Jane Elliot Summary

The main point of Jane Elliot’s study was to demonstrate to the children how prejudices and pre judgements of a person based on their physical appearance, race, ethnicity and even eye color can be demeaning to a person’s self worth. At first the students did not believe the impact that discrimination and racism takes on a person until Jane Elliot put the experiment into effect. The experiment was to break the children in groups based on eye color, which also can be expressed as social categorization, but the students did not get to pick the group they were placed in they were divided solely on a physical trait that they could not help. To begin the teacher made a comment about how people should treat others the way they want to be treated and then followed it up by asking who in the United States does not
It was very shocking to hear the prejudices these young children had on individuals in the United States. The children made comments stating that Black people or Indian people did not belong in the United States. Once the blue-eyed/brown-eyed experiment began it was an instant flip in the student's behavior and actions towards the other students. As soon as the students with blue-eyes were given the idea that they were above those with brown-eyes they experienced confirmation bias. The blue-eyed students believed they were superior to the brown-eyed students which coincides with the idea and belief that whites are superior to blacks. Another thing that was prevalent in the experiment was stereotyping and self-fulfilling prophecy. Unfortunately stereotyping is such a common thing in society, but in this experiment stereotyping was