Prejudice

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Everyone’s brain grows when they learn, but everyone learns differently. This is known as neuroplasticity. People learn from other people around them. As Charles R Swindle, says, “Prejudice is a learned trait. You're not born prejudiced; you're taught it.” Today people refer prejudice as a negative feeling towards another social group. Prejudice exists in all countries and in all cultures. Prejudice has many causes and severe effects.
It is important that one understands what prejudice first is. Being prejudice is when a person likes or dislikes someone or something based on opinions, not facts or experience. There are numerous features of prejudice including stereotyped beliefs, and a tendency to discriminate against members of the group. …show more content…

Firstly, prejudice occurs because of social cognition or the way we think. Social cognition involves the creation of group categorizations. People group members by similarities. Members of the group show in-group bias. In-group bias is the especially positive feelings and special treatment people defined as being part of our in-group (the group with which a person identifies and of which he or she feels a member), and the negative feelings and unfair treatment we reserve for others simply because defined them as being in the out-group (groups which an individual does not identify with). Another aspect of social categorization is the out-group homogeneity bias, the perception that those in the out-group are more similar to each other than they really are. This is basically the belief that “all Asians are alike”. It is very hard to change someone who is prejudice against something using logic. Firstly, when a person is being prejudice; there is an emotional aspect of attitudes. Next, people with strong prejudices have the target groups in their head. They will to pay attention them, and recall the information that stands with their beliefs. Prejudice can also occur because of the realistic conflict theory. This theory says that limited resources lead to conflict between groups and result in increased prejudice and discrimination. An example of the realistic conflict theory would be today’s economic and political competition. There is also …show more content…

People who have experience prejudice start having a negative self-image. He/she starts to believe that all the mean comments about him/her are true. This automatically leads to self-hatred. People who can’t change their gender or race have depression and anxiety. Next, victims of prejudice may have a hard time performing everyday tasks. Researchers at the University of Toronto Scarborough studied individuals' reactions to negative stereotyping, and found that after being placed in a situation where they were victims of prejudice, many people found it hard to concentrate or were even aggressive. Also, once a person experience prejudice aggression forms within them. For example, because of color, a woman is not allowed to eat at a certain restaurant. She probably has a tremendous amount of rage inside of her for un-accepting people. This rage made find its way out through different forms of violence. Lastly, prejudice victims feel vulnerable and start to fear the world. They start becoming less social and less willing to take any sort of risk. This fear stops them from enjoying their life. It also causes them to form a negative

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