Question

Report any past experiences in which you changed your opinion about a person after working or socializing with them, and discuss the contact hypothesis.

Answer 1

• Prejudice occurs when a person judges another person because of a group they belong to. Often, prejudice refers to racial or gender groups.For many years, psychologists have tried to figure out how to overcome prejudice. One theory is the contact hypothesis. The contact hypothesis says that bringing members from different groups together will reduce prejudice. The idea is that exposure to others of different groups will reduce your prejudice for those groups.
• while I was working in the previous organization,i had a team having members from various religions and cultural backgrounds.The obvious prejudice I had was towards muslims in my team,the information I had read about them and their religion. I was also not keen on working with them because of my negative views.With great reluctance we worked on a project and the member after the completion of the project took the initiative of talking with me personally,initially I didnt pay much heed but slowly I started interacting and that helped me to understand their religion and ideologies better.They were good positive people like all of us and people including myself had absolutely wrong views about them. I guess coming in contact with them helped me to overcome by prejudice otherwise I would have held them long life.Interacting and socializing withe people from different backgrounds definitely helps to open your realm of knowldege and have an unbiased view towards others.