What is a prejudice? Theories that explain it, and examples

Several intellectuals, including Gordol Allport, have studied this phenomenon.

In general, when talking about prejudice, everyone agrees that it is a negative thing and that it is wrong to have prejudice..

Whether because of social pressure or because of a greater sensitivity and empathy towards other people, most of society agrees that prejudging others is not right, and that an effort should be made to try to overcome them.

However, we fail to realize that everyone has them and that, in one way or another, prejudices, which is what we are going to talk about in this article, have a function.

Let's see what prejudices are, how they originate, what function they fulfill and some relevant theories on the subject.

• Recommended article: "Horn effect: how our negative prejudices work".

What are prejudices?

Prejudices are predetermined beliefs about a person, object or situation.. These beliefs can be true, although, in most cases, it is not usually so, besides being able to be very exaggerated. Assuming what a person is like based on different characteristics, such as gender, race, nationality or sexual orientation, is something that occurs unconsciously and, as a general rule, implies negative feelings and attitudes.

One of the most prominent figures in social psychology who has dealt with the phenomenon of prejudice is Gordon Allport. This psychologist, who worked at Harvard University, defines prejudice in The nature of Prejudice (1954) as the negative labeling that is made on the basis of beliefs acquired through people and situations that are important in the development of the individual, especially during childhood and through the family.

The functionality of biases lies in the fact that they allow us, in a certain way, to simplify the world. We are exposed to a great deal of information and are required to make decisions quickly, without allowing ourselves to reflect on it. Categorizing people on the basis of their most striking traits, instead of delving deeper into what they are really like, avoids fatigue and saves effort.

How are they generated?

Prejudice can arise from convenience. In the most serious cases, prejudice is aimed at the subjugation of a particular group. It commonly arises from negative attitudes toward a group of which one has little real knowledge..

It can also be the result of a generalization based on past negative experience. That is, the person who has a stereotypical view of, for example, Romanians, may defend it on the basis of having been mugged in the past by one of this nationality.

Cultural factors play an important role in the generation of prejudice. It is common in the family or in a particular culture to promote wrong comments and beliefs about certain people, which may be seen as 'correct' or which could be included in the expression 'think wrong and you will be right'. Moreover, almost by inertia, criticizing others is encouraged rather than taking an empathetic view and trying to put oneself in the other person's place.

How do they influence us?

Prejudices, based on stereotypes, are nothing more than generalizations about something about which we do not have much knowledge. In this way, the world is simplified, even if it is done in a way that may be very wrong and may cause harm to others.

Prejudices do not only affect people who are part of the stereotyped group, such as women from sexism or refugees from anti-immigration movements. They also influence those people who are not part of the stereotyped group, causing them to be more hostile or cautious when they see people from the other group.

Thus, prejudice tends to foster negative biases, prejudice tends to foster negative biasesHowever, as mentioned above, there may also be situations in which a false but positive belief about a particular group is held. For example, assuming that all Finnish people are very smart because Finland has one of the best education systems in the world is, in effect, prejudging, and may imply overestimating their intelligence.

Although many people say otherwise, prejudices interfere significantly in our day-to-day lives. They involve a multitude of attitudes, thoughts, predispositions and feelings that can make us change our behavior in striking ways. For example, changing sidewalks when there is a black person approaching us, speaking more slowly to a person who has an unusual or foreign-sounding name, or not touching a person with HIV for fear of contagion or disgust.

Theories about this phenomenon

When we talk about prejudice, we cannot leave aside the concepts of exogroup homogeneity and endogroup heterogeneity.. It is a common belief that people who are from another group are more similar to each other, while people from one's own group are more distinguishable from each other.

This phenomenon can be better understood with an example. A Christian may have the mistaken belief that all Muslim people are violent and abuse women and children, while when talking about the problem of pederasty in the Catholic Church he has a greater tendency to differentiate between good Christians and bad Christians.

The Robber's Cave Experiment, by Muzafer and Carolyn Sherif (1954)

In this experiment, over 20 11-year-olds were taken and signed up to go camping. The children were divided into two groups and stayed in campsites that were far apart, so as to avoid any initial contact between the two groups.

After a few days, the researchers brought the groups into contact with each other through sports competitions and other activities that pitted group against group. These contacts generated friction, making both groups hostile to each other.

This hostility was so high that the Sherifs had to accelerate the last phase of the research, in which they encouraged the group to be more active.The Sherifs had to accelerate the last phase of the research, in which they encouraged contact between the members of the two groups by making them collaborate as one team to achieve certain goals.

Just as the researchers had generated tensions between the two groups, they also generated friendship and sympathy in the last phase, demonstrating that, if people who do not know each other well work together for mutual benefit, the stereotype barrier can be broken.

Contact hypothesis: can prejudice be reduced?

Undoubtedly, holding negative beliefs about others is a bad thing and can cause harm, so trying to overcome these stereotypes is beneficial for both the believers and the victims of these stereotypes.

The contact hypothesis holds that the prejudices and stereotypes held by people in the ingroup with respect to the outgroup could be reduced through continuous contact between members of both groups. For this to happen, six factors need to be met:

• the members of the two groups have a certain degree of mutual interdependence
• the two groups need to share the same objective
• they must have the same status
• there must be opportunities for interpersonal contact between groups
• there must be many contacts both within and between groups
• there must be norms that promote equality, and they must be taken into account during the process.

Thus, if these conditions were in place, people belonging to two groups could learn from each other, cooperate together to achieve the same goals and understand that they are not as different as they might think.

The aspect of having the same social status is very important, since it facilitates greater empathy. Por ejemplo, un obrero blanco y un obrero negro comprenden que ambos pueden estar igualmente oprimidos por sus respectivos jefes o que las mujeres cisexuales y las mujeres transexuales están oprimidas por la sociedad heteropatriarcal.

Referencias bibliográficas:

• MacRae, C. Neil; Bodenhausen, Galen V. (2001). "Social cognition: Categorical person perception". British Journal of Psychology. 92 (Pt 1): 239–55. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.318.4390. doi:10.1348/000712601162059
• Sherman, Jeffrey W.; Lee, Angela Y.; Bessenoff, Gayle R.; Frost, Leigh A. (1998). Stereotype efficiency reconsidered: Encoding flexibility under cognitive load. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 75 (3): 589–606. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.75.3.589
• Brandt, M; Crawford, J (2016). Answering Unresolved Questions About the Relationship Between Cognitive Ability and Prejudice. Social Psychological and Personality Science. 7 (8): 884–892. doi:10.1177/1948550616660592