Prejudice

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Contents 1 Definition 2 When an where is prejudice most likely to occur? 3 Racial prejudice 4 Implicit and explicit prejudice

Definition

Having a negative predisposition to a group as well as its individual members

When an where is prejudice most likely to occur?

• The more intimate the setting the more likely prejudice is to occur
  • 75% of Americans said that they would shop at a store owned by a homosexual, but only 39% said that they would visit a homosexual physician in a hospital setting (Henry, 1994)
• Prejudice is most likely to occur in a relationship between groups or individuals where there is unequal status (Yzerbyt & others, 1997)
• An individual with high levels or prejudice towards a specific group is more likely to have high levels of intolerance for differences in general, rather than a specific prejudice towards one particular group

Racial prejudice

• In 1942 most Americans thought that streetcars and busses should be racially segregated (Hyman & Sheatsley, 1956)
• As of 1999, 9 out of 10 Blacks and Whites believed that they could vote for a Black president (Etzioni, 1999)
• Half of all African Americans believe that they had been discriminated against within the last 30 days before the poll
• While blatant prejudice in American society may not be a social norm anymore, this doesn't mean that prejudice is dissappearing or even on the decline. It may instead be the case that more subtle forms of prejudice are taking place such as automatic prejudice
  • An experiment exploring automatic prejudice had photos of both Black and White individuals taken with objects in their hands. Both Blacks and Whites more more likely quickly percieve the object to be a gun when place in the hands of a Black individual (Judd, 2004). This is a good example of automatic prejudice occuring.

Implicit and explicit prejudice

We can unconsciously (implicit) maintain negative feelings towards certain people or groups because of negative early childhood experiences. Even when individuals are able to build positive relationships with individuals from such groups, unconscious negativity can still exist (Kawakami & others, 2000).