Prejudice And Stereotypes

Prejudice can have a strong influence on how people behave and interact with others, especially with those who are different from them. According to Saul McLeod in an article on simplypsychology.org, “Prejudice is an unjustified or incorrect attitude towards an individual based solely on the individual’s membership of a social group”. There are several forms of prejudice. There is racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, nationalism, religious prejudice, ageism, and xenophobia. When people hold prejudicial attitudes toward others, they tend to view everyone who fits into a certain group as being "all the same." They paint every person who holds particular views or beliefs as bad and fail to really look at each person as a unique individual.
Prejudice can be based upon many factors including sex, race, age, sexual orientation, nationality, religion and many other factors. In many cases, prejudices are based upon stereotypes. Stereotypes can be both positive or negative. Stereotypes can not only lead to faulty beliefs, but they can also result in both prejudice and discrimination. Psychologist Gordon Allport stated, “The human mind must think with the aid of categories, once formed, categories are the basis for normal prejudgment. We cannot possibly avoid this process. Orderly living depends upon it.” So basically, what he is saying here is, we depend upon our ability to place people, ideas, and objects into different categories to make the world simpler and easier to understand. Being able to quickly categorize information allows us to interact and react quickly, but it also leads to mistakes. Prejudice and stereotyping are just two examples of the mental mistakes that result from our tendency to quickly categorize information in the world around