Prejudice and Discrimination Prejudice and Discrimination are an all to common part of our cognitive social being, but many social psychologists believe that it can be stopped, but only with the help of social In this writing I hope to explain and point outsome key terms and points made in my assigned chapter. Prejudice refers to a special type of attitude, usually something negative toward any group or ethnicity that is not ofone’s own social class. Attitude plays a very important role inones cognitive framework, in that it forces our minds to processinformation on certain social groups differently making acognitive earmark for that individual group (stereotypes). Racially prejudiced persons take significantly longer than otherpersons who are not racially prejudiced to decide whetherstrangers whose racial identity is ambiguous belong to oneracial category or another(Ch.6 Pp.211). Why does prejudiceexist? Individuals hold prejudice views because doing soallows them to bolster their own self image(Ch.6 Pp.213). Bydoing this a person is making themselves believe that they arebetter than another, giving them a feeling of greaterimportance. A second reason for holding prejudice views isthat doing so can save us considerable cognitive effort(Ch.6Pp.213). In sorts prejudice views are a form of collectiverepresentation because a person forms views of certain socialgroups through analyzing the individual traits of one groupmember, forming one opinion for the whole group. Now when prejudice is acted upon by an individual it iscalled discrimination. In recent years discrimination hasdecreased, yet it has all but vanished from our society. Earlyon in our history people were less subtle than they are todaywhen it comes discrimination. Everything in our society wassegregated, every group had their own facilities and were notto be used by members of a different group. At this timepeople felt less remorse for expressing o...
