Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Prejudice

Prejudice is defined as an opinion formed before hand or without knowledge, unreasonable, hostile attitudes regarding a group. This is where individuals high in openness-to-experiance sought more contact with minority group members. Also, in agreeableness had positive attitudes toward minority group members from quality of contact. Prejudice could be very harmful because it is stereotyping.
A couple of examples of prejudice are as follows:
It is general perception that people with mental illness are prone to violence. This has developed from the stereotypes portrayed in movies or written in books, where a mentally ill person becomes violent and goes on a rampage. Although, there are a few isolated cases among mentally ill people, who have a tendency towards violence, but if the statistics are looked at, they show that mentally ill people are no more violent than the average person.
If someone is walking in a secluded area at night, and a couple of senior citizens with canes in hand, come from the opposite side, the person will not feel threatened. However if instead of the senior citizens, three teenagers dressed in jeans and t-shirts with lots of metal chains around their neck are approaching from the other side, the person might feel threatened a bi, even without any kind of provocation from their end.
These are two examples of prejudice, it does not always have to do with race and ethnicity.

2 comments:

  1. I agree with your post. I know that I have tattoos that show when I go to the beach & some people look at me funny cause I'm a young women with tattoos on my back and shoulders and at one point i had 14 holes in my ear; no place too drastic. I would get judged all the time for the piercing and tattoos, which don't make me a bad person or a good person. They are both just something I like and I feel is a way to express myself. We need to get past this prejudice in my opinion and realize it doesn't always make you the person you are today. Its ways of expressing your self; even with the example you said with the teenagers in t shirts and jeans with lots of metal chains. They could be the sweetest people ever. Don't judge a book by its cover.

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  2. Prejudice haunts everyone. There's little known civilizations where people are immune to having no judgment over a certain ideal, race, culture or individual differences. We're human and with that we have an innate function of critiquing the people and our environment, even if we claim to be prejudice free minds. Our minds will produce conscious and unconscious thoughts of what we view and experience, it's simply human nature. It's all about how you carry those thoughts and apply them to the world.

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