Social Interaction 1 - Prejudice & Discrimination

Prejudice & Discrimination

• The difference between prejudice and discrimination
• Types of Prejudice and Discrimination
• Learning to Prejudice
• Overcome Prejudice

1. The Difference between prejudice and discrimination

• Prejudice: an unsupported and negative attitude about the members of a particular social group, a kind of attitude
• Discrimination: to treat differently than others in situation that call for equal treatment, a kind of behavior with prejudice
• Discrimination as a behavior can be controlled and eliminated, but it is hard to remove the prejudice because that is a kind of attitude

2. Types of Prejudice and Discrimination

1) In-groups/ Out-groups:

Once a concept of in or out-group is formed, the members in the in-group tend to form the prejudice and discrimination soon

2) The realistic conflict theory:

• The prejudice and discrimination cause the degree of conflict between in and out group depending on the degree of the prejudice and discrimination.
• Ex) the conflict between the early Crusaders and the Muslims

3) Scapegoating

• When a member or members of the in-group frustrates and has a negative emotion, he or they try to find the target to cope with the frustration or a negative emotion. The target is mainly a member or members of the out-group. The member as the target is called a scapegoat and this behavior is called scapegoating. Especially, in some scapegoating such as a rioting, the people of the least power to resist are taken attack although they are not responsible for the frustration or the negetive emotion.
• Ex) the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles, California, 1992.

3. Learning to Prejudice

1) Social Idenity Theory

• Social Categorization: the reference group is needed to compare
• Social Identity: identify the in and out-group
• Social Comparison: to improve one's own self-esteem, Festinger(1957), "Well, at least I'm better off than that person."

2) Stereotype Vulnerability(Steele, 1992, 1997)

• When a person in out-group recognizes that he or members in his group are treated in sterotyped way by others, he feels anxious and is influenced on his behavior negatively.
• Ex) In the IQ test, if a person of out-group was told the goal of the test is to compare with another of in-group, he feels discomfort and will get lower score than another of in-group.

4. Overcomeing Prejudice

The best way against is education.

1) Equal Status Contact(Sherif, 1961)

• Robber's Cave

2) The Jigsay Classroom

• collect and share the information with other member who has the other information to resolve the problem together