Psychology

Prejudice is biased and often negative attitudes that are usually formed towards a persons or groups of persons. In includes belief structures about the group of people accompanied with expectations that concern how these members should have.

A stereotype is defined as a generalization of a person or groups of persons. It is usually developed as a result of a person being unable or unwilling to obtain all the required information that they require to make fair and reasonable judgments about people or different situations. With the absence of clear or total picture, a person can easily make wrongful judgments about others by filling blanks that lead to unfair forms of discrimination. It is important to note that stereotyping is just one component of prejudice others are antilocution, which is a minor way of stereotyping for example using negative jokes. The other one is through avoidance which involves members of a majority group avoiding members of a minority group. Such forms of prejudice lead to things like Racism, sexism, among others

Roots of Prejudice
One of the roots of prejudice is the personality roots which include the Authoritarian personality. It involves people being submissive towards authority-tendency and accepting anything that an authority figure says. Tendencies to become sexist and racists tend to be stemmed by authority. The authoritarians also tend to be prejudiced against other wide range of groups like women. When a person is raised from a family where authoritarian parenting was used heshe also adopt such practices.

The other root of prejudice is cognitive root. This involves people identifying themselves with certain groups in term of their skin color, gender, and religion. This makes them to have a sense of solidarity and cohesiveness. Such situations lead others to define the other group differently as an out group and they are seen and treated negatively.

The other root of prejudice is social roots. It occurs because people tend to see members of a different group as having different values from members of their group. People also adopt the idea of equality and view a group as getting a raw deal by the system and they even partially blame the prejudiced group for their own plight among other reasons.

Theories to reduce Prejudice
There are many theories that have been suggested and used to reduce prejudice. Some of them work while others havent yet to be proven. Examples include the realistic conflict theory which states that social categorization and direct competition over scarce resources is needed. The other one is the social identity theory which states that prejudice comes from social categorization which is done in order to boost ones self esteem no realistic conflict in needed in the process.

These theories enable professionals to be convinced of their self-worth and that nobody should let them feel bad of themselves. They also assist individual professionals to use strategies like compensation to cope with prejudice. Compensation involves changing ones mode of thinking like black people cant be managers or leaders. It also helps these professionals to anticipate situations in which prejudice will be encountered and either confronts it of decide to avoid it.