Throughout the day, and without being aware of it, we speak and say things that denote our prejudices towards a person, a group of people, or a situation. The word prejudice comes from the Latin “praeiudicium” which translates as “prejudice”. Therefore, prejudice is the action of prejudging, or judging things or people without knowing them.
Prejudice is a negative attitude towards something or someone, which leads to generalization. It involves two consequences:
- A cognitive schema is created that makes us order information incorrectly.
- Not only does it create negative evaluations, but it also generates negative emotions .
Types of prejudices
Prejudices can be of very diverse types: religious, political, racial, gender, etc. But we can highlight two large groups:
Social prejudices
They arise from differences in social position and people’s desire to justify and maintain those differences. Social prejudices make people believe that a man in a suit and tie is more trustworthy than a homeless person. That information remains in our brains, whether it is true or not.
Racial prejudices
These are those that derive from the color of people‘s skin. A group of psychologists from New York University, led by Elisabeth Phelps, conducted a study and found that many people make decisions based on unconscious racial prejudices.
In the study, 50 people of various races were asked to intuitively rate the trustworthiness of individuals of different races depicted in more than 300 photographs, on a scale of 1 to 9.
The trustworthiness of each person was found to depend on their race. These unconscious biases, Phelps argues, come into play when we quickly assess a stranger about whom we have no information.
Characteristics of prejudices
Prejudices have a series of characteristics that are the following. Let’s look at those that are most frequent and with which you surely agree:
- They have harmful effects: since it is a value judgment about a group based on insufficient or incomplete information. On this basis, prejudiced behavior may not be appropriate.
- They are based on a distorted view of reality: prejudices are a way of interpreting reality but are based on erroneous or incomplete information. Sometimes prejudice persists despite having all the information.
- They imply resistance to change: prejudices are very difficult to eliminate since people believe in their truth. This conviction that it is real prevents change.
Break a prejudice a day!
A very good recipe for surviving and being happier is: breaking one prejudice a day. How can we do it? We offer you some tips for doing so:
1. Take your time to get to know people
Before you say or think anything about a person, take the time to get to know them well, to find out who they are. They may positively surprise you if you give them a chance. Often, we learn more from differences than from similarities.
2. Do not do to others what you do not like to be done to you
If you don’t like being criticized for no reason and without knowing who you are, don’t do the same to other people. Respect others as you want to be respected.
3. Develop empathy
Think about how the other person feels and put yourself in their shoes. We don’t know what life others have had and we often jump to conclusions without having enough information. Listen carefully and enjoy the opportunity to understand and get to know other people.
4. Discover your prejudices and commit to change
Reflect on what you think about 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 points of view we will have and the more ideas they will give us on topics that we may not know or only partially know.
5. Accept differences
You can’t understand or share everything because each group has its customs, but maybe another person from another group does not understand your customs. The important thing is not to understand, but to accept the differences.