How does prejudice affect society

Welcome to the United Nations. Toggle navigation. Home Prejudice and discrimination: Barriers to social inclusion. How does discrimination impact social inclusion? The social groups we belong to help form our identities Tajfel, These differences may be difficult for some people to reconcile, which may lead to prejudice toward people who are different.

Prejudice is common against people who are members of an unfamiliar cultural group. Thus, certain types of education, contact, interactions, and building relationships with members of different cultural groups can reduce the tendency toward prejudice.

In fact, simply imagining interacting with members of different cultural groups might affect prejudice. Indeed, when experimental participants were asked to imagine themselves positively interacting with someone from a different group, this led to an increased positive attitude toward the other group and an increase in positive traits associated with the other group.

What are some examples of social groups that you belong to that contribute to your identity? Social groups can include gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, social class, religion, sexual orientation, profession, and many more.

And, as is true for social roles, you can simultaneously be a member of more than one social group. An example of prejudice is having a negative attitude toward people who are not born in the United States. Although people holding this prejudiced attitude do not know all people who were not born in the United States, they dislike them due to their status as foreigners. Can you think of a prejudiced attitude you have held toward a group of people?

How did your prejudice develop? Prejudice often begins in the form of a stereotype —that is, a negative belief about individuals based solely on their membership in a group, regardless of their individual characteristics. Stereotypes become overgeneralized and applied to all members of a group. We cannot possibly know each individual person of advanced age to know that all older adults are slow and incompetent.

Therefore, this negative belief is overgeneralized to all members of the group, even though many of the individual group members may in fact be spry and intelligent. Another example of a well-known stereotype involves beliefs about racial differences among athletes. As Hodge, Burden, Robinson, and Bennett point out, Black male athletes are often believed to be more athletic, yet less intelligent, than their White male counterparts. These beliefs persist despite a number of high profile examples to the contrary.

Sadly, such beliefs often influence how these athletes are treated by others and how they view themselves and their own capabilities. Whether or not you agree with a stereotype, stereotypes are generally well-known within in a given culture Devine, Sometimes people will act on their prejudiced attitudes toward a group of people, and this behavior is known as discrimination.

As a result of holding negative beliefs stereotypes and negative attitudes prejudice about a particular group, people often treat the target of prejudice poorly, such as excluding older adults from their circle of friends. Have you ever been the target of discrimination?

If so, how did this negative treatment make you feel? However, it is important to also point out that people can hold positive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors toward individuals based on group membership; for example, they would show preferential treatment for people who are like themselves—that is, who share the same gender, race, or favorite sports team. This video demonstrates the concepts of prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination.

In the video, a social experiment is conducted in a park where three people try to steal a bike out in the open. The race and gender of the thief is varied: a White male teenager, a Black male teenager, and a White female. Does anyone try to stop them? The treatment of the teenagers in the video demonstrates the concept of racism.

Why are these aspects of an unfamiliar person so important? Although these secondary characteristics are important in forming a first impression of a stranger, the social categories of race, gender, and age provide a wealth of information about an individual. This information, however, often is based on stereotypes. We may have different expectations of strangers depending on their race, gender, and age. What stereotypes and prejudices do you hold about people who are from a race, gender, and age group different from your own?

What are some stereotypes of various racial or ethnic groups? Racism exists for many racial and ethnic groups. Mexican Americans and other Latino groups also are targets of racism from the police and other members of the community.

For example, when purchasing items with a personal check, Latino shoppers are more likely than White shoppers to be asked to show formal identification Dovidio et al. In one case of alleged harassment by the police, several East Haven, Connecticut, police officers were arrested on federal charges due to reportedly continued harassment and brutalization of Latinos.

Have you witnessed racism toward any of these racial or ethnic groups? Are you aware of racism in your community? Sexism is prejudice and discrimination toward individuals based on their sex. Typically, sexism takes the form of men holding biases against women, but either sex can show sexism toward their own or their opposite sex.

Like racism, sexism may be subtle and difficult to detect. Common forms of sexism in modern society include gender role expectations, such as expecting women to be the caretakers of the household. For example, women are expected to be friendly, passive, and nurturing, and when women behave in an unfriendly, assertive, or neglectful manner they often are disliked for violating their gender role Rudman, Research by Laurie Rudman finds that when female job applicants self-promote, they are likely to be viewed as competent, but they may be disliked and are less likely to be hired because they violated gender expectations for modesty.

In media such as newspapers, tv, or radio, for instance. Or on social media. If negative things about a specific group are repeated over and over, then we have to be careful. Especially if no one counters these ideas, more and more people may end up believing the prejudice. Negative prejudices that are common in a society can cause tension between groups. Or result in groups of people being discriminated against or treated unequally on the basis of, for example, their background, skin colour, or religion.

This is called discrimination.