Prejudice is a major problem within our society whether it is positive or negative, and is recognised everywhere. Prejudice falls into different types for example racism, ageism, sexism etc. It derives from fixated opinions due to the values and opinions of certain groups in society. Prejudice does not have to be forced on by others but we do it without knowing and there are many theories to explain why prejudice happens and where it all started. One theory is the 'Realistic conflict theory' by Muzafer Sherif. His experiment 'The Robbers Cave' was aimed to show negative prejudice, conflict and stereotypes between different groups can be resolved by the groups working on a common ground together. Sherif et al carried out a field experiment were he got two groups of twelve boys around the age of eleven. The first group called the Eagles and the other group the Rattlers. This experiment entailed three phases which lasted about a week for each phase. In the first week of phase one (in-groups) the two groups kept to themselves and did not interact with each other. The two groups were encouraged to bond with each other within their individual groups. Later on in that week the two groups were made aware of the other group and started to form their identities and started to take part in activities that involved competing against the other team, leading to having bias groups. At the end of the week the two groups were brought together and had to take part in competitive activities, working against each other to win awards for each …show more content…
team member. Making the winning group feeling more stronger and better, forming their own rules and identities. This lead to aggression towards the opponent team, creating a division between us and them. In phase two there was a lot of disharmony between the groups. The researchers would make activities more competitive, they would also arrange for the winning team to win better awards for example a trophy and bladed pocket knife, but having no awards for the loosing team, stirring up more friction between the two groups and giving more self-righteous status to the winning team. In the last phase the two groups were bought together for the first time, there was name-calling and even physical fighting. The groups were given tasks to work together one example is the drinking water problem. The boys we mislead to think that their water was cut off due to damage, both teams cam together without any conflict and solved the problem. Tajfel (1979) and his social identity theory suggested that people feel the need to form groups and start to discriminate against other groups to make their own groups seem more important.
The length people would go to find acceptance and to find a leader to honour and fight with other groups. Social identity theory has similarities and backs up Sherif's robbers cave theory. It shows how easy it is to provoke confrontation between the
groups.
In the book West Side Story by Arthur Laurents there were many prejudices. Prejudice is a favoring or dislike of something without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge. There were prejudices in West Side Story that had to do with the types of people, their races and sex. Sometimes prejudice can be in small doses and can be meaningless, other times prejudice can be very serious and cause death.
Some people say prejudice is part of human nature. Others think we learn it from our elders. Either one could be true, as there are various controversial beliefs about why prejudice exists in the world. One interesting theory is that prejudice is an emotional reaction that is triggered in our brain whenever we encounter unknown people, who have different physical characteristics, different personalities, and/or different beliefs. In fact, these unfamiliar people scare us, and we start treating them differently to reassure ourselves that they cannot possibly matter to us. Another possible reason for prejudice could be negative education about others, either direct or indirect. An example of the direct type would be that you are deliberately taught to avoid certain people who are discriminate...
Sherif argued that intergroup conflict occurs when two groups are in competition for limited resources. This theory is supported by evidence from a famous study investigating group conflict: The Robbers Cave (Sherif, 1954, 1958, 1961). Sherif (1954) conducted an experiment with young boys in a summer camp. The participants were 24 schoolboys, came from the similar,
There are some very magnificent things in the world. There also many horrible things. Prejudice can easily be classified as something terrible and awful. Prejudice is found just about everywhere in the world. There is prejudice against colored people, religions, overweight people and many others as well. But how does one form such perspective of prejudice towards others? A person's experiences can change their perspective on prejudice as well as how they view the world and everybody else around them.
...t does not take into account how conflicts can arise. The realistic conflict theory explains how intergroup conflicts can arise as a result of conflicting goals and competition over limited resources, this can account for prejudices and discrimination (Duff & Peace, 2012). The difference between social learning theory and realistic conflict theory it suggests that it is not the creation of two groups that leads to prejudice, but that they need to have a goal for conflict or prejudice to develop. A disadvantage of social learning theory it does not take into account other factors that could be creating conflict between two groups.
From the reading I learned prejudice is when a person attaches negative emotion to a certain group of people that is not based on facts. Prejudice has two levels cognitive or affective where the cognitive is thinking and feeling prejudice while affecting is actually doing prejudice actions. Discrimination is also discussed in chapter one. Discrimination is unequal behavior or treatment of a person based on them being a member of a group. An example of discrimination would be not getting selected for a job because you are African
A more modern conflict theorist is Lewis Cosner. Lewis Coser defined conflict as “the struggle over values and claims to scarce status, power and resource in which the aims of the opponents are to neutralize, injure, or eliminate their rivals” (culturalapparatus.com, 2013). According to him, the intensity of social conflict is related to the existence of safety-valve institutions, the tolerance of conflicting parties, levels of social mobility, and the solidarity of the conflicting groups. In his research he focuses a lot on the themes of social order and social conflict together. He showed that they can work together to either increase or diminish conflict.
Prejudice can be defined as a negative, hostile attitude toward members of another group, simultaneously resulting in detrimental behaviour towards them. This form of discrimination ranges from minor, unpleasant social exclusions and restrictions to more violent actions, such as ethnic cleansing. People who are prejudiced may or may not display discriminatory behaviour while those who do discriminate may or may not be prejudiced. This entails whether attitudes predict behaviour, a validity of assumption which serves as significant motivation and has also been comprehensively questioned. Such idiosyncrasy, therefore, implies that prejudice and discrimination is not restricted to any particular society.
Prejudice and discrimination have both prevailed in human society since the beginning of civilization.Prejudice is the negative thought and discrimination is the further developed version of prejudice where one 's thoughts are put into action. Discrimination has always divided society as it makes one group seem they are better than another group. Prejudice and discrimination cause isolation, they lead to lack of diversity, and they result in loss of self esteem.
The initial study of this theory was conducted in a three-step experiment. In the 1950’s Muzafer Sherif conducted a study at Robber’s Cave State Park in Oklahoma (Sheriff & Sherif, 1953 p. 5). Baumeister & Bushman (2011) explained, “…22 white, middle class, 11-year old boys were thought they were going on a summer camp experience…Sherif divided the group into two groups of eleven…During the first stage, the two groups had no contact with each other. The boys in each camp became good friends… During the second stage, the boys met each other and competed in contests such as baseball and tug of war… The stakes were high, because the winners took home valuable prizes… The contests produced strong feelings of prejudice toward the other group… In the third stage, researchers tried to reduce the hostility between groups. They soon found that creating hostility was much easier than reducing it” (p. 403-404).” By the end of the program, opposing attitudes began to dwindle, but only after bringing the groups together by using subordinate goals, or a goal that con only be completed with the assistance of others. Because the boys only had a limited number of prizes they could win, and competition for those pri...
Prejudice can be caused because of various reasons. Religion, ethnic race and social status are examples of causes of prejudice. Sometimes prejudice is caused by how we are raised. Many times parents pass on prejudice beliefs to their children. A lot people raised in the southern part of the country are prejudice against blacks. In the early to mid 1960’s, prejudice was alive and well in the south. Blacks had their own bathrooms and were forced to ride in the back of city busses. It’s hard to believe that was doing on only 40 years ago. A lot of Middle Eastern countries are very prejudice against women.
The dictionary defines prejudice as a learned, preformed, and unsubstantiated judgment or opinion about an individual or a group, either favorable or unfavorable in nature. Through the study of the book, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and the poem Telephone Conversation by Wole Soyinka, ones understanding of prejudice and what makes up prejudice changes considerably for what could be perceived as for the better or for the worse. Being ignorant of what is happening or not knowing and properly understanding what prejudice is can make it easy to turn a blind eye to what is happening around you. Learning what prejudice is makes one more conscious of what is happening right next to you in everyday life. Being educated about prejudice is one step closer to a more peaceful life but prejudice will likely never completely disappear, like George Aiken says, “If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, creed and color, we would find some other cause for prejudice by noon.” Ones perception of the concept of prejudice is primarily determined by the environment in which one grew up. As Sydney Smith said, “Never try to reason the prejudice out with a man. It was not reasoned into him, and therefore cannot be reasoned out.” It is evident that ones opinion of other people reflects back to the ethics that they were brought up with.
Prejudice is a judgment based on a preconceived notion about a group of people because of the way they look or act. This perception about an ethnic group or simply a person has existed since the beginning of mankind, it has been hardwired into our brains to think this way. You can see prejudice throughout history, examples being the holocaust of how it started based on the way people looked upon Jews and said that they were manipulating the financial sector. Or the way lots of people think that people who practice Islam are all terrorists which is a completely erratic and a horrible idea, which mosts prejudices are. This feeling about people is based on a primitive mindset of survival and the only solution to this instinct is education, so you can make a conscious thought before making erroneous accusations about people.
However, if the social group fails to understand one another on the goals, values, or interests, it is not surprisingly true that it will be damaged and not functional. A real life example, of an internal conflict, in my sense, would be that of an intimate soccer team that has multiple years playing together. Everybody in the team has knowledge of each other extremely well, including the coach that instructs the team. In addition, let’s suppose that a particular teammate starts becoming envious of the team captain, due to the fact that he feels that he would be much better off leading the soccer team than his current teammate. Next, the jealous team player goes up to the captain, and starts insulting him and accusing him of the team’s losses. The former captain, including other teammates, calmly talk civilized to this hostile teammate, although the insults have been going on for quite a while. The team captain has finally had enough and leaves the team. Now, the social structure has been torn apart. In this circumstance, the intimate soccer team had gone years playing as a whole, but as one teammate was challenging for a scarce resource, it had consequences on the very root of the relationship. My real life example was caused by the fact that a team player
From the text book, prejudice is an unfounded attitude toward an outgroup based on a comparison with one’s ingroup. Honest speaking, I don’t like Hong Kong people. They are kind of rude and shameless towards the people from the mainland of China.