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The word prejudice comes from the Latin “praeiudicium” which translates as “preliminary judgment”. Therefore, prejudice is the action of anticipating, judging things or people without knowing them.
Throughout the day, even without being aware of it, we say things that demonstrate our prejudices in relation to a person, a group of people or a situation.
Prejudice is a negative attitude towards something or someone that tends to generalize. It assumes the existence of two consequences:
- It creates a cognitive scheme that makes us misclassify information.
- It creates negative evaluations, but it also generates negative emotions.
Types of prejudice
Prejudices can be of many types: religious, political, racial, gender, etc. But we can highlight two main groups:
social prejudices
They arise from differences in social status and people’s desire to justify and maintain these differences.
Social prejudices make us believe that a man in a suit and tie is more trustworthy than a beggar. Our brain records this information, regardless of whether it’s true or not.
racial prejudices
They are prejudices created from the color of people’s skin.
A group of psychologists at New York University, led by Elisabeth Phelps, conducted a study and found that many people make decisions based on unconscious racial prejudice.
The study was carried out with fifty people of different races who intuitively analyzed the reliability of people of different races through more than 300 photos, on a scale from 01 to 09.
This study demonstrated that the reliability of each person depended on race. These unconscious prejudices, says Phelps, come into play when we quickly assess an unknown about which we have no information.
Characteristics of Prejudice
Prejudices have a series of characteristics that are as follows:
They have harmful effects
They have harmful effects because it is an assessment of a particular group, based on insufficient or incomplete information. In this case, prejudiced behavior may not be appropriate.
They are based on a distorted view of reality
Prejudices are a way of interpreting reality, but based on incorrect or incomplete information. Often, prejudice persists despite the person receiving all the correct information.
Involve resistance to change
Prejudices are very difficult to eliminate, because people believe in their truth. This conviction that it is true prevents change.
Break a prejudice a day!
A good recipe to survive and be happy is to break one prejudice a day.
How can we do that? Here are some tips:
Take time to meet people
Before saying or thinking about a person, get to know them better. You might be positively surprised if you give it a chance. We often learn more from differences than from similarities.
Don’t do to others what you don’t want them to do to you
If you don’t like being unreasonably criticized by people who don’t know you, don’t do that to others. Respect people the same way you want to be respected.
develop empathy
Think about how the other person feels and put yourself in their shoes. We don’t know anything about your life and we draw conclusions without having enough information. Listen carefully and enjoy the opportunity to understand and meet other people.
Discover your prejudices and commit to change
Reflect on what you think of people who belong to certain groups or races and commit to change.
Appreciate diversity and learn from differences. Diversity enriches us as people.
The more different people we meet, the more knowledge we acquire. We can exchange ideas on different subjects, maybe even subjects we don’t know about.
accept the differences
It is impossible for us and the other to understand or share everything, because each group has its own customs. The important thing is not to understand, but to accept the differences.
