STEREOTYPING, PREJUDICE AND DISCRIMINATION

 A conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image. A partiality that prevents objective consideration of an issue or situation. A preconceived opinion; bias; sentence passed before proper examination of the circumstances Stereotypes can be either positive ("black men are good at basketball") or negative ("women are bad drivers"). But most stereotypes tend to make us feel superior in some way to the person or group being stereotyped. Stereotypes ignore the 

• Stereotypes: Beliefs about members of a specific group. 

• Prejudice: Negative feelings towards members of a specific group.

 • Discrimination: Negative behaviours / actions directed at members of a specific group. 74 uniqueness of individuals by painting all members of a group with the same brush. Prejudice – A prejudice evolves from a stereotype. Prejudices can be positive as well as negative. Positive stereotypes can also lead to discrimination but largely not as harmful as negative. Based on our stereotypes if we start forming hostile or negative opinions of others or when a person dislikes another for no good reason, or has formed a hostile opinion of someone before even getting to know them it is prejudice. It is in other words a negative judgment or opinion formed about an individual or group without knowledge of the facts. Discrimination -- Treating people in a less favorable way because they are members of a particular group. Discrimination is prejudice in action. Let us take a concrete example For instance you perceive ‘A’ community as violent because of stereotyping. You might not show your hatred with words, but your prejudice is there and when you take a negative action you discriminate. For instance you are the boss of a company and a person from that A community applies for a job you already have a prejudice against them and so you might not select the candidate even if he/she is meritorious. This is discrimination. So you see how the three terms described above are interrelated. Thus there is a relationship between stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination. Prejudice and discrimination occur with respect to differences in race, ethnicity, gender, language and a variety of other social categories. Thus, stereotypes and prejudice is a widespread phenomenon, present in all societies of the world. Our society often innocently creates and perpetuates stereotypes, but these stereotypes often lead to unfair discrimination and persecution when the stereotype is unfavorable. Social perception involves the development of an attitude towards another person or group of persons. 

ATTITUDES / BELIEFS ACTIONS / BEHAVIORS STEREOTYPES PREJUDICE DISCRIMINATION 

A stereotype is an attitude towards a person or group on the basis of some physical characteristic or physical fact. A "stereotype" is a generalization about a person or group of persons. We develop stereotypes when we are unable or unwilling to obtain all of the information we would need to make fair judgments about people or situations. In the absence of the "total picture," stereotypes in many cases allow us to "fill in the blanks." For example, if we are walking through a dark lane at night and encounter three senior citizens wearing kurtas and having walking sticks, we may not feel as threatened as if we were met by three college-aged boys wearing jeans and leather jackets. Why is this so? We have made a generalization in each case. These generalizations have their roots in experiences we have had in the past, read about in books and magazines, seen in movies or television, or have had narrated to us by friends and family. In many cases, these stereotypical generalizations are reasonably accurate. Yet, in virtually every case, we are resorting to prejudice by ascribing characteristics about a person based on a stereotype, without knowledge of the total facts. For instance we may assume that a person from ‘A’ community will be illiterate or backward. Sometimes we may have positive over generalizations or stereotypes like all Tamilians are good in Mathematics. Television, books, comic strips, and movies are all abundant sources of stereotyped characters. For example the Sardar jokes in movies and joke books depicting them to be foolish, AfroAmericans portrayed as being unintelligent, lazy, or violence-prone. As a result of viewing these stereotyped pictures or news items, we encourage prejudice. So generally a prejudice would emerge from a stereotype. Social psychologists define a stereotype as the cognitive component of the prejudiced attitude. It is defined as a generalization about a group whereby identical characteristics are assigned to virtually all members, regardless of actual variation among the members. Prejudice is defined as the affective component - hostile or negative attitude toward a distinguishable group of people based solely on their group membership and discrimination is the behavioral component of the prejudiced attitude - an unjustified negative or harmful action toward members of a group based on their membership. Possible prejudicial effects of stereotypes are: 

• Justification of ill-founded prejudices or ignorance. 

• Unwillingness to rethink one's attitudes and behavior towards stereotyped group. 76 

• Negative attitudes towards different social groups resulting in hatred, alienation. 

• Preventing some people of stereotyped groups from entering or succeeding in activities or fields. In simple words stereotypes distort our perceptions. Once a stereotype is activated, these traits come easily to the mind and will affect the way we perceive things. Another important ill effect is we will tend to attend more to stereotype–consistent information and reject information that does not confirm to the stereotype we have. Thus, stereotypes obviously influence social judgments we make about the other group, they influence how much we like or dislike a person or a given group.