fear and guilt and finds its outlet through displacement on to those who are weaker, while the power and the authority of the parents is idealised and generalised to all authority figures. This theory rested upon Adorno et al original work. The most dominate theoretical and empirical approach to prejudice is social cognition (Fiske & Taylor, 1991). Social cognitive research suggests that outgroups discrimination and prejudice stem from basic and functional cognitive processes such as categorisation and stereotyping. It is argued that our limited cognitive capacities makes the simplification and generalisation of social information necessarily adaptive, so a group’s tendency to stereotype out group members and to perceive them as homogeneous is an inevitable by-product of our cognitive hard-wiring. While cognitive models of prejudice are currently dominant, researchers are emphasising the role that affects plays in prejudice. To some extent this derives from the frustration – aggression theory of the 1930’s and 1940’s which argued that inner hostilities were displaced onto innocent outgroups and minorities. The development of prejudice in young children is where much of the social cognitive developmental literature has been found that children demonstrate clear ethnic and racial preferences at around 3 or 4 years old (Aboud, 1988). These preferences tend to be consistent with the differential values associated with different social groups i.e. North American children between 3 and 5 express negative attitudes towards minority groups such as Afro – Americans and Native Americans. However after the age of 7, this attitude does decline. The socio-cognitive models have advanced to account for these developmental findings in young children. We should involve children in lots of role-play i.e. for them to act out at being ogres, elves and to come to the defence of short people like gnomes and halflings. Instead of...
