In order to make sense of the world around us, it's important to sort information into mental categories. We cannot possibly avoid this process. Orderly living depends upon it. In other words, we depend upon our ability to place people, ideas, and objects into different categories in order to make the world simpler and easier to understand.
We are simply inundated with too much information to sort through all of it in a logical, methodical, and rational fashion. Being able to quickly categorize information allows us to interact and react quickly, but it also leads to mistakes. Prejudice and stereotyping are just two examples of the mental mistakes that result from our tendency to quickly categorize information in the world around us.
In fact, according to an article in Current Directions in Psychological Science , prejudice comes from a deep psychological need where people who aren't comfortable with ambiguity are prone to make generalizations about others. The process of categorization applies to the social world as well as we sort people into mental groups based on factors such as age, sex, and race. Researchers have found that when it comes to categorizing information about people, we tend to minimize the differences between people in certain groups and exaggerate the differences between groups.
In one classic experiment, participants were asked to judge the height of people shown in photographs. People in the experiment were also told that:. We have taken care to match the heights of the men and women pictured. That is, for every woman of a particular height, somewhere in the booklet there is also a man of that same height. Therefore, in order to make as accurate a height judgment as possible, try to judge each photograph as an individual case; do not rely on the person's sex.
Despite this, participants consistently rated the men as being a few inches taller than the women. Because of their prejudgment that men are taller than women, the participants were unable to dismiss their existing categorical beliefs about men and women in order to judge the heights accurately.
Researchers have also found that people tend to view members of outside groups as being more homogenous than members of their own group, a phenomenon referred to as the out-group homogeneity bias. This perception that all members of an out-group are alike holds true of all groups, whether based on race, nationality, religion, age, or other naturally occurring group affiliations. People tend to see individual differences among members of their own groups, but they tend to see those who belong to out-groups as being "all the same.
In addition to looking at the reasons why prejudice occurs, researchers have also explored different ways that prejudice can be reduced or even eliminated.
Training people to become more empathetic to members of other groups is one method that has shown a considerable success. By imagining themselves in the same situation, people are able to think about how they would react and gain a greater understanding of other people's actions.
Based on existing literature, the Report found that discriminatory norms and behaviours remain widespread and continue to drive social exclusion. Members of racial or ethnic minority groups in many countries feel that they face discrimination in day-to-day encounters. The World Values Surveys assess prejudicial attitudes through questions on whether respondents would object to having certain groups of people as neighbours as a measure of social distance between groups.
Prejudice based on gender is called sexism. Both women and men can be victims of this, but it is more common for women to be the victims. Prejudice based on the national grouping or race a person has is known as racism.
Research Topics. Displaying 1 - 10 of results. Latinos with darker skin color report more discrimination experiences than Latinos with lighter skin color.
More people globally see racial, ethnic discrimination as a serious problem in the U. Concerns about racial and ethnic discrimination are widespread in most of the 17 advanced economies surveyed this spring.
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