What kind of prejudices are there

Delegate: Find someone who can help. Delay: Check in with the person later. Sometimes, you may not feel comfortable or safe intervening in the moment. When that happens, reach out when you can and see how you can help. Thapar-Olmos recommends finding agency and voice where you feel comfortable. Identify ways you can support, speak, and act on behalf of causes and people you care about.

Allyship, advocacy, and activism are not mutually exclusive for any person or act. Allyship is support for a particular group, especially a marginalized group that you are not a member of. Advocacy is public support for a cause or movement. Activism is action for social or political change in the form of campaigning, protesting, and the like.

Everyone can still be surprised by their own biases, and that can make people feel vulnerable or defensive. But people need to push through that reaction.

The following section includes tabular data from the graphics in the post above. What Is Prejudice? Positive Stereotypes.

Negative Stereotypes. Hate Speech: form of expression intended to attack or incite hatred of a class of persons. Hate Crime: criminal offense motivated by a bias. Hate Group: organization that attacks or condemns a class of people. What Are the Health Effects of Prejudice? Face reality head-on. Denial can be powerful. Name and acknowledge your experiences, whether it is to a family member, friend, or counselor.

Make meaning out of experiences. How can we learn from these experiences? How can they inform us? Control what you can. You may not be able to change other people, but what do you have control over? Another example of a well-known stereotype involves beliefs about racial differences among athletes. As Hodge, Burden, Robinson, and Bennett point out, Black male athletes are often believed to be more athletic, yet less intelligent, than their White male counterparts.

These beliefs persist despite a number of high profile examples to the contrary. Sadly, such beliefs often influence how these athletes are treated by others and how they view themselves and their own capabilities.

Whether or not you agree with a stereotype, stereotypes are generally well-known within in a given culture Devine, Sometimes people will act on their prejudiced attitudes toward a group of people, and this behavior is known as discrimination.

As a result of holding negative beliefs stereotypes and negative attitudes prejudice about a particular group, people often treat the target of prejudice poorly, such as excluding older adults from their circle of friends. Have you ever been the target of discrimination? If so, how did this negative treatment make you feel?

However, it is important to also point out that people can hold positive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors toward individuals based on group membership; for example, they would show preferential treatment for people who are like themselves—that is, who share the same gender, race, or favorite sports team. This video demonstrates the concepts of prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination. In the video, a social experiment is conducted in a park where three people try to steal a bike out in the open.

The race and gender of the thief is varied: a White male teenager, a Black male teenager, and a White female. Does anyone try to stop them? The treatment of the teenagers in the video demonstrates the concept of racism.

Why are these aspects of an unfamiliar person so important? Although these secondary characteristics are important in forming a first impression of a stranger, the social categories of race, gender, and age provide a wealth of information about an individual.

This information, however, often is based on stereotypes. We may have different expectations of strangers depending on their race, gender, and age. What stereotypes and prejudices do you hold about people who are from a race, gender, and age group different from your own?

What are some stereotypes of various racial or ethnic groups? Racism exists for many racial and ethnic groups. Mexican Americans and other Latino groups also are targets of racism from the police and other members of the community. For example, when purchasing items with a personal check, Latino shoppers are more likely than White shoppers to be asked to show formal identification Dovidio et al.

In one case of alleged harassment by the police, several East Haven, Connecticut, police officers were arrested on federal charges due to reportedly continued harassment and brutalization of Latinos.

Have you witnessed racism toward any of these racial or ethnic groups? Are you aware of racism in your community? Sexism is prejudice and discrimination toward individuals based on their sex.

Typically, sexism takes the form of men holding biases against women, but either sex can show sexism toward their own or their opposite sex. Like racism, sexism may be subtle and difficult to detect. Common forms of sexism in modern society include gender role expectations, such as expecting women to be the caretakers of the household. For example, women are expected to be friendly, passive, and nurturing, and when women behave in an unfriendly, assertive, or neglectful manner they often are disliked for violating their gender role Rudman, Research by Laurie Rudman finds that when female job applicants self-promote, they are likely to be viewed as competent, but they may be disliked and are less likely to be hired because they violated gender expectations for modesty.

Sexism can exist on a societal level such as in hiring, employment opportunities, and education. Have you ever experienced or witnessed sexism? Why do you think there are differences in the jobs women and men have, such as more women nurses but more male surgeons Betz, ? Women now have many jobs previously closed to them, though they still face challenges in male-dominated occupations. People often form judgments and hold expectations about people based on their age. Plous Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for VerywellMind. At any time, you can update your settings through the "EU Privacy" link at the bottom of any page. These choices will be signaled globally to our partners and will not affect browsing data. We and our partners process data to: Actively scan device characteristics for identification. I Accept Show Purposes. Table of Contents View All.

Table of Contents. Reducing Prejudice. A stereotype is a simplified assumption about a group based on prior experiences or beliefs. Was this page helpful? Thanks for your feedback! Sign Up. What are your concerns? Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

Related Articles. What Is Gender Essentialism Theory? What Is Prejudice? The Psychology of Racism. As mentioned, a prejudiced attitude can be based on a number of factors, including sex, race, age, sexual orientation, nationality, socioeconomic status, and religion.

Some of the most well-known types of prejudice include the following:. When people hold prejudicial attitudes toward others, they tend to view everyone who fits into a certain group as being "all the same. This has a very strong influence on how people behave and interact with those who are different from them. As a result, it can also cause them to miss out on relationships or conversations that have the potential to be deeply fulfilling.

Those on the receiving end of prejudice are particularly impacted, though. For example, the ubiquitous prejudice against Black people has translated into higher incarceration rates, fewer job offers, and lower pay.

Another blatant example is the prejudice against Muslims; the rampant anti-Muslim sentiment in the West has led many people to believe that all Muslims are violent and hateful. According to psychologist Gordon Allport , prejudice and stereotypes emerge in part as a result of normal human thinking. We cannot possibly avoid this process. Orderly living depends upon it.

In other words, we often depend upon our ability to place people, ideas, and objects into different categories in order to make the world easier to understand. We are simply inundated with too much information to sort through all of it in a logical, methodical, and rational fashion. Unfortunately, this quick categorization leads to faulty assumptions that have an impact on individuals and the world at large. Whether deeply ingrained, taught, or an implicit bias , it is important to fight our own prejudices we have against others.

One of the first ways to do this is to understand and accept that it happens. When you realize that you are pre-judging someone else, try asking yourself the following questions:. In addition to looking at the reasons why prejudice occurs, researchers have also explored different ways that prejudice can be reduced or even eliminated.

For example, equipping yourself with the skills to be more wholly empathetic to members of another group is one method that has shown considerable success. Instead, they become a more complex being in your eyes—someone with a mother and father, a sibling, a friend to others, a co-worker, a romantic partner.

Someone with unique interests, the ability to love, cry, and feel. Other techniques that are used to reduce prejudice include:. Knowing what prejudice is and why it tends to occur is an important step in helping the world become a more welcoming, equal place.