Question

In Social Psychology terms: Explain the relationship between stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination and the differences between these terms.

What examples from your life come to mind? You may also post a link to a current events news story relevant to the course and discuss how it is related to the topic for this week. – Ensure to include the link.

Answer 1

Stereotypes refer to exaggerated beliefs or opinions about the characteristics of different social groups, which lead to oversimplified generalizations about those groups. Stereotypes neglect the concept of 'individual differences'. A stereotype can be a positive belief or generalization or a negative belief or generalization about a group. Stereotypes can be related to any characteristic of a group like race, ethnicity, age, gender and sexual orientation. For example, people can positively generalize about 'Italians' and consider them to be 'romantic'. People can hold a negative belief about 'old people' that they are 'boring'. A prejudice is an irrational or indefensible negative attitude or feeling towards an outgroup or a prejudgment related to it. Prejudice leads to the generation of affective states like disliking, anger, fear, disgust, discomfort and hatred in an individual. For example, 'racism' is a kind of prejudice, in which one racial group considers itself to be superior and another racial group to be inferior. Discrimination refers to the act of unfair treatment of a person, as he or she has certain traits. When a person is treated less favourably, he or she is discriminated against. Discrimination can be related to gender, race, age, religion, etc. For example, women are often discriminated against men, when it comes to promotion, because of their gender.

The above-mentioned paragraph highlights the differences between the concepts of stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination, along with examples related to each. However, stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination related concepts too. More specifically, stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination are all social psychology concepts, which influence people’s lives in several ways. They influence one's academic performance, the career one chooses, his or her productivity at work, etc. They determine attitudes towards others and the consequent actions. They affect the development of social norms or rules and regulations of a group, concerning an outgroup.