Prejudice is a negative attitude towards a group based solely on membership in that group. There are three main types of prejudice: racial, automatic, and gender prejudice. Prejudice arises from desires to justify social status differences and childhood exposure, though it is not necessarily maintained into adulthood. Prejudice has motivational sources like frustration-aggression theory and social identity theory, and cognitive sources like categorization of people into groups and perception of differences between in-groups and out-groups. Ways to reduce prejudice include empathy training, anti-discrimination laws and regulations, changing social norms, increasing awareness of inconsistent beliefs, and more contact between groups.

1. Formation of Prejudice

2. What is prejudice?
• Prejudice is a hostile or negative attitude
toward a distinguishable group of people
based solely on their membership in that
group.

3. Types of Prejudice:
1. Racial Prejudice
2. Automatic Prejudice
3. Gender Prejudice

4. What are the sources of Prejudice?
• Prejudice springs from several sources. It may
arise from differences in social status and
people’s desire to justify and maintain these
differences.
• Whether or not there is a biological root to
prejudice is unknown; in any case, it is clear
that prejudice occurs between biologically
similar people who hold different beliefs.

5. • Prejudices are easy to learn, although
childhood prejudices are not necessarily
maintained.
• Children whose parents hold prejudices may
be exposed to competing views and not hold
their parents’ prejudices.
• Rohan and Zanna (1996) found the greatest
similarity of beliefs for parents and their
children with egalitarian values.

6. Social Inequalities:
• Sociologists see society as a stratification
system that is based on a hierarchy of power,
privilege, and prestige which leads to patterns
of social inequality.
• Fear and self-preservation are themes here as
well.

7. What are the motivational sources of
prejudice?
Frustration and aggression theory:
• Prejudice frustration-aggression theory asserts
that if the goals of people are blocked, they
would tend to be frustrated and aggressive.
• This particularly happens when people have
no specific target to blame.
• This causes them to release their frustration
and aggression on a weaker target.

8. Social Identity Theory:
• Social identity is a person’s sense of who they
are based on their group membership(s).
• In order to increase our self-image we
enhance the status of the group to which we
belong.
• Therefore we divided the world into “them”
and “us” based through a process of social
categorization (i.e. we put people into social
groups).

9. What are the cognitive sources of
prejudice?
Categorization: Classifying People into Groups
1. Spontaneous Categorization
2. Perceived Similarities and Differences

10. Spontaneous Categorization:
• We cannot resist categorizing people into
groups.
• We label people of widely varying ancestry as
simply “Black” or “White,” as if such
categories were black and white.
• Such categorization is not prejudice, but it
does provide a foundation for prejudice.

11. Perceived similarities and differences
• We assume that other groups are more
homogeneous than our own.
• Mere division into groups can create an out-
group homogeneity effect—a sense that they
are “all alike” and different from “us” and
“our” group (Ostrom & Sedikides, 1992).
• We generally like people we perceive as
similar to us and dislike those we perceive as
different, so the result is in-group bias

12. • Many non-Europeans see the Swiss as a fairly
homogeneous people. But to the people of
Switzerland, the Swiss are diverse,
encompassing French-, German-, Italian-, and
Romansh-speaking groups.
• Sorority sisters perceive the members of any
other sorority as less diverse than the
members of their own (Park & Rothbart,
1982).

13. Distinctiveness: Perceiving People
Who Stand Out
• Have you noticed that people also define you
by your most distinctive traits and behaviors?
• Tell people about someone who is a skydiver
and a tennis player, report Lori Nelson and
Dale Miller (1995), and they will think of the
person as a skydiver.

14. • People also take note of those who violate
expectations (Bettencourt & others, 1997).
• “Like a flower blooming in winter, intellect is
more readily noticed where it is not expected,”
reflected Stephen Carter (1993) on his own
experience as an African American intellectual.
• Such perceived distinctiveness makes it easier for
highly capable job applicants from low-status
groups to get noticed, although they also must
work harder to prove that their abilities are
genuine (Biernat & Kobrynowicz, 1997).

15. Ways to Reduce Prejudice
• Training people to become more empathetic
to members of other groups is one method
that has shown considerable success.
• By imaging themselves in the same situation,
people are able to think about how they
would react and gain a greater understanding
of other people's actions.

16. Other techniques that are used to reduce
prejudice include:
• Passing laws and regulations that require fair
and equal treatment for all groups of people.
• Gaining public support and awareness for
anti-prejudice social norms.
• Making people aware of the inconsistencies in
their own beliefs.
• Increased contact with members of other
social groups.