Analyze The Factors Which Influence The Development Of Prejudice And Discrimination

Throughout history prejudice and discrimination has been an ongoing struggle in society. Prejudice is a person’s unsupportive negative attitude, or stereotype, about the members of a particular social group. An example of prejudice would be someone holding a certain attitude toward another person of a different race. Discrimination is treating people differently because of a prejudice toward the social group to which they belong. An example of discrimination would be, a person talking down on the prejudice group. There are many factors to prejudice and discrimination, as well as techniques to reduce the development. Prejudice and discrimination go hand in hand. Prejudice is the attitude and discrimination is the behavior that results from the attitude. Discrimination can be reduced, if not eliminated due to laws being made, but prejudice cannot. With that there are different types of prejudice and
The social cognitive theory proposes that prejudice is seen as an attitude that is formed as other attitudes are formed, through direct instruction, modeling, and other social influences on learning. The realistic conflict theory states that increasing prejudice and discrimination are closely tied to an increasing degree of conflict between the in-group and the out-group when those groups are seeking a common resource, such as land or available jobs. Another theory is social identity theory, which includes three processes that are responsible for the formation of a person’s identity within a particular social group and the attitudes of concepts, and behavior that go along with identification with that group. A type of prejudice that sort of goes with a theory is stereotype vulnerability, it refers to the effect that a persons knowledge of another’s stereotyped opinions can have on that person’s