Stereotyping, Prejudice, And Discrimination In Social Psychology

Stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination has been a core topic in social psychological research in an attempt to understand the origins of biases and impact on groups and individuals (Dagner & Dalege, 2013). The terms prejudice, discrimination, and stereotype, are often used mutually in daily dialogue. Stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination are biases that contribute to the creation of social inequality in the society (Fiske, 2008). Most often people are biased against other individuals outside of their social connection, displaying stereotypical behaviors, showing prejudice and discrimination. Formerly, individuals are more explicit with their biases, however during the 20th century, it has become less socially acceptable to exhibit bias, prejudice, and discrimination. The argument stands that new stereotypes are seldom created, they tend to be recycled from groups that have been adapted into the community and reused to describe newly subordinate groups (Schmader, Block & Lickel, 2015). Hence avoiding stereotyping can be a challenging and daunting task for an individual as the effort is made to abstain from engaging in the stereotypical behavior. Stereotypes are natural characteristics of human cognitive processing. Also, Stereotypes are distorted and generalized ideas about a group of people based on race, age, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation without considering individual differences. Hence, it is notably argued that stereotypic behaviors are inevitable due to the role and emphasis placed on media in the process (Schmader, Block & Lickel, 2015). Media images are assumed to contribute profusely to the construction and maintenance of stereotypes. Also, prejudice pertains to the attitudes and feelings which could be either positive or negative, conscious or non-conscious that individuals have towards members of other groups. Furthermore, discrimination consists of actions of a person or group of individuals against other person or group in the society. For instance, a “white only” sign exemplified discrimination that is not logical today. However, stereotyping is accurate beliefs about a group including describing how a particular group should behave, look like or abilities respectively. Hence, stereotype involves a cognitive representation of attitudes and behaviors of a particular group, the similarities, and differences herein from one another and other group members. Also, people can be conscious of cultural stereotype without personally endorsing such stereotypes which could affect our judgement and behavior. The stereotype is considered to occur as a result of adaptive processes that simplify a complex world where people can devote more cognitive means to other tasks. However, …show more content…
For instance, the horrific maltreatment of the Jews, African America, and women has been the major motivation for the study of stereotyping, prejudice and decimation in social psychology. Stereotypes are harmful and dangerous as they foster prejudice and discrimination among the distinguished group of people. Also, stereotyping, discrimination and prejudice often occur simultaneously; however it is also possible to occur independently of each other. For instance, when an ethnic group is stereotyped with a positive characteristic such as family values, discrimination and prejudice may be absent. Also, prejudice against amputees may not involve particular stereotype or discrimination. Discrimination can occur without prejudice or stereotype either intentionally or unintentionally such as sex discrimination involving the percentage of female job candidate offered a position in an organization. Hence, prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination are a distinct entity, though they often occur together in daily