Now and then there has always existed a phenomenon of prejudice or prejudgment, i.e. an unduly opinion towards a particular group of people or even a person based on general idea but lacking plausible information. A prejudice can be both negative and positive. In the first case, a hostile attitude is formed towards some people or process. However, a positive prejudice is unreasonable but favorable attitude. The bases for prejudgment may vary greatly: it can be religious affiliation, life style, social class, profession or occupation, hobby, nationality or ethnicity, language and gender, age, etc. As noted by Gordon Allport in his book, The Nature of Prejudice, it can be ascribed not only to separate individuals, but it also exists on the collective level, in the society’s consciousness. He also notes that it is quite difficult to distinguish only one factor that causes the appearance of prejudice. There can be several of them: biological ground, social learning and social cognition.
Firstly, a nature of any human being is quite primitive from the biological perspective. It relies on reflects and impulses. As for the prejudice, which is mainly considered to be a society’s problem, it is also formed on the same ground. It is evolutionary proved that people tend to create groups with the similar and abide by the set rules in order not be a black sheep. Phelps research (2012), in which people were placed in MRI scanner and shown different pictures (of disabled, homeless, rich, old people and athletes), threw some light on the nature of prejudice appearance. For instance, insula, the hormone when people feel disgust, activated when participants saw the pictures of the homeless. Other hormones were activated in different situations. Basically, even without knowing the background and those people in the pictures, participates evaluated them grounding on their own judgments or even experiences from the past. However, in this research several important factors were not included, i.e. cultural and ethnic values of participants. Moreover, only adults took part in an experiment which cannot give a full picture on this issue. There always has been only one way to eliminate our biases against different social groups, i.e. learning to be more tolerant towards different ethnical, cultural, religious or even political groups, accept each other. However, looking deeply in the root of the problem, scientist usually point out this biological ground. They claim that prejudice was inherent to our ancestors. So to get rid of this negative phenomenon, it is not enough to look only at its surface. To my mind, we will always face these differences between different social groups and they will feel quite hostile to changes.
One of the factors, that was not considered in Phelps research, was the participation only of adults. However, this is a very significant part in understanding of prejudice and stereotypical opinion. The thing is, that there is a strong social ground for it – upbringing. Socialization of any child is a serious and influential period that determines whether a child will feel comfortably in the particular society. Parents are the first “teachers” and “guides” into it. Consciously or not, but the child takes the experience of their caregivers to itself, accepting it unquestionable. I had a friend from a respectable family. All our acquaintances were fascinated by the way her parents lived: they were rather rich, both professors at the university. When seen in public, they impressed everyone with their neatness and cheer mood. And only few people, including me, knew that they were extremely cruel towards their daughter, not letting her out of the house for days, forbidding communication with her friends. In times when she came out for a couple of hours, she felt depressed and upset, seeing no perspectives for future. It was very difficult to cheer her up, I almost always tried her to talk out her pain and fears after which she felt better. Anyway, when she first told me her story, I could not believe my ears. Her parents have always been nothing but friendly to me. But once I decided to visit her at home. Standing at the door I hears yells and swearing addressed to my friend and her cry. It is useless to tell the truth to other people, for they have formed their own opinion of my friend’s parents, judging them by their appearance, occupation and manner of communication. There is a stereotypy in the society that professors cannot be cruel, narrow-minded or hostile, that is why they have such an image. For instance, my parents have also wanted me to study hard in order that I can become a respectable scientist, so for me it was also difficult to ruin this stereotype. An important thing is also that we tend to form certain opinion about other people or groups of people throughout our development. In other words, our experience and negative interaction with them will probably carve into our attitudes towards similar people. That is, for example, I knew a girl had usually conflicts with one of the representatives of youth subculture. Although their contradiction was based on a simple hostility towards each other, this girl was clearly persuaded that the matter was in that girl’s affiliation to a youth subculture. So whenever she saw other members of that group she ascribed hostility and indecent behavior to them. In this case her negative experience spread onto her future relationships with the representatives of this subculture.
This above-mentioned example proves also a second theory devoted to prejudice studies: cognitive. According to a cognitive theory, people are likely to generalize their ideas of a particular group of people without distinguishing separate individuals with their unique set of features, background and life experience. Devine (1989) developed a theory how prejudiced beliefs are formed and processed. She determines controlled and automatic negative opinions. According to this theory, when people analyze the information about each other, they first apply the stereotypes they know and only then the real information. After this it is their choice, whether to accept or discard the negative prejudice they have got so far. In the majority of cases people subconsciously automatically accept their bias without giving it further consideration.
List of References
Davis, M. (2006).Neural systems involved in fear and anxiety measured with fear-potentiated startle. Am. Psychol. 61, 741–756
Devine, P. G. (1989). Stereotypes and Prejudice: Their Automatic and Controlled Components. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 56(1), 5-18.
Grewal, D. (2011). The Evolution of Prejudice. Retrieved from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evolution-of-prejudice/
Phelps, E. A., Kubota & J. T., Banaji, M. R. (2012). The neuroscience of race. Nature Neurosci. 15, 940–948
