The Implicit Prejudice Psychological Analysis - Article Example

Prejudice: The Evil Of Society People have a tendency to think that they are superior to others. This thinking makes them feel that they are always right. However, there are times when people’s experience teach them a lot and make them realize that they are not always right. Some incidences in life are so unusual that they remain etched in the mind and make people aware of the fact that no matter how modern or forward they think they are, they are still victim of narrow minded thinking and influence of past experiences. I was also one of those people but because of one incidence in my life, I changed my thinking and now make conscious effort not to let my past experiences influence my thinking pattern. Personal Experience One day, I had a chance of learning something new about my fear for certain kind of people without any rational basis for it. It was a weekend and I was coming back from shopping. I was traveling in a bus and after two bus stops, there were only two people left in the bus. I was very scared as I was traveling alone. I was told that there was still half an hour for me to reach my destination. This worried me more. On the top of it, three heavily built men boarded the bus. The fact that it was a night time scared me more. I started shivering and my breathing became difficult. To make things worse, those three men came and sat on the seat which was to the right side of mine. I looked at them through the corner of my eyes and found that they were tall, strong and heavily built men. They were from white ethnic background and had tattoos all over their bodies. Their hands were displaying the tattoos of dragon and snakes. One of the men also had a tattoo of a dagger with blood dropping from it. The other had a sword with a snake spiraling around it. They were all wearing a sleeveless tight T- shirt showing their big biceps and a picture of a fist printed on it. Their jeans were torn and they were wearing pointed shows. They were bald and were wearing scarf on their head. By this time I had started praying. I was thinking that they were thinking of attacking me and were waiting for a right time. I was so scared that even a thought of leaving my seat and going to other seat was impossible for me. Those 10 minutes that I sat there seemed like hours for me. I said 10 minutes because after 10 minutes an interesting thing happened and my fear vanished. On the next bus stop a woman boarded the bus. She was in her thirties and was accompanied by two 4-5 year old kids with her and also an infant. The moment the woman boarded the bus the atmosphere suddenly became light and the deathlike silence vanished. However, what surprised me the most was that she came to the front of the bus and sat with the men I was scared of! They kissed each other and the children stared taking their place on his lap. One of the men was their father and the other two guys were his friends. The thought of the man sitting in front of me was a family man would have never crossed my mind if I had not seen him with his wife and kids. He was very loving, caring and friendly with his wife and kids. He was asking them about their day at school and was enquiring about the things they learnt at school that day. One can imagine my relief and happiness at realizing that my fears were completely baseless and I am going to reach home safe and sound. However, at the same time I felt extremely guilty of my thoughts. I felt that I had committed a crime against these men by having misconceptions about them. The question is what made me so scared of these men? Was it their physical appearance, their tattoos or the way they were dressed? I was surprised to know that I have a prejudiced thinking against people who have tattoos. I feel that these people are rowdy and have violent nature. I learnt a very important lesson of my life that day. I decided never to judge anyone on the basis of ethnic background, culture or the lifestyle they follow. Everyone is unique and should be judged as an individual. The Psychological Analysis Of The Incident The article ‘The implicit prejudice’ by Sally Lehrman describes how people are influenced by stereotyped thinking and prejudice when forming opinions about other people. People have a tendency to judge other people on the basis of their gender, ethnic background, education, culture etc. The beliefs that women do not make good leaders, people with black ethnic background make better athletes, people with Hispanic ethnic background are not suitable to hold a managerial position etc., are the beliefs that are based on the prejudiced thinking. According to Allport(1954), prejudice can be defined as a dislike for people based “upon a faulty and inflexible generalization” (Myers, 2005, p.332). Prejudiced thinking makes people to evaluate other people negatively on the basis of prejudgment about the group or the race they belong to (Myers, 2005, p.333). Prejudice can be caused by different aspects of personality like emotional associations, negative beliefs, fears, need to justify the hatred and anger against certain group of people etc (Myers, 2005, p.333). This explains why I was so scared when I saw those men in the bus I was traveling in. The incidence that I mentioned earlier is an example of a negative prejudgment. I have a mental association of heavily built physique and tattoos to violence. This association makes me think that all those people who have tattoos on their bodies are violent by nature. The interesting thing is that I am not sure when and how this association was created in my mind. It is as if an unconscious feeling and hence, I have no control on it. The interaction that man had with his family made me realize how wrong I was in my thinking. Moreover, I wondered about my physical reaction to the fear. Even when the men had done nothing to make me get scared of them, just a thought of them being violent made my breathing go fast and my body to shiver. This shows how strongly the prejudiced thinking affects the emotions, behavior and mind of a person. Experiments by Mahzarin Banaji have revealed that the negative judgment that we form about people are a result of a response from the unconscious mind (Lehrman, 2006). Banaji has found that even those people who think that they treat other people with equality are victim of thinking influenced by prejudice (Lehrman, 2006). The only thing is that the bias, discrimination and the prejudiced thinking that they entertain is so deeply ingrained in their mind that they are not eve aware of it (Lehrman, 2006). The most disturbing thing found by Banaji was that when asked to associate positive words with people belonging to different ethnic background or race, the participants were not able to respond quickly. Contrary to their opinion that they treat everyone equally, their mind did not respond automatically when associating positive attributes to people belonging to other ethnicity (Lehrman, 2006). This shows that even if we think we are free of prejudice and discrimination, we are not. It affects every moment of our life and the way we communicate with each other. Conclusion My experience of that night opened my eyes towards the negative beliefs and opinions I have about people who have tattoos on their bodies. I realized that I am not as modern or as broad minded as I think I am. My unconscious emotional associations still have a strong influence on me. It is time to realize that prejudice does nothing but create hatred and misunderstand between human beings. Hence, it is extremely necessary to make conscious effort to develop a prejudice free mind and behavior. Only then can we say that we are modern. References Lehrman, S. (2006). The Implicit Prejudice. Scientific American Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-implicit-prejudice Myers, D.G. (2005). Social Psychology. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Read More