Or perhaps, even prejudice against one another and the community at large? Different kinds of Prejudice Today One prejudice essays that everyone can agree on, prejudice essays, regardless of where they live in the world, is that people are different. Standing right behind them was a well-dressed, African-American woman with a few items in her hand. He was standing up in the shopping cart giving the African-American lady dirty looks. Works Cited Hamilton, Darrick. Self-awareness is the first step to improving oneself.
Introduction
In this essay we will discuss about Prejudice. After reading this essay you will learn about: 1. Meaning, Definition and Characteristic of Prejudice 2. Development of Prejudice 3. Determinants or Causes 4. Some Indian Studies 5. Functions 6. Methods of Reducing Prejudice and Discrimination. Prejudice is a disease of the society persisting from age to age. Prejudice is derived from the Latin noun, Prejudium which means prejudgement. It is forming an attitude or belief in advance or passing a judgement in advance. It is a judgement before actually coming in contact with the object or stimulus on which the judgement is passed, prejudice essays.
A prejudice may be defined as a composite of stereotypes, myths, prejudice essays, legends in which the group lebel or symbol is used to classify, characterize or define an individual or a group considered as a totality. In forming a prejudice, thus, one is guided by the decisions, attitudes, stereotypes and of course, prejudices of the group. It is developed either to prejudice essays the interest of the group or self interest, prejudice is a bias usually believed to be a negative attitude towards people, objects, institutions, prejudice essays, nations and nationalities.
Some hold that prejudice is a negative attitude. But this is not correct. Prejudice refers to both positive and negative attitude towards the member of some distinct social group, prejudice essays. On the other hand, discrimination refers to negative actions directed towards some distinct social groups or persons or institutions. In prejudice, the experiences gained from social life are over simplified and hence lead to prejudgement. You are travelling in the train and a person of a particular community misbehaves with you. You, at once, develop a hostile attitude towards all of them.
This over simplification of experience leads prejudice essays misunderstanding, biases and prejudices. Despite the warning by academicians, social reformers, social scientists and by every sane individual for that matter, against jumping to conclusions, we do this where other persons are concerned. We form judgements about them, particularly the outgroups. Prejudices indicate unscientific, unfounded judgement and assume that they possess certain traits and take it for granted, prejudice essays. Rather, we predict that they will act on certain ways simply because they belong to specific groups. This very tendency plays a central role in the concept of prejudice and discrimination.
Here, we judge long before prejudice essays come in actual contact. The characters are painted in such a way that automatically we judge them unscientifically, prejudice essays. Baron and Byrne have defined prejudice as a specific type of attitude where individual traits and behaviour play little role. They are liked or disliked simply because they belong to a definite and specific social group. The child is influenced prejudice essays his parents and develop prejudices because of the traditional age old prejudice of the parents running prejudice essays generation to generation.
Thus, prejudices lack scientific character. They are unreasonable and biased. In the drama of real life, prejudice essays in group represents for us the forces of good and they as an out prejudice essays represent the forces of evil. We are the chosen, prejudice essays, the people of glorious destiny, savers of our lives whereas they are the forces of destruction, prejudice essays, the inferior people, the unworthy, who is who, prejudice essays, is a matter of group membership. According to Fieldmanprejudice essays, prejudice is a positive or negative evaluation or judgement of members of a particular group which are based primarily on the fact of their membership in the group and not necessarily because of particular characteristics of individual members.
Prejudice towards female occurs not because of some individual or specific characteristics or qualities of that particular woman but because she is a female. Fieldman holds that though prejudice is thought as usually a negative evaluation, it can also be positive. Hence, prejudice is a type of bias and unscientific prejudgement and it can be both pro and anti. In both the cases the bias or judgement is not related to the qualities of a prejudice essays individual, rather it is related to a group to which the individual belongs, Allport defines prejudice as negative attitude towards human beings that are held because of their membership or of their suppressed membership of certain groups.
According to Kretch and Crutchfield, prejudice refers to some attitude or belief that serves to place the objects of the attitudes and beliefs at an advantage or disadvantage. The prejudices of people even in the same country or same race vary significantly not only in content, but also in clarity, prejudice essays, specificity, strength, importance and verifiability, prejudice essays. The nature of prejudice is diverse. Prejudice may not always be involved with active aggression. In several cases, prejudice only involves the avoidance of the outgroup by the prejudiced person, prejudice essays.
Sometimes the prejudice is also expressed towards the outgroup prejudice essays minority group by withdrawing certain facilities. Because of the varied nature of prejudice the diagnosis of the problem of prejudice becomes extremely difficult and hence, prejudice essays, treatment and reduction of the prejudice becomes much more difficult. Prejudices are basically attitudes shared by a group as a whole and the person of the out group is considered a member of a rejected group. A prejudiced person will always ascribe reasons to his attitudes. The hostile acts of the outgroup are remembered while the friendly acts are forgotten. The child learns to acquire the prejudice towards other groups. Initially we find small children do not have any feeling of prejudice essays. Small boys and girls, children of upper prejudice essays and lower class, rich and poor families, prejudice essays, play together.
But gradually they learn to discriminate. Thus, only when children grow up they learn to treat the children of other groups as different from them. Prejudice is a product of social learning. It grows in the minds of men mostly linked to political, geographical, legal and economic issues and are of less psychological significance, prejudice essays. The white black feeling started prejudice essays a very simple economic practice. When there is a change in social conditions, revolution arises which gives rise to prejudice. In societies, in which intergroup and intra group relationships are based on political and economic power and are not integrated or planned there necessarily arises a scale of social distance which becomes incorporated in the individual members.
The famous study conducted by Clark prejudice essays Clark on Negro children of 3 to 7 years age suggest that even at the age of 3 years children are perceptually able to discriminate the white child from the prejudice essays child. But they do not, at this stage, develop any preferences, hostilities or prejudices, prejudice essays. As they grow because of the exposure to various experiences in the society, they learn to develop prejudices and feeling of discrimination to children of outgroups. So, prejudice develops with the growth of personality. Clark and Clark conducted the above mentioned experiment to verify the hypothesis that hostility to out groups is innate but it takes time for this hostility to develop because prejudice essays the immaturity of the sensory experience.
These children were presented with 4 dolls, two of which were brown with black prejudice essays and two were white with yellow hair. Most of them could discriminate between the white and Negro children. The most prejudice essays fact is that at this age level, they did not show any preference, prejudice or hostility. It is, thus, obvious that as children grow, they are exposed to certain experiences and training at home and society. Therefore, they learn to develop prejudices to the children of the outgroup. Horowitz prejudice essays Horowitz interviewed a few white children in a Southern Community and noted that many children said that they were punished and penalised by their parents and relatives for not dissociating themselves from the Negro children.
In India, children of various castes and socioeconomic groups are taught from childhood to maintain distance from children of other groups as decided by the society and social norms, prejudice essays. Actual conflict between the ingroup and outgroup infinitely adds more effectively to the intensification of prejudice, prejudice essays. Once a superior group starts a prejudice, scientists, philosophers and politicians come to justify it. Hitler created the prejudice that Germans can rule the world. Thus, prejudice develops in the same way as attitudes prejudice essays stereotypes grow in the minds of a person due to social influence. Prejudice essays of prejudice mostly depends upon the family members, societies, tradition, customs, myths, prejudice essays, legends, stories, prejudice essays, faiths and beliefs.
It further grows with the prejudice essays of social distance because of the development of attitude and prejudices. If the social distance is high, prejudice is more and vice versa. There is always prejudice of the Americans towards the Turkians, Indians towards Americans, though not one American in a thousand knows anything about the Turki. This is because of the historical conflicts between the Mahamadians and the Christianity. A study based on interviews prejudice essays persons prejudice essays from a cross section of the American Zone showed that women are significantly more biased against the Jews than men.
Small town people, uneducated people are found to be more prejudiced than those of large cities and educated people. Prejudice is prejudice essays to be greater among people with low status in society. Many studies indicate high levels of racism among lower class whites who may feel that blacks will take away their jobs. One of the basic reasons behind the development of prejudice is stereotype. The conditions and expectations assigned to members of group simply on the basis of the membership in those groups lead to prejudice. Stereotypes are over simplification of facts which are used to add meaning to certain facts out of a complex social environment.
In the process, the important differences that distinguish one person from another is lost sight of. Today, prejudice essays, the pressure is more on social and economic stereotypes in the development of prejudice. Prejudice essays and Bayton found that beliefs about social class provided more powerful stereotypes than did beliefs about race, prejudice essays. Similarly, sex stereotypes lead to sex prejudices. Some emphasise the role of self fulfilling prophecy to the development of prejudice. It means expectations about the possibility of further events or behaviours that act to increase the likelihood that the event or behaviour will occur.
If people assume that members prejudice essays a certain group are lazy, they may act in a way that actually elicits laziness on the part of the members of prejudice essays group. Cultural factors play a very important role in the development of prejudice. Sociologists and anthropologists have emphasised the tremendous impact of socio-cultural factors in the growth and development of prejudice and discrimination.
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Fieldman holds that though prejudice is thought as usually a negative evaluation, it can also be positive. Hence, prejudice is a type of bias and unscientific prejudgement and it can be both pro and anti. In both the cases the bias or judgement is not related to the qualities of a particular individual, rather it is related to a group to which the individual belongs, Allport defines prejudice as negative attitude towards human beings that are held because of their membership or of their suppressed membership of certain groups. According to Kretch and Crutchfield, prejudice refers to some attitude or belief that serves to place the objects of the attitudes and beliefs at an advantage or disadvantage.
The prejudices of people even in the same country or same race vary significantly not only in content, but also in clarity, specificity, strength, importance and verifiability. The nature of prejudice is diverse. Prejudice may not always be involved with active aggression. In several cases, prejudice only involves the avoidance of the outgroup by the prejudiced person. Sometimes the prejudice is also expressed towards the outgroup or minority group by withdrawing certain facilities. Because of the varied nature of prejudice the diagnosis of the problem of prejudice becomes extremely difficult and hence, treatment and reduction of the prejudice becomes much more difficult. Prejudices are basically attitudes shared by a group as a whole and the person of the out group is considered a member of a rejected group.
A prejudiced person will always ascribe reasons to his attitudes. The hostile acts of the outgroup are remembered while the friendly acts are forgotten. The child learns to acquire the prejudice towards other groups. Initially we find small children do not have any feeling of discrimination. Small boys and girls, children of upper class and lower class, rich and poor families, play together. But gradually they learn to discriminate. Thus, only when children grow up they learn to treat the children of other groups as different from them. Prejudice is a product of social learning. It grows in the minds of men mostly linked to political, geographical, legal and economic issues and are of less psychological significance. The white black feeling started with a very simple economic practice.
When there is a change in social conditions, revolution arises which gives rise to prejudice. In societies, in which intergroup and intra group relationships are based on political and economic power and are not integrated or planned there necessarily arises a scale of social distance which becomes incorporated in the individual members. The famous study conducted by Clark and Clark on Negro children of 3 to 7 years age suggest that even at the age of 3 years children are perceptually able to discriminate the white child from the black child. But they do not, at this stage, develop any preferences, hostilities or prejudices.
As they grow because of the exposure to various experiences in the society, they learn to develop prejudices and feeling of discrimination to children of outgroups. So, prejudice develops with the growth of personality. Clark and Clark conducted the above mentioned experiment to verify the hypothesis that hostility to out groups is innate but it takes time for this hostility to develop because of the immaturity of the sensory experience. These children were presented with 4 dolls, two of which were brown with black hair and two were white with yellow hair. Most of them could discriminate between the white and Negro children. The most interesting fact is that at this age level, they did not show any preference, prejudice or hostility.
It is, thus, obvious that as children grow, they are exposed to certain experiences and training at home and society. Therefore, they learn to develop prejudices to the children of the outgroup. Horowitz and Horowitz interviewed a few white children in a Southern Community and noted that many children said that they were punished and penalised by their parents and relatives for not dissociating themselves from the Negro children. In India, children of various castes and socioeconomic groups are taught from childhood to maintain distance from children of other groups as decided by the society and social norms. Actual conflict between the ingroup and outgroup infinitely adds more effectively to the intensification of prejudice. Once a superior group starts a prejudice, scientists, philosophers and politicians come to justify it.
Hitler created the prejudice that Germans can rule the world. Thus, prejudice develops in the same way as attitudes and stereotypes grow in the minds of a person due to social influence. Growth of prejudice mostly depends upon the family members, societies, tradition, customs, myths, legends, stories, faiths and beliefs. It further grows with the growth of social distance because of the development of attitude and prejudices. If the social distance is high, prejudice is more and vice versa. There is always prejudice of the Americans towards the Turkians, Indians towards Americans, though not one American in a thousand knows anything about the Turki. This is because of the historical conflicts between the Mahamadians and the Christianity.
A study based on interviews with persons released from a cross section of the American Zone showed that women are significantly more biased against the Jews than men. Small town people, uneducated people are found to be more prejudiced than those of large cities and educated people. Prejudice is found to be greater among people with low status in society. Many studies indicate high levels of racism among lower class whites who may feel that blacks will take away their jobs. One of the basic reasons behind the development of prejudice is stereotype.
The conditions and expectations assigned to members of group simply on the basis of the membership in those groups lead to prejudice. Stereotypes are over simplification of facts which are used to add meaning to certain facts out of a complex social environment. In the process, the important differences that distinguish one person from another is lost sight of. Today, the pressure is more on social and economic stereotypes in the development of prejudice. Smeelley and Bayton found that beliefs about social class provided more powerful stereotypes than did beliefs about race. Similarly, sex stereotypes lead to sex prejudices. Some emphasise the role of self fulfilling prophecy to the development of prejudice.
It means expectations about the possibility of further events or behaviours that act to increase the likelihood that the event or behaviour will occur. If people assume that members of a certain group are lazy, they may act in a way that actually elicits laziness on the part of the members of that group. Cultural factors play a very important role in the development of prejudice. Sociologists and anthropologists have emphasised the tremendous impact of socio-cultural factors in the growth and development of prejudice and discrimination. Increasing urbanization and population complexity of the society, competition and rivalry among different ethnic groups help in the development of prejudice of one group towards the other.
When certain minority or disadvantaged groups are provided with the advantage of reservation in admission to educational institution; in jobs and in various elections to political system, the unreserved category develop prejudice towards these groups. Social factors, such as these would ultimately increase prejudices on the part of the people who feel that they are being denied a resource that is rightfully theirs or they are being debarred from their due which is rightfully theirs. People also develop prejudice to have self regard and conformity. Many of the beliefs and attitudes occur to satisfy the specific needs of an individual. The environment also contributes a lot to the development of prejudice. When poor and uneducated people remain in small, dirty, clumsy cottages, rich and educated people develop stronger prejudice towards them.
The prejudiced person lives in an environment which provides a lot of support for the development of prejudice. Through the operation of the principles of similarity and proximity, certain sociological cues develop which serve as environmental support for the development of prejudice through beliefs and attitudes. Prejudice exists in all, it is an universal phenomena and seems to persist in all societies, though, recorded history from age to age. The question now arises how so many people develop this particularly towards people belonging to specific social groups and the outgroups. Factors contributing to the growth and development of prejudice have been extensively investigated in India as well as abroad. Studies on prejudice have been made on the sociological, cultural, psychological determinants of prejudice.
Socio-economic status usually show a positive correlation with antisemitism. But the relationship between socio-economic status and prejudice against blacks is not significant. The most common finding is that individuals of low socio economic status are most likely to have unfavourable attitudes towards blacks. On a follow up study-Gilbreth found that Princeton students checked many of the same traits for national groups in that Katz and Barely measured in Hartley has found the same pattern of social distance in that Bogardus had found in The findings that there were more anti Negro prejudice in the South than in the North car be explained interms of differential impact of cultural norm.
From three major psychological theories of prejudice, such as frustration, aggression, authoritarian, personality and belief congruence the effect of personality variable on prejudice is obvious. a The support to the frustration-aggression hypothesis of prejudice comes from the studies showing that more prejudiced individuals have greater tendency to displace hostility than unprejudiced individuals. Furthermore, this psychodynamic approach holds that prejudiced individuals are more susceptible to frustration. The free floating hostility which cannot be expressed directly due to social restrictions is vented at an alternate target. The minority group in many cases becomes the likely scapegoat as it is probably less powerful than the original source which created frustration by blocking the satisfaction of a desire.
b A number of studies have also indicated the relevance of personality variables like insecurity, anxiety and intolerance of ambiguity to prejudice. A person who feels secured about his job, position and status in the family or society takes an objective view of the situation that he comes across. But a person with feelings of insecurity tries to find out an individual upon whom he can put the blame of his insecurity. Allport and Gough a, b, c have reported that persons with high level of insecurity arc likely to show higher level of prejudice. Many investigators, including Rokuch , Siegat , point out that more anxious individuals display higher levels of prejudice than less anxious subjects.
Frenkel and Brunswik found that children high in prejudice tended to be intolerant of ambiguity and dichotomous in their thinking about sex roles. Because of the ambiguity of the subject or issue, people perceive them as they are asked to perceive. So, they develop prejudice towards such objects. Thus, the very perceptual processes create these environmental supports. Ambiguity of physical traits, behaviour traits and as a result the distorting perceptions, has substantial effect on the development of prejudice. Rokeach attempted to explain, prejudice on the basis of individual difference in the ways of organising belief and disbelief system.
Persons with high level of prejudice belief and disbelief systems are rigidly organised whereas in other individuals the systems are relatively flexible. According to Freud, man is born with aggressive and destructive tendencies and the desire for war is quite unconscious. Human beings can live together peacefully only when this innate destructiveness is turned inward. Glover, a psycho pathologist says that unconsciously motivated sadism, machosism may indeed be the essential cause of world tension. Studies by the UNESCO on social tension have been done on a large scale to determine the causes and remedies of social tension. The book Authoritarian Personality suggests that prejudice is a result of a particular set of characters shared by authoritarian personality.
Authoritarians displace their hostility towards weak or unconventional groups i. usually towards minority groups. But, further studies also show that people who score low on the authoritarian scale may be very prejudiced. Personality factors, like rigidity, superstitionsness, intolerance, lack of liberality and dynamicity are responsible for more prejudice. Prejudice on the whole is caused and determined by the interaction of the socio-cultural Factors with the personality traits. Prejudice is caused due to struggle and unhealthy competition over jobs, good school, housing and living facilities, high status in the society, money, social prestige, desire for power and recognition.
During competition, they come to perceive each other in various negative ways. They consider each other as enemies, they think their own group as totally right and their opponents as totally wrong. Initially which started as a simple competition gradually grows to strong prejudice. Several studies have provided evidence to this view. The study of Blake and Mouton on corporate executives and Sherifs several studies in this regard are notable. People usually divide the social group in which they live into two clear categories i.
Clearly differentiated contrasting feelings and beliefs are generally marked in the minds of the members of the ingroup towards the outgroup and vice versa. Studies by Hemstone, Locksley, Jaspars , Ortiz and Hepburn Tajfal and Turner support the above facts. The subjects in the above studies, by and large, indicated more negative attitudes towards members of outgroups and treated them in less favourable ways than members of their own ingroups. What is an ingroup? Persons try to elevate their self esteem by becoming identified with specific social groups. They perceive these groups superior and better than other competing and rival groups. Since, all individuals in a society are subject to this, everyone is bound to develop some prejudice.
Thus, prejudice arises out of the clash or conflict of social perception. Prejudice grows due to social learning in the same process, like attitude and stereotypes. Children acquire negative attitudes and various prejudice towards specific groups, institutions and stimuli as they are exposed to such views by parents, teachers, playmates, friends, and relations or because they are specifically rewarded for adopting them. A negative attitude automatically develops towards those people shown in dirty dress, unclean dialapated cottages, growing in poverty and illiteracy, uttering faulty languages.
Recent studies of Liebert-Sparkin and Davidson and Bandura reveal the strong influence of mass media and T. on the growth of prejudice. The key process of social cognition refers to the fundamental ways in which one thinks about other persons. Among them stereotypes, illusory correlation and the illusion of outgroup homogeneity are noteworthy. For interpreting and processing social information, stereotypes function as a negative schemata and cognitive framework. The negative earlier knowledge and belief of specific social groups strongly affect the way in which one deals with further informations. For example, Dovidio, Evans and Tyler have found that informations relevant to a particular stereotype is accepted and processed more quickly than informations not related to that stereotype.
You have heard and believed a particular nation is war minded. When you get an information supporting this belief you immediately believe and accept this and act upon it within no time. But when you get an information contrary to your already existing stereotype notion, you may not accept it, process it and act upon it. Similarly stereotypes lead a person to pay attention to specific type of information or the input that is consistent with the existing stereotypes. Even we remember those informations and inputs which suit our purpose and are consistent with our stereotypes and forget those which do not tally with it.
The rest he prefers to forget. Operation of such negative schemata has got support from the recent studies of Dovidio, Evans and Tyler , Greenberg and Psyzoyaski Illusiory correlations which appear to play some role in the growth of prejudices and stereotypes as found by Spears, Vander Plight and Eiser develop due to the basic tendency to give more attention to unusual and distinctive events. It refers to perceiving the relationship between factors or variables that actually do not exist and obviously this perception of not existent things cause prejudice.
The tendency to perceive all the members of the outgroup as all very much alike and homogenous reflects a fundamental bias in the way we think about other and so prejudice is grown because of this even if there is lot of contact. Park and Rothbart have observed that even males perceive all women having similar qualities and attitudes and females perceive all men having homogenous qualities and attitudes though, these two sex groups always come in intimate contact with each other. These factors explain the causes and determinants of prejudice and also hint as to why prejudice inspite of all efforts persists. Some psychologists have attempted to trace the causes of prejudice from motivational and personality aspects through the frustration, aggression or scapegoat theory.
It is said that those people who experience continuous free floating aggression are likely to develop more prejudice. Accumulated tensions arising out of frustration of various basic and particularly significant needs often find expression in aggressive acts. When this aggression is directed against a group as the target, it turns to prejudice. Miller and Bugelski have demonstrated that the frustration of even relatively unimportant needs like seeing a movie in a theatre lead to racial antipathy. The history of growing up and being in an adult modern society is a history of constant and continuous frustration.
Every human being is subjected to constant frustration from the moment of birth till death and birth itself is said to be the greatest frustration in human life. When people find themselves frustrated in some way, they may turn their hostility towards a socially acceptable substitute i. minority group. Competition between groups and the very fact that members of another group are different, may also cause prejudice. Most social psychologists hold the view that all the racial prejudice can be attributed to the frustration aggression sequence which reflects the motivational causes of all prejudice. But, since, all frustrations do not lead to aggression and there are other reactions to frustration besides aggression, it is not possible to say that all people who are prejudiced suffer from frustration.
Hence, besides, frustration and aggression there are also other causes of prejudice. Racial prejudice is found among the sadists and in persons with free floating aggression. Pathological personality systems like paranoia is found to be related to prejudice. A paranoiac has been described as person who is not capable of understanding other people and who continuously attributes all types of motives to other people. He seeks for people as a target of his aggression. But the reverse is not true. All mentally sick people may not necessarily develop prejudice. In a particular cultural and social set up, the individual is expected to fulfil certain social obligations.
Very often he is forced to obey some social rules and regulations and show culturally approved behaviour. But the person has a lots of antisocial desires to be satisfied. This leads to conflict and clash. In an attempt to solve these conflicts prejudice occurs. Getting money and political eminence are good socially approved needs. But, if the individual uses the socially disapproved ways to satisfy these needs and then rationalises, he projects and attributes his own faults on other groups, classes or castes, leading to the occurrence of prejudice. Prejudice has its roots in the parental and cultural influences of adult life. Sometimes the culturally disapproved needs particularly which conflict with the moral ideology of the person are repressed.
Since, the repressed tensions remain in a dynamic form and always in the verge of coming out, they are reflected in the defence mechanism of projection. Through this mechanism, they attribute uncomplimentary and mallacious characters to a specific group or race. The California study of Frenkel-Brunswik relating the T. T test conducted on the anti-semantic girls indicated meaningless jealousy, repressed hatred and suspicion towards parental figures. These repressed tendencies find out outlet in negative attitudes and antipathy against various racial groups which serve as scope goat.
Prejudice is also caused due to ambiguous and crisis situation. In a crisis situation, the individual frequently may take recourse to beliefs and attitudes of racial prejudice. At this moment, the only available interpretation offered to him by his culture and environment is accepted quickly to meet the crisis situation. There is no time to wait, analyse and reason before accepting the facts. Their ambiguous and vague ideas and beliefs about other countries now in a crisis situation become crystallized and they quickly accept the readymade ideas and suggestions. People also seem to develop prejudice for the sake of self respect, to defend the self and to maintain the individuals identification with the society which is also called conformity. Beliefs and attitudes of racial prejudice frequently stem from emotional experiences and needs.
But they result in guilt feeling, emotional conflicts and aggressive defence reactions etc. Thus, it is said belies and attitudes do something for the person and to the person. Causes of prejudice have also been explained from the psychodynamic point of view by some through repressed hostility, castration anxiety and Oedipus complex. Minor conflicts between small groups is related to national and international tension and prejudice. Parents often transmit their own prejudice to their children. Several Studies indicate that parents are the primary source from which the racial prejudices are learnt. But Bird and his associates found low correlation between the attitudes of parents and children towards Negroes.
Though these studies do not refute the role of parents in the causation of prejudice, they, however, suggest that heavy weightage should not be given to the role of parents in the transmission of prejudice. Different studies indicate that in younger age group less prejudice is observed. Studies also show that young people are relatively more tolerant compared to older people. Before three years prejudice does not enter the minds of children as studies indicate. Waller , Maykovich and Mohanty found that age and education were significantly associated with ethocentrism.
Katz observed that by the age of three or four years children are able to distinguish between blacks and whites and also possess different feelings towards them. Since ages, some occupations are considered appropriate for men than for women and vice versa. Jobs in police, airforce, navy are considered to be in appropriate for women and jobs of teachers, doctors and nurses are said to be appropriate for women. It is a prejudice. Here historical attitude influences this discrimination. Studies indicate that religious background or religion as a causative factor of prejudice do not provide any consistent picture. However, several studies show Catholics to be more prejudiced against negroes, protestants next most prejudiced, jews and people with less religious affiliation are least prejudiced.
Investigators like Hanlan Adorno etal. Conflicting result in this area need further investigation on the relationship between religion and prejudice. Each and every culture has got certain beliefs, attitudes, stereotypes and prejudices regarding other groups. Prejudices are, thus, portions of cultural heritage. Studies reveal that prejudice found in a particular culture is prevalent in the children of that culture. Sociologists and anthropologists say that increasing urbanization, complexity of society, increasing population density and competition for jobs operate in various ways to increase prejudice towards minority groups.
Prejudices also occur because of the differences in languages spoken, customs and ways of living like the differences in the ways of living of Hindus and Christians, Hindus and Muslims, whites and blacks, Americans and Jews etc. Prejudice increases particularly when a group feels that he is threatened by another group. Prejudices, infact, grow as a social norm of a group to which all adjust and share. All these discussions and studies on the determinants and causes of prejudice lead to one basic truth that the underlying factors of prejudice are multidimensional and large number of factors operate in the development of prejudice. In India, research on prejudice is of special significance because of various castes, creeds, communities and religions in Indian society.
Prejudice in India, therefore, manifests itself in many forms in relation to religion, caste, language etc. The importance of studies on prejudice in India has been realised specially after when the Hindu Muslim conflict became a matter of grave concern for the sociologists and psychologist. The range of social distance is very high in Indian societies because of inadequate interpersonal relationship. This is obvious from the Hindu, Muslim conflicts, riots, Christian and nonchristian feeling, lower and higher caste feeling, and the exploitation of the poor class by the rich. Sometimes politically dominant groups continue to dominate on other groups. This creates ill feeling, anger and as a result prejudice in the minds of the disadvantaged and weaker section of the society.
Though, large number of studies on prejudice have been conducted in western countries, the findings of such studies are not fully applicable in India. Since, Indian social conditions are completely different from the western conditions the western finding cannot give adequate information about the origin and development of prejudice in India. In order to get accurate information in this regard, studies on prejudice are to be made in the Indian climate, Indian socio-economic conditions and in the prespective of the uniqueness of the Indian society, Indian and Western societies are different culturally, economically and politically. Hence study on prejudice has to be conducted in the Indian land on the Indian people for the last so many years. After independence, there has been a lot of discussion on national integration which is extremely urgent in the present India because of suspicion, hatred and distrust among the members of the society.
Prejudice, on any level, can do tremendous damage to those targeted. ORDER NOW! A number of types of prejudice exist in society today. The following are just a few of the most prominent prejudices. Prejudice has no place in society. People who may be the victim of one form of prejudice may turn around and subject others to discrimination for another reason. The only way for prejudice to become a thing of the past is for everyone to accept that despite our differences, we all members of the human race. Rely on professional writers with your college paper and take a load off your mind. Relax while we are working on your essay. Your peace of mind is just one click away. Home » Samples » Other » Prejudice Essay.
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