Processes that Contribute to Prejudice – Prejudice and Bias (PSY, SOC)

00:00 Okay, let’s talk about prejudice and bias.

00:05 Think of you right now. You are looking at me. You are watching me.

00:08 And in your mind, you’ve probably created some prejudice or bias about me.

00:15 So you don’t necessarily need to do that in a negative mean spirited way but you might look at an individual and very quickly making an assessment.

00:23 But sometime that assessment goes on and develops into a prejudice and it might have some negative connotation to it.

00:31 So, what’s striving that? You know, is it emotion? Is it you cognitively thinking that through? Let’s take a look at some of those variables.

00:39 One thing that we know that can contribute to prejudice is how you view individuals.

00:46 And that consolely develop into an actual stereotype.

00:49 Stereotype are over-simplified ideas about large groups of peoples based on their characteristics.

00:53 And those can be simple things like: race, gender, sexual orientation, religion.

00:58 These are things that separate us from one another but really shouldn’t be used to make generalizations about that groups as a whole.

01:07 So stereotypes can have both positive and negative connotations.

01:11 What can be a positive stereotype? Something like, a certain culture. Let’s just pick anybody. So let’s say Italians.

01:22 The Italians are really, really hard working individuals.

01:25 Or a stereotype might be that Asians are amazing at math.

01:31 And all Indians become doctors.

01:35 These are all what we can considered positive stereotypes.

01:38 But, are they true and valid? Not always, right.

01:41 So that’s the positive stereotype.

01:44 And then, you can have something like a negative stereotype, like a certain culture is extremely lazy.

01:50 or that culture is all abandoned of thieves and terrorist.

01:55 Again, these are negative connotations towards that larger group and so were stereotype them based on some proposed prejudices.

02:06 What is a prejudice? Now, a prejudice refers to thoughts, attitudes, and feelings about a group not based on actual experience.

02:14 Couple of words I want to highlight here are thoughts, attitudes and feelings.

02:18 This is a kind a lot of internalization. This is you thinking at certain way.

02:22 You might never even vocalize or share your prejudice.

02:25 You might just keep that into yourselves, saying, “You know, I really don’t like hairy guy’s named Terry.” And you used to keep that to yourself. And you don’t ever tell anybody that.

02:34 and one day you might meet a hairy guy named Terry.

02:37 And again, you might not act or say any different saying, “Hi, how are you. Nice to meet you Terry.” But in your mind you’re like, “Oh there’s one of those guys again.” And so, it’s not actually based on some previous experience.

02:48 It’s just how you’re feeling. And you don’t necessarily share that.

02:51 Now, discrimination is a little bit different.

02:53 This is involves you acting in a certain way towards a group.

02:56 You might now say, “I don’t ever want to be around a guy named Terry.

03:03 I don’t want ever shake his hand. I don’t like those guys.” And so, you’re actually changing your action as supposed to prejudice, you would shake my hand and say hello.

03:11 Now, because you’re discriminating against me, you actually even won’t to look at me, talk to me or give me the time of the day.

03:16 And so some of the things that I can influence in change discrimination include things like power, prestige and class.

03:22 Where the more power and prestige in higher class you are the more – the easier it for you to actually execute and implement this discrimination.

03:31 In the discrimination module that we’ve done, we’ve talk about how somebody who is extremely powerful can may be determine who they want actually hire with their company and discriminate towards against a certain culture, race or gender, Saying, This is a boys club. I don’t think we need to hire any woman guys. So and so.

03:52 Again, they might not share that with everybody with that internal discussion.

03:55 But they have the power in order to discriminate and keep certain individuals out.

04:00 But they’re acting. They are actually, there is a behavioral change there.