person’s life. Prejudiced thoughts are usually based on characteristics such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and religion. Unopposed, these prejudiced thoughts lead individuals to behave differently to individuals who are different, also known as discrimination. Prejudice also affects people on varying levels, from guessing where an individual might buy their clothes from to not having access to basic human rights. Given that prejudice can lead us to behave negatively toward others, it would be in our best interest as a society to reduce or eliminate prejudice to the greatest extent possible. In fact, prejudice is a problem that social psychologists have been trying to solve for around 80 years (Fiske, 2014). Since it’s been studied for so long, why is it still a problem? Why haven’t scientists developed a solution to this problem, or at least reduced it? Is discrimination simply inevitable?
Defining Terminology
When you discuss prejudice, it’s of the utmost importance to define the term as well as words that are closely associated with it, as they often get confused or used interchangeably. In this case, prejudice will be defined as thoughts, feelings, or an attitude toward a particular group of people that entails an emotional reaction. You probably noticed that prejudice doesn’t have a negative connotation in its definition, and that’s because prejudice isn’t inherently negative – it can include positive thoughts, feelings, or attitudes as well (Fiske, 2014). A term that is closely associated with prejudice is stereotype, and stereotypes can be defined as the classification of individuals based on a particular characteristic or sets of characteristics. Another term that is associated with prejudice is discrimination, and will be defined as the particular behavior or behaviors that result from prejudices.
Why We Discriminate
If discrimination is evil, how did it start and still persevere to this day? Discrimination may start off innocently as a method to categorize people in order to save resources (Fiske, 2014), particularly cognitive resources. This categorization is also known as stereotyping. Stereotyping also helps individuals create expectations for people based on the characteristics they observe. These expectations help us to predict behaviors. For example, say you are walking down a city street and you see you are about to pass a person who is sitting on the curb, visibly dirty, tattered clothing, and no shoes. You use these observations to make inferences about their behavior, such as an expectation that this person may ask for money. These created stereotypes can lead to prejudices, where the categories develop into an emotional response to that particular category. Following suit, these thoughts, feelings, or attitudes lead affect how we behave toward others. Sometimes, these behaviors are negative, leading them to become discrimination.
“Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up." - Bill Gates |
One way in which discrimination can be lessened that has been heavily supported by research is through intergroup contact (Fiske, 2014). Intergroup contact was first coined by Gordon Allport (1954) and can be defined as when an individual has social contact with another individual in the ‘outgroup’ (a member that is not within your perceived social group). Not only did he coin the term, but he identified the most effective conditions of contact that alleviate negative outgroup perceptions. Intergroup contact is most favorable when there is perceived equal status of the groups within the context, common goals, cooperation (albeit no competition), and/or a punishment for contact by an authority between the outgroup contact. Through this approach, it appears that reducing prejudice can be as simple as getting to know someone.
Telzer et al. (2013) found that individuals who have no contact with persons of different races experienced deficits in their facial recognition abilities of other races as well as deficits in recognition of emotional states of other races. Deficits in facial and emotional recognition may increase the chance that one may have prejudice toward outgroup members. A lesser ability to recognize faces of the outgroup may make it easier to view them as less human, more unlike you, and label them as “other.” A deficit in emotion recognition may cause an inability to empathize with outgroup members, i.e. “place yourself in their shoes.” Simply speaking, having exposure to outgroup members may help in reducing prejudiced thoughts later in life.
Conclusion
Discrimination can have deleterious impacts on groups, such being viewed as less than human, reduced access to resources, and, in extreme cases, have basic human rights stripped away. Discrimination occurs as a result of prejudice, and prejudice begins as a method of categorizing people to save mental resources as well as produce expectations of behavior based on outgroup characteristics. While this blog only covered a couple possible methods to reducing discrimination, there is a lot of research out there that can help provide solutions to discrimination. However, a lot of the research seems to call out a particular theme: contact. Simply having positive contact (emphasis on positive) with outgroup members seems to do wonders in reducing negative prejudices against others. Moreover, this contact is important at even the earliest stages of life based on Telzer et al.’s (2013) study. Therefore, to reduce discrimination, it would behoove us as a society to ensure greater amounts of positive outgroup contact.
- Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
- Fiske, S. T. (2014). Social beings: Core motives in social psychology (3rd Edition). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
- Telzer et al. (2013). Early experience shapes amygdala sensitivity to race: An international adoption design. The Journal of Neuroscience, 33, 13484-13488