Outline The Role Of Prejudice In Social Psychology
Social Psychology The definition of prejudice is a preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience. There are many components which play a role in promoting prejudices. Some of these factors include stereotyping, self-fulfilling prophecy, fundamental attribution error, media, projection, and groupthink. Many prejudices are made based on where a person lives, what they look like, or what religion they belong to. Although these are a few examples of prejudices, there are many others. An example of prejudice is when women weren’t allowed to vote. This was prejudice because men would not let women vote because they were seen as inferior. In fact, many scientists completed “studies” to try and prove the inferiority of women. One study that was conducted compared the size of a man’s skull to a
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woman’s skull.
Because the man had a larger skull the scientist claimed that men are smarter than women. Often, society discusses the topic of stereotyping. Many people are often the recipients of this harsh type of judgement. Stereotyping is the widely held, but fixed, and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing. Last week my Aunt and Uncle took their children on a vacation to Disneyland. We saw them this past Sunday after they had gotten back. They were telling us about their vacation and one of the more prominent things I remember them telling me is that security at Disneyland has significantly increased because of the dangerous society we live in. They explained that they are taking more precautionary measures to keep their guests safe. They have now installed metal detectors where their bag check is at. The workers at Disneyland do not make every person go through the
metal detector. My cousins stated that every time they wore camo, they were told that they needed to go through the machine. Everyone else in their group not wearing camo was able to bypass the machine. This example of stereotyping shows that many people believe that if you wear camouflage, then you have a gun or knife with you. My Mom asked my Aunt if any Muslims or African Americans were stopped. My Aunt said no, because these people would get upset because they would think that the only reason they were stopped is because of their race. Stereotyping is interesting because people get upset because it is not equal, but the thing is that it never really goes away, it just gets transferred over to another group of people. Stereotyping influences prejudices because it puts a belief into people’s minds that isn’t necessarily true and puts a belief into a person’s mind that they are superior to anyone who isn’t like them. Self-fulfilling prophecy is an expectation about a subject which causes the expectation to be true. One example of self-fulfilling prophecy is in the old television show, That’s so Raven. In this show, the main character, Raven had psychic powers and could see small glimpses of her future. Sometimes she saw things that made her excited and she couldn’t wait for them to come true, but in all reality they usually turned out badly. This shows that self-fulling prophecy isn’t always good. This contributes to prejudices because the person thinking like this believes that they are superior and find reasons as to why they are the best. They will purposely find reasons in their mind to show why they are superior to the other people
Our tendency to explain one’s behavior based on internal factors such as personality or disposition and underestimate external factors is called fundamental attribution error. An example of this is when you are at Wal-Mart and the cashier is in a foul mood and angry. You may feel that the cashier is a rude person all of the time and that that’s his personality all of the time. In all reality, the manager made the cashier work through his lunch break so he’s really hungry and his feet hurt from standing. Fundamental attribution error applies to prejudices because people tend to say things like, because some African Americans are good at basketball, all of them are. But, in all reality only some African Americans are good at basketball, and people do not realize that because they tend to only notice when an African American is good at the sport. This leads to prejudices because it causes the formation of stereotypes.
Media Models for Violence is the fact that the media and video games teach humans social scripts, which causes violence and aggression in human beings. Aggression is the intent to harm another human or thing. Recently in many US states there have been attacks on police, or police “attacking” citizens. The fact is that this has happened in the past but the media has only been reporting it when the attacker or the person “attacked” is not Caucasian. This example obviously shows that the media portrays the aggression and violence to play off of people’s thoughts, feelings, and emotions of racism, sexism, homophobia, etcetera.
Projection is a defense mechanism in which unwanted feelings are displaced onto another person or thing. A simpler definition that applies to prejudice is a feeling that you have about yourself that you place on another person or group. An example of projection is when you dislike someone, but you have been told that you are supposed to like everyone, so you play your dislike off by saying that the other person dislikes you. There are many people in the world today who don’t like people of another race, sex, etc. so they say that the other people don’t like them in order to justify their dislike for the person.
Groupthink occurs when a person sees a group do something that they do not agree with, but they never make any objections about it so they are eventually pressured into following what the group believes. An example of groupthink is in the movie Mean Girls. In the movie, the “plastics” tell the main character Katy that she can only be in their group if she follows certain rules, such as wearing pink on Wednesdays. These rules set the “plastics” apart from the other groups in the school. In the end, it is these rules that cause a lot of chaos and confusion in the high school. This example shows how certain groups tend to dress in certain ways that show that their “better” than other groups, causing prejudices to develop and grow.
In the end, it is important to see that there are many factors that cause prejudices. Prejudices affect many people and often cause people to define who they are based on these prejudices.
woman’s skull.
Because the man had a larger skull the scientist claimed that men are smarter than women. Often, society discusses the topic of stereotyping. Many people are often the recipients of this harsh type of judgement. Stereotyping is the widely held, but fixed, and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing. Last week my Aunt and Uncle took their children on a vacation to Disneyland. We saw them this past Sunday after they had gotten back. They were telling us about their vacation and one of the more prominent things I remember them telling me is that security at Disneyland has significantly increased because of the dangerous society we live in. They explained that they are taking more precautionary measures to keep their guests safe. They have now installed metal detectors where their bag check is at. The workers at Disneyland do not make every person go through the
metal detector. My cousins stated that every time they wore camo, they were told that they needed to go through the machine. Everyone else in their group not wearing camo was able to bypass the machine. This example of stereotyping shows that many people believe that if you wear camouflage, then you have a gun or knife with you. My Mom asked my Aunt if any Muslims or African Americans were stopped. My Aunt said no, because these people would get upset because they would think that the only reason they were stopped is because of their race. Stereotyping is interesting because people get upset because it is not equal, but the thing is that it never really goes away, it just gets transferred over to another group of people. Stereotyping influences prejudices because it puts a belief into people’s minds that isn’t necessarily true and puts a belief into a person’s mind that they are superior to anyone who isn’t like them. Self-fulfilling prophecy is an expectation about a subject which causes the expectation to be true. One example of self-fulfilling prophecy is in the old television show, That’s so Raven. In this show, the main character, Raven had psychic powers and could see small glimpses of her future. Sometimes she saw things that made her excited and she couldn’t wait for them to come true, but in all reality they usually turned out badly. This shows that self-fulling prophecy isn’t always good. This contributes to prejudices because the person thinking like this believes that they are superior and find reasons as to why they are the best. They will purposely find reasons in their mind to show why they are superior to the other people
Our tendency to explain one’s behavior based on internal factors such as personality or disposition and underestimate external factors is called fundamental attribution error. An example of this is when you are at Wal-Mart and the cashier is in a foul mood and angry. You may feel that the cashier is a rude person all of the time and that that’s his personality all of the time. In all reality, the manager made the cashier work through his lunch break so he’s really hungry and his feet hurt from standing. Fundamental attribution error applies to prejudices because people tend to say things like, because some African Americans are good at basketball, all of them are. But, in all reality only some African Americans are good at basketball, and people do not realize that because they tend to only notice when an African American is good at the sport. This leads to prejudices because it causes the formation of stereotypes.
Media Models for Violence is the fact that the media and video games teach humans social scripts, which causes violence and aggression in human beings. Aggression is the intent to harm another human or thing. Recently in many US states there have been attacks on police, or police “attacking” citizens. The fact is that this has happened in the past but the media has only been reporting it when the attacker or the person “attacked” is not Caucasian. This example obviously shows that the media portrays the aggression and violence to play off of people’s thoughts, feelings, and emotions of racism, sexism, homophobia, etcetera.
Projection is a defense mechanism in which unwanted feelings are displaced onto another person or thing. A simpler definition that applies to prejudice is a feeling that you have about yourself that you place on another person or group. An example of projection is when you dislike someone, but you have been told that you are supposed to like everyone, so you play your dislike off by saying that the other person dislikes you. There are many people in the world today who don’t like people of another race, sex, etc. so they say that the other people don’t like them in order to justify their dislike for the person.
Groupthink occurs when a person sees a group do something that they do not agree with, but they never make any objections about it so they are eventually pressured into following what the group believes. An example of groupthink is in the movie Mean Girls. In the movie, the “plastics” tell the main character Katy that she can only be in their group if she follows certain rules, such as wearing pink on Wednesdays. These rules set the “plastics” apart from the other groups in the school. In the end, it is these rules that cause a lot of chaos and confusion in the high school. This example shows how certain groups tend to dress in certain ways that show that their “better” than other groups, causing prejudices to develop and grow.
In the end, it is important to see that there are many factors that cause prejudices. Prejudices affect many people and often cause people to define who they are based on these prejudices.