Prejudice and the Various Methods that Can Be Used in Effectively Overcoming Prejudice - Essay Example

? Prejudice and the Various Methods that can be used in Effectively Overcoming Prejudice What is Prejudice? And the Various Social Psychology Theories that Explain it It was Gordon Allport, the famous Harvard psychologist who first attempted to define the term prejudice. In his published report "The nature of prejudice 1954": Allport, described prejudice as an antipathy that happens to be primarily based on inflexible and faulty generalization (Pelinka, Bishchof and Sto?gner, 2009). The key word in Allport’s definition is found to be the term “Antipathy”. Antipathy is often described as being largely a negative feeling but most psychologists find it rather difficult to describe this word and often resort to defining it as not primarily being an emotional feeling but something which can be described as existing between personal habit and personality trait. Some time back, a raging debate existed between Thomas Pettigrew / Gordon Allport and Theodore Adrono and his associates with whom they created the general concept of Authoritarian personality. The whole debate was as to whether prejudice could essentially be categorized as being a personality trait or not. Although the Authoritarian theory that had been put forth by Adrono and his team was essentially a good and popular concept, it was seen to critically fail in its attempts to try and explain the racism that seemed to exist between people from the south of the United States who although they could be described as essentially being generally good egalitarian individuals, they seemed to have accepted the whole concept of segregation as a way of life (Gilbert, Fiske and Lindzey, 2003). Adorno’s social psychology theory of authoritarianism is seen to generally attempt to postulate that the initial origins of an individual’s authoritarian personality trait that is often found to be prejudice-prone is basically found to stem from a set of parental practices as well as childhood influences. Parents are seen to generally cause their children to develop an authoritarian personality trait due to their strict enforcement of discipline, placing more emphasis on the child to ensure that they perform their various duties and responsibilities as opposed to placing more emphasis on affection, caused the love that they offered to their children to be mainly dependent on mainly the child’s individual unquestioning obedience, as well as the parents generally showing contempt for persons who happen to have generally a lower social status, while at the same time being overly ingratiated towards persons who happen to have a higher social status. It is due to the parent’s strictness that the child generally develops repressed hostility and several other impulses that the parents might find to be generally unacceptable such as sex and aggression, these impulses are generally eventually displaced and subsequently wrongly projected by the affected child towards subordinate and other minority groups due to the relative safety of these outlets. The children are seen to generally develop prejudice that is targeted towards several minority groups, and a basic tendency to idealize toughness, power, strength and status while subsequently showing severe disdain for self-introspection, weakness and tenderness (Millon, 2003). This position is seen to be supported by the Freudian theory that explains racial prejudice as often being the result of one attempting to project their own often unacceptable characteristics and various prejudices onto the innocent members of another group. It was the Harvard definition that was seen to eventually have won out in the debate and it is now generally accepted that there exists no prejudiced personality type. It is due to this Harvard theory that it is now considered to be a critical conceptual mistake to attempt to blame the idea of racism or even racist personalities or even try to use phrases such as racists or prejudiced personalities to attempt to try and connote the perceived existence of certain general personality types. Prejudice is now widely believed to not be in anyway part of any given socialization process or personality trait, it is a generally accepted view that racial attitudes and prejudice are not taught but it is caught (Healey, 2012). Prejudice is often found to be an inflexible and faulty generalization due to its arbitrary nature that is not flexible and does not change. Prejudice is often seen to develop prior to any actual contact with the given object or subject of the prejudice. This quality in itself is found to be purely a form of passing judgment on an individual or object event before an individual has had the opportunity of interacting with the object of prejudice. Prejudice is found to be a strong intellectual position and not an emotion, this rather strong intellectual position is found to often be taken regardless of the availability of any amount of objective information that happens to be available to the given prejudiced individual. The key reason as to why prejudice is found to be similar to a habit is mainly because the prejudiced individual is often found to essentially think that their given intellectual position is adequately well-thought out, and that this well thought out intellectual position essentially helps in serving as a basic core for all the individual’s intellectual thinking. It has been shown that due to the very nature of prejudice, there are no two cases of prejudice that are found to be exactly the same in nature (Stangor, 2000), this is mainly due to the fact that different individuals generally tend to internalize prejudice in different forms into their basic core thinking. Nowadays, the term prejudice is often used by individuals in reference to the presence of any hostile or negative attitude being attributed by one individual group towards another social group (Andersen and Taylor, 2006). This hostile attitude is often found to be primarily racially defined. Discrimination is now used to closely refer to the presence of any unfavorable treatment, behavior, outcome or action by one group of individuals towards another. However, this is not necessarily so, for prejudice to automatically eventually lead to any form of discrimination. Discrimination essentially be found to exist without prejudice and prejudice can also be found to exist in its various forms without exhibiting any discriminatory tendencies. Although the two happen to be related, the relation between them is often found to be not strongly casual in nature. The social dominance theory attempts to explain prejudice by stating that society can generally be viewed as essentially being a group-based series of hierarchies, these various hierarchies are found to generally be in constant competition for various scarce resources such as employment and housing and as a result, the more dominant groups tend to create various prejudices in an effort to try and provide both intellectual and moral justification for their inherently dominant position, this justification is seen to help them in the validation of their claim over the scarce available resources (Brown, 2007). Another popular social psychology theory on prejudice is the realistic conflict theory. This theory postulates that increased discrimination and negative prejudice is often as a result of increased competition for already severely limited resources. This is especially so in the event that the resources in question happen to be insignificant (Whitley and Kite, 2010). Social institutions can be found to essentially be prejudicial in nature without the member of staff working in that particular agency having any prejudicial tendencies. Some common forms of prejudice and discrimination can often be found to essentially be mainly based on ethnicity which is seen to comprise of outlooks, traditions and cultural practices, and they can also be based on race which is found to be mainly based on an individual’s physical characteristics such as skin color (Hiscox, 1998). Racism is often found to essentially be a form of prejudice and / or discrimination as determined on the presence of any socially significant physical distinctions (Merskin, 2011). The attitude or opinion that is made to automatically assume any inferiority or superiority based on the existence of any racial differences is often found to be the prime factor actively contributing to the development of racial prejudice. According to Allport, there exists some certain groups of individuals in almost every society that are found to have been normally traditionally exploited by the different societies across different periods of time. This theory that was proposed by Allport is now commonly referred to as the Scapegoat Theory. Some common examples of traditionally scapegoated groups in everyday society is seen to invariably include Atheists, Communists, and Alcoholics. The socio-cultural levels are seen to invariably include not only the man-made culture but also the societal culture. The main factor that is often blamed for the creation of socio-cultural prejudice is often found to be Urbanization. This is due to its anonymity and often impersonal nature. In the situational level of discrimination, the key items that are often found to be commonly referred to are the environmental as well as the atmospheric contexts, this category is found to include the presence of despair, poverty, dilapidation as well as any accompanying disease. The personality level is seen to invariably refer to certain given individuals who happen to happen to have certain given character disorder problems mainly due to some given organic reasons. In referring to the phenomenalogical level, Allport is seen to mainly be referring to symbols, linguistics, signs and semiotics. There are some certain words that happen to have various stereotypical actions. The stimulus-object level is seen to commonly refer to any real contacts between people and it is often the least common cause of prejudice. Henri Tajfel who was responsible for the development of the social identity theory proposed that the various groups that people happened to belong to were essentially an important source of both self-esteem and pride, the groups are seen to basically help individuals by providing them with a general sense of identity. In an effort by the individual group members to try and enhance the group’s status as well as its self-image, the group generally tends to hold various prejudiced views and well as discriminatory tendencies towards other groups (Hill, 2001). The different forms of Prejudice and Methods of Overcoming them Prejudice is found to be widely prevalent in modern day society. In order to effectively manage to overcome prejudice in all its contexts, it is of vital importance to first understand the different forms that prejudice exists in so as to be able to effectively manage to overcome them. Different forms of prejudice can effectively be overcome using a variety of methods, some of the common forms of prejudice and the methods that can be effectively be used to tackle them include: Sexist Prejudice The term Sexism is commonly used in reference to any discrimination that might exist and is mainly found to be based on the gender or sex of an individual person. Sexism is often found to generally occur at various different levels ranging from institutional levels to individual levels of prejudice. Sexism in general is often found to invariably involve various practices that are seen to invariably promote stereotyping and prejudicial tendencies. Sexism is often found to more commonly be used to generally refer to any inequalities that may tend to exist among women and men and in particular reference to any given situation that is seen to promote the treatment of women in a somewhat inferior or unequal manner as compared to how the men happen to be treated. Similarly to other forms of prejudice and discrimination, sexism is often found to occur through the carrying out of covert or blatant actions that might include an individual displaying outright disdain or hatred for another given group or individual, the general prevalence of one group over another similar group or the practice of tokenism which is usually characterized by women being granted special favors or even jobs mainly because they happen to be women and not purely based on their experience and skills (Ritzer and Ryan, 2011). The main definition of sexism has been noted to have gradually changed over time. This gradual change in its definition due to the need for the term sexism to reflect the various contemporary sociological debates that happen to exist on nurture vs. nature ans well as gender vs. sex (Ritzer and Ryan, 2011). In the recent past, its was the common expectation that virtually all the boys would end up growing to become quite masculine in nature, while the girls were mostly expected to grow up to have feministic tendencies. The basic gender blueprint was found to be evidently quite clear-cut in nature. The well-adjusted man was expected to be dominant, assertive and suitably independent while the well-adjusted woman was normally expected to be dependent, submissive as well as be quite nurturing. It is these general prejudices and stereotypes that were seen to generally lead to the development of sexist prejudice. Some common forms of sexist prejudice included; the general assumption that women were innately not quite as smart as their male counterparts, most people were found to be unequally comfortable with having women bosses as compared to when they happened to have male bosses, the general misconception that a woman’s place is basically in the home, the selection of male over females in various projects, the general belief that it was not possible for males to eventually become nurses, the expectation that it was not possible for males to nurture or cook, and the criticism that was often heaped on males in the event that they happened to display any form of sentimental emotions or attempted to cry (Santrock and Halonen, 2010). How to Effectively Overcome Sexist Prejudice Among the various methods that can effectively be used by females to secure their general self-Improvement and eventual avoidance of sexism include the fact that females should essentially avoid using the established male standards in the overall judgment of their basic competencies. It is also important for females to try and build effective relationships while attempting to stay in touch with their own emotions and be proud of them. It is also important for females to ensure that they have adequate comprehension of what essentially constitutes of sexual harassment, this will help them in reporting such instances in the event that they happen. Females should also adequately focus on their own respective needs and ensure that they try to meet them (Stantrock and Halonen, 2010). Men can also employ several methods in order to effectively avoid displaying any sexist prejudice on their part. Some of the possible strategies that can essentially be employed by men include, men should ensure that they constantly try to understand the intricate emotional elements that may happen to arise in any given situation, this will basically help them in better understanding the situation in addition to helping them give more consideration to feelings that may happen to be exhibited by others. It is also important for men to always ensure that they are able to tone down their anger in the event that they happen to be hostile and aggressive. They should also ensure that they aptly control how they tend to display their various negative emotions. Men should also ensure that they emphasize on the promotion of collaboration over competition. It has been found that both employers and players in various academic situations tend to generally appreciate the efforts of a good team player. While striving to ensure that they put all this into play so as to prevent any sexism on their parts, it is vital for men to be able to retain their basic strengths while taking appropriate pride in all their achievements (Stantrock and Halonen, 2010). Racist Prejudice According to Leone, racism can essentially be defined as a general belief in the overall inherent superiority of a given race. Racal prejudice is seen to basically deny the basic equality that is commonly enjoyed by all human kind and is seen to generally correlate an individual’s abilities with the given individual’s physical composition. It is due to this that racism is seen to generally assume that the failure or success of an individual in any societal endeavor will generally be seen to mostly depend on the given individual’s basic genetic endowment as opposed to be mainly reliant on the individual’s access to various opportunities as well the surrounding environment. Of important notice in the general definition of racism is the use of the word superiority. It is usually the general idea of superiority that is seen to generally allow a given group of individuals to tend to mistreat another group of individuals on mainly the basis of religion, ancestry, race, sexual preference national origin or color. The main folly of racist thinking is that the concept of racism is not only cruel and unethical, its is also found to be mainly constructed on a myriad of false premises. It has now been established that the principal differences between the various human groups is mainly due to effects of cultural differences and is not based on race or any biological inheritance. All human beings are seen to generally belong to the same individual species and the basic biological feature that are found to be essential to the support of human life are inherently common to all people (Samovar, Porter and McDaniel, 2009). How to Avoid Racial Prejudice There are several methods that can effectively be used by a given individual so as to be able to effectively avoid any racial prejudice on their part or on the part of others, the first step being that it is found to be quite necessary for a given individual to attempt and establish if they happen to hold any racist views on their part. Although this is found to be a relatively simple point to state, it is quite a difficult one to effectively accomplish. It is a vital first step for an individual to be able to confront their inherent racist views. As a second step in the method, an individual should strive to try and essentially object to any racist insults or jokes wherever they happen to hear them. Although it might often be quite a difficult thing to accomplish, it is found that this often courageous and daring action will tend to send a good message to other individuals that the person concerned generally tends to try and denounce any form of racism when it occurs. Another important method is for one to try and effectively deal with racial prejudice is to ensure that they unequivocally respect freedom (Samovar, Porter and McDaniel, 2009). Most constitutions such as the United States constitutions urge their citizens to try and respect freedom, in order to essentially achieve this goal; individuals should receive adequate social and political freedom. Another effective method that can essentially be pertinently be used in dealing with racial prejudice is for one to try and examine the basic historical roots of racism. The main rationale for this method is found to be evidently documented by Solomons and Back who are seen to clearly note that it is a crucial first step before one can be able to properly grasp the full impact and various challenges of racism, they should be able to not only understand, but also explain not only the main roots of contemporary racist ideals but also they various sources and movements of their various appeals (Samovar, Porter and McDaniel, 2009). Religious Prejudice It commonly noted that religious intolerance is considered to be one of the most fierce manifestations of prejudice. Religious prejudice is found to be commonly based upon the belief that there exists only a single truth and that truth happens to be the truth that is considered by the given individual to be true and is therefore an essentially clear statement of what can be construed to be an aspect of the basic human condition in addition to its definition. Although religious prejudice is essentially a resultant product of the certain given cultural circumstances, religious belief is often found to essentially turn around this very fact and ends up not only proselytizing but also sees the entire world from the general standpoint of an individualistic view of self. It is found that although the various differences that happen to exist between different religions can often cause quite fierce intolerance it is often the differences that happen to exist within religions that are found to be more fierce in nature. This aspect is seen to help provide an insight into the innate nature of prejudice. Human history is found to be rife with examples of religious prejudice from the Crusades to the Jihads, that considered the rampant slaughter of others to be a considerably holy cause. The Spanish Inquisition was seen to consider itself as generally be doing considerable good in its torturing of South American Indians to force them into the true faith. It should however be noted that there exists several instances of religious tolerance in history an example being the Muslim Byzantium or the refusal by the Spanish King Charles V to destroy the Muslim Mosque that was located at Cordoba Cullingford, 2000). Methods of Overcoming Religious Prejudice. Several key methods that can effectively be employed in effectively overcoming religious prejudicial tendencies, some of these methods include: It is important for one to ensure that they treat persons who may happen to be traditional atheists or may even be nominally religious. It is important for one to treat such persons with the same sensitivity that they would afford to individuals who happen to profess faith in any of the more traditional religions. During the hiring process of an organization, it is important not to favor applicants and employees who may happen to be of a particular religion. It might be important for an organization to stress on the fact that it does not in anyway discriminate its employees and various applicants in its hiring, benefits and promotion programs. It is often found that many religions and beliefs happen to have some special spiritual observance or festival days. In order to avoid any form of religious discriminations against these particular religions, it is important for the government to offer support to these holidays by causing some of them to become public holidays, an example of this being the Christian Christmas holiday. In the event that a worker happens to request permission from their employer so as to be given leave to attend the ceremonies involved and celebrate the festivals, it is of vital importance that the employer ensures that they exhibit sympathy while considering such requests and where possible, the employees should be allowed to be away from work in the event that they happen to have sufficient holiday entitlement (Addison, 2007). Sexual Prejudice Homophobia is a rather well known and commonly used term in the description of any prejudice that might happen to exist towards persons who happen to be either gay, bisexual, transvestite or even lesbians. However, the use of the term homophobia is commonly challenged due to its implication that the attitudes involved in homophobia are ultimately expressions of fear that is often irrational in nature as opposed to these attitudes being ultimately motivated by a wide variety of multiple factors. The proposed term “sexual prejudice”, is often seen to define any negative attitudes that might be exhibited towards certain given individuals mainly based on their actual sexual orientation (Morrow and Messinger et. Al , 2006). How to Overcome Sexual Prejudice Some of the methods that can effectively be used in order for one to effectively overcome any sexual prejudice that they may happen to be facing include: Such persons should attempt to seek proper help form other persons who may happen to share their sexual orientation. It is often found that such people generally tend to form affirmative friendship organizations and networks that help in the facilitation of positive bisexual, lesbian, or gay identity (Sears, 1997). As an individual critically contemplates disclosing his sexual orientation to another individual, it is of vital importance to try and determine if the person to whom they intend to disclose the information to happens to exhibit attitudes that might be considered to be benign heterosexist or if they happen to various forms of homophobic discrimination (Sears, 1997). Conclusion We all live in a world that happens to be full of cultural, religious, ethnic, social, sexual and economic diversities. Due to the differences in opinion that may happen to exist as a result of these divergent views and beliefs, prejudice will be seen to often arise among the different opinion groups this is especially so in light of the increasing globalization that has resulted in more interactions between persons from different parts of the world. Generally, prejudice is seen to exist in all societies around the world in different forms. It is therefore of considerably vital importance for persons in different societies to ensure that they effectively overcome all the different forms of prejudice. Although prejudice happens to exist in a wide variety of forms, it is possible to effectively overcome it by the application of several different methods that are found to be suitable for overcoming the particular form of prejudice. Bibliography Addison, N., 2007. Religious Discrimination and Hatred Law. Routledge. Andersen, L. M., and Taylor, F. H., 2006. Sociology : understanding a diverse society. Belmont, CA : Thomson/Wadsworth. Cullingford, C., 2000. Prejudice: From Individual Identity to Nacionalism in Young People. Routledge. Gilbert, T. D., Fiske, T. S. and Lindzey, G., 2003. The handbook of social psychology. Oxford : Oxford University Press. Healey, F. J., 2012. Diversity and society : race, ethnicity, and gender, 2011/2012. Thousand Oaks, Calif. : Pine Forge Press/Sage. Hiscox, R. A., 1998. Tapestry of cultural issues in art therapy. London [u.a.] : Kingsley. Merskin, L. D., 2011. Media, minorities, and meaning : a critical introduction. New York : Peter Lang. Morrow, F. D., et al. 2006. Sexual orientation and gender expression in social work practice : working with gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. New York : Columbia University Press. Pelinka, A., Bischof, K., and Sto?gner, K., 2009. Handbook of prejudice. Amherst, N.Y. : Cambria Press. Ritzer, G. and Ryan, J. M., 2011. The concise encyclopedia of sociology Chichester, West Sussex, UK : Wiley-Blackwell. Samovar, L. A., Porter, E. R., and McDaniel , E. R., 2009. Communication between cultures. Belmont, Calif. : Wadsworth ; London : Cengage Learning [distributor]. Santrock, W. J., and Halonen, S. J., 2010. Your guide to college success : strategies for achieving your goals. Boston, MA : Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Sears, T. J., 1997. Overcoming heterosexism and homophobia : strategies that work. New York : Columbia Univ. Press. Stangor, C., 2000. Stereotypes and Prejudice: Essential Readings. Psychology Press. Millon, T., 2003. Handbook of psychology. Hoboken, NJ : Wiley. Hill, G., 2001. A Level psychology through diagrams. Oxford : Oxford University Press. Whitley, E. B, Jr. and Kite, E. M., 2010. The psychology of prejudice and discrimination. Belmont, CA : Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Brown, R., 2007. Prejudice : Its Social Psychology. Chichester : John Wiley & Sons. Read More