Prejudice and discrimination

Prejudice is an attitude, usually negative, towards a group. It has:

• a cognitive component: a stereotype, a fixed, oversimplified belief about a group ('they are all lazy');
• an affective component: dislike or hatred;
• a behavioural component: discrimination.

Discrimination is the behaviour: treating people unfairly because of their group. Each can exist without the other: a person may be prejudiced but not act on it (perhaps because of laws), or may discriminate without feeling prejudice (following company rules, for instance). Laws can curb discrimination even when prejudice remains.

Sources of prejudice:

• Learning: from family, reference groups, the media.
• A strong social identity and ingroup bias: favouring one's own group.
• Scapegoating: the majority blames a weak minority for its own problems (such as unemployment).
• The 'kernel of truth': some stereotypes contain a grain of truth, which is then wrongly applied to every member.
• Self-fulfilling prophecy: when a group is expected to behave badly, it may come to behave that way, confirming the negative expectation.

Strategies to reduce prejudice:

• minimise learning of prejudice (better parenting and schooling);
• change prejudiced attitudes;
• de-emphasise narrow ingroup identity, and stress shared identities;
• discourage the self-fulfilling prophecy among victims.

Tools: education, and intergroup contact. But not any contact reduces prejudice. It works when the groups:

• cooperate on a shared goal, not compete;
• have close, personal interaction;
• meet as equals (equal status).

Stressing individual identity (seeing a person, not a group label) also helps. Prejudice can be reduced.