Prejudice, Discrimination, And Inter-Group Conflict Analysis

Prejudice, discrimination and inter-group conflict have all evolved and changed over time, but still exist and cause separation between groups today. Prejudice is defined as a preconceived judgement of a group and its individual members, supported by one’s stereotypes. Discrimination is negative behavior toward a group and/ or its members, often influenced by prejudices. As the new community leader at University of Maryland, I will work to minimize conflicts between black and white groups. Through my plan, I will work to reduce prejudice, discrimination, and intergroup conflict, which defined as the conflict between groups who categorize themselves as similar and who hold increased prejudices towards an “outgroup”. My plan for reducing conflicts …show more content…
Adam Galinsky and Gordon Moskowitz’s study used perspective taking to measure decreases in stereotype expression and ingroup favoritism (2000). The study consisted of eighty five undergraduates. There were two different experiments in the study. The first study had participants rate themselves on 90 personality traits. After they rated themselves on the study, they were asked to write a narrative on an African American elderly man. Some groups were given no additional instruction, some groups were told not to include stereotypical information, and other groups were asked to imagine they were the individual. While the first two groups showed great variance between stereotype consistent and stereotype inconsistent words, the group who was told to imagine they were the man showed only a .03 variance difference between stereotype consistent and stereotype inconsistent words. This shows when taking the perspective of another group, individuals are more likely to minimize stereotypes, and subsequently minimize prejudices. The second experiment studied ingroup vs outgroup opinion. In this experiment, participants first estimated the amount of dots on a screen. The participants were told that their guesses were all overestimates. Then the participants were asked to write a narrative on either the characteristics of an underestimator, or a narrative on how overestimators and …show more content…
These prejudices and intergroup conflicts can be minimized and decreased by contact between the different groups, and perspective taking. My program would place students into dorms with roommates and floormates of different races and ethnicities, like placing black and white students together to help minimize prejudices both hold. It would also introduce perspective taking programs that would encourage students to look at the other groups perspective in a conflict, a strategy proven effective in decreasing prejudice by Galinsky and