Critically analyse methods which might be used to overcome prejudice.
According to the oxford shorter dictionary prejudice is; a previous judgement especially a premature or hasty judgement, preconceived opinion; bias, favourable or unfavourable prepossession, usually with unfavourable condition, an unreasoning prediction or objection.
Therefore prejudice is usually theorized as an attitude that has a cognitive element e.g. how people hold a certain belief about another group. It has an emotional element e.g. either they dislike or like the other group or it has an impulse element e.g. they might have a natural predisposition to have negative thoughts towards the other group. However most researchers define prejudice as a negative attitude.
Alport (1954) in his seminal volume the nature of prejudice defined prejudice as “an antipathy based on faulty and inflexible generalization i.e. it’s an outgrowth of normal human function. He believed that “the human mind must think with the aid of categories…. Once formed categories are the basis for normal prejudgment. Humans cannot possibly avoid this process. Orderly living depends upon it (p.20). This explanation tells us that prejudice is not something logical or based in fact, but rather, on a series of assumptions, half-truths and guesses.
Based on recent evaluations of what prejudice is, I have come to understand prejudice is based on an individual’s attitude whether positive or negative toward groups which creates a standard between groups, prejudice needs to be viewed as a process within a set of relationships, rather than a state or characteristic of particular people (Abrams and Houston, 2006; Abrams and Christian, 2007).
Sometimes not all pre-conception are damaging or particularly consequential. Some are quite favourable (for example, the belief that Chinese people are better at maths than Europeans would be favourable towards Chinese people in Britain). Prejudice would only happen when such predispositions are potentially harmful and consequential because they reduce the standing or value attached to a person through their group membership.
This will happen when stereotypes, attitudes and emotions towards the group are focussed on a particular individual member of the group.
To prove the existence of prejudice an experiment by Duncan, participants were asked to watch a film that showed an actor giving another actor a push in a heated conversation; however in the experiment there were 2 experimental groups, one group saw the film with white actors and the other group saw the film with black actors. The results showed that the white participants where persuaded to classify a black actors push as violent than a white actors push.
There are further researches that suggest prejudice such as Sheriffs Robbers cave experiment.
All this experiments and how prejudice and discrimination affect people’s chances, their social resources, self-esteem and motivation, and their commitment with wider society makes researchers question the effect of prejudice reduction which I would talk about further in this essay.
Few researchers dispute the claim that reducing prejudice is an easy process, because it’s extremely difficult to reduce prejudice this is because prejudice is arguably a permanent aspect of society.
This could be interpreted into two forms, the first form views prejudice as an innate expression which could be biological and environmental factors. This form suggests that people wouldn’t change their views.
The second claim understands prejudice stems from our social world where prejudice is encouraged. However people argue that prejudice could be reduced by some strategies such as. The contact hypothesis theory which states that prejudice will be reduced with increased social contact between members of the groups contact between groups is more likely to increase mutual understanding, but it needs to be close and meaningful contact (Alport 1954). However this could only be carried out if they follow some conditions such as the contact theory must be done with groups of equal status, they must share common goals, they must be willing to participate in inter group co-operation and have political support. And the groups have to work together for a common goal without feeling threatened or in competition with another group. This hypothesis by Gordon Alport claims prejudice is as a result of generalization and overloading a group based on a mistaken assumption therefore prejudice can be reduced as a group learns more about the other group.
Support of contact hypothesis comes from studies like Deutsah and Collins two housing projects which involved Blacks and whites. When whites and Blacks where put together in one community there was less prejudice because they were of equal status than when Whites and Blacks lived in a different community.
Jahoda conducted a study that showed white Americans could change their attitude towards living with black people when they lived with Black Americans as neighbours.
When someone from a majority groups interacts with someone from a minority group the experience is positive and there’s an attitude change in both groups as the member feels less threatened (Alport 1954). This is because the initial thought by the other group if it’s a negative one is changed and it turns positive with the participant of both groups is extended to the rest of the group (Brow&wade, 1987, Hewstone&Brown, 1986; Riordan & Ruggiero,1980).

For someone’s behaviour to change to achieve a goal they must have some degree of motivation. This motivation can take many forms such as receiving a reward, avoiding a punishment or a desire to maintain a positive image of one self.
Psychologists have found several types of motivation to reduce prejudice. One important factor is people’s personal standard if they have egalitarian attitude, (Devine 1989).
They must have both internal and external motivation. Internal motivation would be driven by a desire to act in with their personal standard of egalitarianism. External motivation would be to avoid negative reactions from others for behaving in a prejudiced way.
( Devine, Plant, Amodio et al 2002) suggested that people with big internal/low external motivation showed lower levels of prejudice. This could be explained because highly internalized motivation is done out of free will i.e. their autonomous state rather than their agentic state.
To avoid prejudice thinking, people can try to focus on other thoughts e.g. trying to ignore group membership of others and focusing on stereotypic individuality information which was discovered by (Macrose et al 1994).
There are also individual approaches like feelings and cognitions that are steered by a variety of theories that recommends different strategies, such as instructions, expert opinion and targeting emotions.
Instruction; (Stephen & Stephen 1984) blames ignorance as one of the roots of prejudice. Co-operations now send employees abroad, teaching people how to interpret behaviours of different culture and racial groups (Landis et al 1976).
Instruction system focuses on ways to think, this will help individuals avoid generalisations (Gardiner 1972) successful study, showed after training students were more inclined to write positive stories about an interracial encounter and report friendliness towards racial and ethnic out-groups.
But instructions to reduce prejudice and generalisation have had the opposite effects that researchers intended because it increases their access of prejudice (Galinsky & Moskowie 2000) as (Kulik et al 2000) found business students who were trained to subdue negative thoughts about elderly estimated older job candidates less favourably than students who did not receive suppression instructions.
In general studies suggest that people who are thought to supress their prejudicial thoughts do not reduce their prejudicial views. This is not an effective way of reducing prejudice as it does not change their negative thoughts.

Expert opinion and norm information: (Crandall & stangor 2005) social psychological research shows that prejudiced attitudes, and behaviours are greatly inclined by social norms and under some situations people are persuaded by expert opinions like teachers.
Telling people that prejudice and stereotyping is not normal and acceptable in their peer group reduces prejudice.
However this is not ethically right because influencing other people’s thoughts isn’t making them think independently and it’s forcing your views on other people.
People should be able to have a choice on what they think is wrong and right.
Also asking people to provide solid reasons for their prejudices should reduce them because if they cannot be justified then it’s not true.
Psychological theories like classical conditioning have been used to reduce prejudice such presenting positive images of famous black people e.g. Barrack Obama to people who think negative of black people reduced their negative impression of Black people. This is not an effective way of reducing prejudice as some adults have already learnt to associate people with certain stereotypes, it would be hard learning to associate that with positive attitudes.

Targeting emotions: (smith 1993) suggest that emotional states can influence how prejudice is expressed. Writing from the perspective of a Black person reduced stereotypes of black people; because seeing things from the opposite group leads to more positive thinking of the out groups personality characteristics (Galinsky & Moskowitz 2000; Vescio et al 2003).
(Esses& Dovidio 2002) suggest focus on feelings rather than thoughts when watching a video that showed anti-black discrimination increased their desire to increase interaction to black people because it change their emotions. However this study did not change participant’s beliefs towards black people, it might not be an effective way to reduce prejudice.

If prejudice is to be reduced it is important to show a wide analysis of ways they start in all social processes. In analysing the reduction of prejudice we need to understand how social psychology emphasizes on the areas that people should understand.
Firstly
The inter group context; this explains how people in different social group view members of other groups. This may be due to power differences, the exact problem the group is facing and if the group members pose a threat to them. This helps reduce prejudice as if we face the problems within the group behaviour and know how to resolve the conflict the group might be facing, we might get ways to reduce prejudice.

The psychological bases for prejudice
This is based on the way the person sees themselves and others, if they feel belonged i.e. social identity theory and social norms which defines people included or excluded from social groups.
Prejudice is more likely to develop and keep re happening in groups that have different or conflicting key values. Therefore reducing prejudice will aim to see how two groups can work together but still have different or conflicting key values. However it is difficult for people to stick and have same goals. Psychologist researchers suggest this might be hard to tackle and might work only on a small group basis.

Prejudice is also more likely to occur when others are seen as different e.g. racial prejudice; however this can be reduced with theories like intergroup contact theory where there will be les prejudice if the groups are more likely to have more contact, therefore in cases like racial prejudice. Black and white people living in one area being in cont5act and seeing themselves as equal can stop prejudice.
However this is difficult to9 establish as prejudice is someone’s personal attitude and it’s hard to change an internal force.
It is also hard to maintain an equal group as some groups are unequal as they maybe poorer, less educated and have fewer opportunities. Some group may have more power than others in society this doesn’t sometimes cause prejudice, it’s people’s wrong knowledge and inappropriately generalising that should be understood.
Prejudice is also more likely to occur if people sell their identity in terms of belonging to particular groups and their group discriminate against others.
This could be reduced by laws preventing against discrimination and a wider outreach by people and government on trying to change outlooks on peoples attitude however (Olson, Vernon, Harris & Jang 2001; Tesser 1993) suggest that attitudes have also shown to have some genetic basis, and highly heritable attitudes can be more resistant to change than less heritable attitude. Which was cited by Richard E. Perky, S. Christian Wheeler, Zakary L. Tormala, Pessuasion and attitude vhange journal.
Nonetheless legislation and the direct provision of services and resources only works to some extent, because they cannot on their own deal with fixed and rooted social attitudes that people have , whether deliberately or otherwise, to prejudice. Because it is an internal thinking.

We also need to understand manifestations of prejudice; prejudice can be expressed by stereotyping in either a negative or positive way, the group or person might fear that other groups may pose a threat.
Therefore reducing negative prejudice might mean making people feel that they are equal; they feel less threatened by other group or member.

Another way of reducing prejudice is a theory by Stephen and Stephen’s list by reducing realistic threats from an out group is to create a lesser realistic conflict by sharing power with the out-group, however this approach could be criticized by Sidaus & Veniegas cited from reducing prejudice page 7 the theory argues with the in-groups motivation of wanting to get higher status over the smaller out-group.

Dasgupta(1999) suggested that exposure to positive role models from minority ethnic groups can lessen prejudice and also explicit negative attitude this could however be disclaimed by Johnson & Hewstone (1992) as they suggested picking out a couple of individuals from the minority group just represents that they are non-typical

To reduce prejudice we don’t always have to tackle it when the attitude has already been formed. Prejudice can start in childhood. Understanding prejudice in childhood can be a method in reducing prejudice in childhood.
Psychologist and educationist were shocked with the claim that from age two children can identify their own and others gender and ethnicity. If young children feel there is already a gap or inequality they can also hold negative attitudes towards people that belong to different ethnic group because people in the same ethnic group prefer their own ethnic group over others, this already creates prejudicial attitudes.
In children a positive way to reduce prejudice would be inclusion and the government is committed to inclusion ad a means of creating a more equal and non-bias society, inclusion of children with different gender, ethnicity, disabled and non-disabled children, will help achieve inclusion which would reduce prejudice.
There are different interventions to reduce prejudice in children. 1. Multicultural approach
This approach encourages diversity by making children learn to accept and appreciate cultural differences. It makes children understand there’s a difference in groups instead of dwelling on the differences, it makes children learn to accept these differences in a positive way rather than a negative conception. This approach makes children understand that prejudice will be reduced by embracing positive diversity.
This could be done by reading multicultural stories as it explores various aspects of ethnicity, disability or nationality by using characters in the story as examples.
This approach would be effective in reducing prejudice as it makes children aware of people’s differences but focus on the positive ones and there are different activities that could be done to reach this goal, but it’s difficult to make people see only the positive aspects, it would be hard to ignore what children see as a negative thing in a group. 2. Colour blind approach
In this approach social group membership are not discussed, they are non-existent. It focuses on treating people as individuals rather than on a social group membership like ethnicity or disability. Not emphasizing social group membership, children will learn to focus on an individual when forming opinions about people. For example stories in which groups which the characters belong where not emphasized and the story only focuses on individual qualities of the characters. The disabled and non-disabled groups were not mentioned or discussed.
This approach doesn’t make children understand that there will always be differences in groups this makes a stable world and it doesn’t encourage them to appreciate these differences. Not mentioning if a child is disabled will only make them more curious on why the child or person is different. This approach can only be used for younger children because as they grow older they get curious. 3. Common ground approach
This approach suggests that the best way to reduce prejudice is emphasizing the similarities between groups and membership of common groups such as school and hobbies. The minor group a child is in such as ethnic group as well as the common group members that both groups belong in.
This approach could be effective as if similarities of the opposite group is stressed to children they feel less inferior. Then they treat all groups equal. This also stresses that people are different but finding similarities make them equal. 4. Counter- stereotype Education
This approach is slightly different from the other three, because the other approaches suggest prejudice can be reduced by changing children’s views of the connection between their group and other groups or changing what the supposed likenesses between the groups.
But this approach views prejudice reduction by dealing directly with people’s stereotypic thinking rather than trying to change children’s perception of their relationship between their own and other groups.
This approach suggests prejudice can be reduced by making children learn that their pre-conception about other groups are not true.
This approach deals with teachi8ng children common stereotypes that children and adults may hold about certain groups e.g. children would be taught that women can do jobs that are stereotypical for men and also ethnic minorities can also hold a big status position.
I think this is the most effective approach in reducing prejudice from a young age because it addresses rather than ignore that adults have prejudicial thoughts. It deals with stereotypical beliefs from a young age so children don’t make same mistakes and belief stereotypical claims.

Working with children and understanding how children think can be a way to reduce prejudice, because understanding differences and similarities between groups and their school based contact would help in reduction of prejudice. As it encourages positive attitude and thinking

Another way of reducing prejudice is Tajfels social identity and categorisation theory; it explains prejudice by people having a tendency to identify themselves in a group, and to categorize other people as within or outside that group.
This theory states that conflict does not necessarily make prejudice happen but being in a group and being aware that there’s another group makes prejudice develop. Prejudice occurs in three stages 1. Social categorisation: this is an automatic process, this happens by placing ourselves and other members in the group we belong to which is the in-group. The other group that we do not belong to is the out-group. 2. Social identification: this is when we embrace the identity, norms and values of the group we belong to i.e. the in-group e.g. wearing the uniform associated with the in-group. 3. Social comparison: this is comparing the group we belong to, to the other group i.e. comparing in-group and the out-group.
We intentionally do this to raise the confidence or self-esteem of the in-group, because if the out group appears weaker the in-group feels superior.
Support for this theory comes from Sheriff et al (1961) ‘robbers cave experiment’. When two groups meet and are in competition with each other, prejudice is bound to happen leading to inter group conflict. However co-operative task can reduce prejudice as they have a common goal.
This theory suggests that simple classification is enough to create prejudice.
(Crisp & Hewstone 2007) suggest reducing prejudice in groups has four different stages. 1. Decatigorisation
In this approach individual approach is highlighted and emphasized on over group identity. Support comes from (Betten court et al) he found that participants were less likely to be bias to their in-group over the other group when both teams worked together.
This model has been condemned because t doesn’t cover bias reduction toward the entire group (Rothbart & John 1985) and for suppressing important subgroup identities (Berry 1984).
2. Recategorization
This approach encourages people to think of out-group members as part of one superordinate group by using same uniforms. Supports comes from (Gaertner & Dovidio 2000) this study found in-group members favoured their group less in terms of evaluation and rewards to co-operate more with the out-group.
3. Crossed categorisation
This is based on the idea that prejudice is reduced when people of two opposing groups know that they are members of a third group. E.g. having different ethnic diversity but having a common national identity. ( vesicio et al 2004) suggested that this changes the perception of what boundaries the group have but it doesn’t reduce out-group bias.
4. Integrative model
This has the same idea as cross categorization technique by being aware of group differences but having a common group identity, or by having two groups use their best skill solves a task under equal status conditions ( Dovidio et al 1997).

Lastly the media could also be a useful source for reducing prejudice, however there is limited evidence about the effectiveness of media campaigns because there is a doubt that it could have the opposite effect.
(Maio, Greenland, Bernard and Esses 2001) investigated how people responded to anti- racist messages, they found that people who had mixed feelings about ethnic minorities took more time to read, but it had consequences. When people read the messages they expressed more prejudice. Those who did not have any feelings became less prejudiced. These studies show that media can sometimes work but give the opposite effect.

In conclusion we have to ask the question if prejudice can be stopped and what the most effective way to reduce prejudice. There cannot be one method to reduce prejudice as there’s a broad approach in reducing prejudice however the method with the most support and backed up evidence is the contact hypothesis. Brown and colleagues gathered high school students from Belgium , England and Germany to find how much contact the majority and minority group had in relation to prejudice. This study found that contact reduced prejudice. Supporting the contact hypothesis as the most effective way, this also showed contact reduced prejudice because contact reduced intergroup activity. however prejudice also restricted contact. Therefore trying to reduce prejudice must start with a detailed analysis of intergroup context and how prejudice starts within the group.

RefRENCES

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Dominic Abrams. (2010). Processes of prejudice:Theory, evidence and intervention. Equality and Human Rights Commission Research report 56. 56 (1), 5-90.

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