Theories of Prejudice: Exploring Social and Cognitive Explanations

🎯 Lesson Objectives: Understanding Prejudice Theories

• 🧠 Define prejudice and its core components (affective, behavioral, cognitive).
• ⚖️ Distinguish between social and cognitive explanations for prejudice.
• 🤝 Explore major social theories: Social Learning, Social Identity, and Realistic Conflict.
• 💭 Delve into key cognitive theories: Social Categorization, Stereotypes, and Attributional Biases.
• 🔬 Analyze the interplay of these theories in forming and maintaining prejudice.

🛠️ Materials Needed for This Session

• ✍️ Whiteboard or projector for key terms and examples.
• 🖊️ Markers or pens for interactive discussions.
• 📄 Optional: Handouts with short case studies on prejudice scenarios.

⏰ Warm-up Activity (5 Minutes): What Comes to Mind?

To kick things off, let's think about prejudice. I want you to silently reflect for a moment:

• 🤔 What are some general examples of prejudice you've observed or read about?
• 🚫 Without naming specific groups, what are some common negative assumptions people make about others?
• 🗣️ Share one anonymous observation with a partner or the class.

📚 Main Instruction: Diving Deep into Prejudice Theories

Prejudice is a complex attitude, often negative, towards a group and its individual members. It involves three components:

• ❤️ Affective Component: The emotional response (e.g., hostility, fear, anger).
• 🚶 Behavioral Component: Discrimination (e.g., avoiding, excluding, treating unfairly).
• 🧠 Cognitive Component: Stereotypes (e.g., generalized beliefs, assumptions).

👥 Social Theories of Prejudice

These theories emphasize the role of social structures, group dynamics, and learning in developing prejudice.

• 👶 Social Learning Theory (Bandura):
  • 👀 Prejudice is learned through observation, imitation, and reinforcement.
  • 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Children often acquire prejudiced attitudes from parents, peers, media, and cultural norms.
  • 📺 Media portrayals can reinforce existing stereotypes and discriminatory behaviors.
• 🆔 Social Identity Theory (Tajfel & Turner):
  • 🌟 People strive to achieve and maintain a positive social identity by belonging to groups.
  • 🗂️ We categorize ourselves and others into ingroups ("us") and outgroups ("them").
  • ⬆️ Ingroup favoritism and outgroup derogation often enhance self-esteem and group cohesion.
  • 📉 Even minimal or arbitrary group differences can lead to bias and discrimination.
• ⚔️ Realistic Conflict Theory (Sherif):
  • 🏆 Prejudice arises from direct competition between social groups for scarce resources (e.g., land, jobs, power, status).
  • 🔥 When groups perceive their goals as mutually exclusive, hostility and prejudice between them tend to increase.
  • 🤝 Superordinate goals (common goals requiring intergroup cooperation) can effectively reduce prejudice and conflict.

🧠 Cognitive Theories of Prejudice

These theories focus on how our mental processes, such as categorization and information processing, contribute to prejudice.

• 🗂️ Social Categorization:
  • 👥 The natural human tendency to classify people into groups based on shared characteristics (e.g., age, gender, race).
  • 🤏 Simplifies social perception and helps us organize information about the world.
  • ➡️ Can lead to ingroup-outgroup distinctions, forming the basis for stereotypes and biases.
• 🏷️ Stereotypes:
  • 💡 Generalized beliefs about the characteristics, attributes, or behaviors of a group and its members.
  • 🌐 Often oversimplified, resistant to change, and can be inaccurate or exaggerated.
  • 👓 Can act as cognitive shortcuts, biasing how we perceive, interpret, and remember information about others.
• ⚖️ Attributional Biases:
  • 🔄 Fundamental Attribution Error: Tendency to attribute outgroup members' negative behaviors to internal, dispositional factors and positive behaviors to external, situational factors.
  • 🛡️ Group-Serving Bias (or Ultimate Attribution Error): Attributing ingroup successes to internal factors and failures to external ones, while doing the opposite for outgroups.
  • 🔁 These biases reinforce existing stereotypes and prejudice by shaping how we explain behavior.

🤝 The Interplay of Social and Cognitive Factors

It's crucial to understand that these theories don't operate in isolation. Social and cognitive factors often interact to fuel prejudice:

• 🌍 Social learning can teach us stereotypes, which are fundamental cognitive constructs.
• 📈 Social identity needs (e.g., to boost self-esteem) can motivate the activation and use of negative stereotypes.
• ⚔️ Realistic conflict situations can heighten cognitive biases, making us more likely to perceive outgroups negatively.
• 🔄 Our inherent cognitive shortcuts (like categorization) make us more susceptible to social influences that promote prejudice.

📝 Practice Quiz: Test Your Understanding

1. ❓ Which theory suggests that prejudice is learned through observing and imitating others, particularly from parents and media?
2. 🤔 Explain how Social Identity Theory accounts for the phenomenon of ingroup favoritism and outgroup derogation.
3. 🏢 A company is experiencing tension between two departments competing for a limited budget. Which theory best explains the potential rise of prejudice in this scenario?
4. 🧠 Describe the cognitive process of social categorization and its potential link to the formation of stereotypes.
5. 💡 Provide an example of how an attributional bias might reinforce a negative stereotype about an outgroup.
6. 🔍 Identify the three core components of prejudice (affective, behavioral, cognitive) and briefly explain each.
7. ✅ How might superordinate goals help to reduce prejudice according to one of the social theories discussed?