Groups which experience prejudice

All men were shown segments of sexually explicit videos. One of these videos involved a sexual interaction between a man and a woman heterosexual clip. One video displayed two females engaged in a sexual interaction homosexual female clip , and the final video displayed two men engaged in a sexual interaction homosexual male clip. Changes in penile tumescence were recorded during all three clips, and a subjective measurement of sexual arousal was also obtained.

While both groups of men became sexually aroused to the heterosexual and female homosexual video clips, only those men who were identified as homophobic showed sexual arousal to the homosexual male video clip.

While all men reported that their erections indicated arousal for the heterosexual and female homosexual clips, the homophobic men indicated that they were not sexually aroused despite their erections to the male homosexual clips. Adams et al. Prejudice and discrimination persist in society due to social learning and conformity to social norms.

If certain types of prejudice and discrimination are acceptable in a society, there may be normative pressures to conform and share those prejudiced beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. For example, public and private schools are still somewhat segregated by social class. Historically, only children from wealthy families could afford to attend private schools, whereas children from middle- and low-income families typically attended public schools. If a child from a low-income family received a merit scholarship to attend a private school, how might the child be treated by classmates?

Can you recall a time when you held prejudiced attitudes or beliefs or acted in a discriminatory manner because your group of friends expected you to? When we hold a stereotype about a person, we have expectations that he or she will fulfill that stereotype. A self-fulfilling prophecy is an expectation held by a person that alters his or her behavior in a way that tends to make it true. When we hold stereotypes about a person, we tend to treat the person according to our expectations.

This treatment can influence the person to act according to our stereotypic expectations, thus confirming our stereotypic beliefs. Research by Rosenthal and Jacobson found that disadvantaged students whose teachers expected them to perform well had higher grades than disadvantaged students whose teachers expected them to do poorly. In turn, the job applicant will perceive that the potential employer dislikes him, and he will respond by giving shorter responses to interview questions, making less eye contact, and generally disengaging from the interview.

Do you think this job applicant is likely to be hired? Treating individuals according to stereotypic beliefs can lead to prejudice and discrimination. Another dynamic that can reinforce stereotypes is confirmation bias. When interacting with the target of our prejudice, we tend to pay attention to information that is consistent with our stereotypic expectations and ignore information that is inconsistent with our expectations.

In the job interview example, the employer may not have noticed that the job applicant was friendly and engaging, and that he provided competent responses to the interview questions in the beginning of the interview. Have you ever fallen prey to the self-fulfilling prophecy or confirmation bias, either as the source or target of such bias? How might we stop the cycle of the self-fulfilling prophecy? Social class stereotypes of individuals tend to arise when information about the individual is ambiguous.

If information is unambiguous, stereotypes do not tend to arise Baron et al. As discussed previously in this section, we all belong to a gender, race, age, and social economic group. These groups serve as our in-groups. An in-group is a group that we identify with or see ourselves as belonging to.

For example, if you are female, your gender in-group includes all females, and your gender out-group includes all males [link]. People often view gender groups as being fundamentally different from each other in personality traits, characteristics, social roles, and interests. Because we often feel a strong sense of belonging and emotional connection to our in-groups, we develop in-group bias: a preference for our own group over other groups.

This in-group bias can result in prejudice and discrimination because the out-group is perceived as different and is less preferred than our in-group. These children are very young, but they are already aware of their gender in-group and out-group. Despite the group dynamics that seem only to push groups toward conflict, there are forces that promote reconciliation between groups: the expression of empathy, of acknowledgment of past suffering on both sides, and the halt of destructive behaviors.

One function of prejudice is to help us feel good about ourselves and maintain a positive self-concept. The misperceptions that most often lead to negative attitudes include that migrants take away jobs from natives or they commit illegal acts, among others. Persistent exposure to discrimination can lead individuals to internalize the prejudice or stigma that is directed against them, manifesting in shame, low self-esteem, fear and stress, as well as poor health.

Welcome to the United Nations. What Is Prejudice? Types of Prejudice. Why Prejudice Occurs. Fighting Against Prejudice. Prejudice Prejudice is an assumption or an opinion about someone simply based on that person's membership to a particular group.

The Psychology of Racism. What Is the Proximity Principle in Psychology? Recognizing and Correcting Your Prejudices When you realize that you are pre-judging someone else, try asking yourself the following questions: Why am I having this thought? What proof do I have that my judgement about this particular person or group is correct? Is it possible that I could be biased?

How People's Prejudices Develop. Was this page helpful? Thanks for your feedback! Sign Up. What are your concerns? Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

Related Articles. The Psychology Behind People's Prejudices. What Is Gender Essentialism Theory? How Othering Contributes to Discrimination and Prejudice. How to Avoid Bias in the Mediation Process. What Is Feminist Therapy? Non-white people where prevented from voting and lived in separate communities. Later, the Jews were placed in concentration camps by the Nazis. In Western societies, while women are often discriminated against in the workplace, men are often discriminated against in the home and family environments.

For instance after a divorce women receive primary custody of the children far more often than men. Women on average earn less pay than men for doing the same job. Influences that cause individuals to be racist or sexist, for example, may come from peers, parents, and group membership.

Social norms - behavior considered appropriate within a social group - are one possible influence on prejudice and discrimination. People may have prejudiced beliefs and feelings and act in a prejudiced way because they are conforming to what is regarded as normal in the social groups to which they belong:. Minard investigated how social norms influence prejudice and discrimination. The behavior of black and white miners in a town in the southern United States was observed, both above and below ground.

Below ground, where the social norm was friendly behavior towards work colleagues, 80 of the white miners were friendly towards the black miners. Above ground, where the social norm was prejudiced behavior by whites to blacks, this dropped to