Prejudice
Prejudices emerge from the disposition of the human mind to perceive and process information in categories. “Categories” is a nicer, more neutral word than “stereotypes,” but it’s the same thing.
Cognitive psychologists consider stereotypes to be energy-saving devices that allow us to make efficient decisions on the basis of past experience; help us quickly process new information and retrieve memories; make sense of real differences between groups; and predict, often with considerable accuracy, how others will behave or how they think.1 We wisely rely on stereotypes and the quick information they give us to avoid danger, approach possible new friends, choose one school or job over another, or decide that thatperson across this crowded room will be the love of our lives.
That’s the upside!
The downside is that stereotypes flatten out differences within the category we are looking at and exaggerate differences between categories.
All of us recognize variation within our own gender, party, ethnicity, or nation, but we are inclined to generalize from a few encounters with people of other categories and lump them all together as them. This habit starts awfully early!
Us is the most fundamental social category in the brain’s organizing system, and it’s hardwired. Even the collective pronouns us and them are powerful emotional signals.
As soon as people have created a category called us, however, they invariably perceive everybody else as not-us
Evolutionary psychologists argue that ethnocentrism – the belief that our own culture, nation, or religion is superior to all others – aids survival by strengthening our bonds to our primary social groups and thus increasing our willingness to work, fight, and occasionally die for them.
When things are going well, people feel pretty tolerant of other cultures and religions – they even feel pretty tolerant of the other sex! – but when they are angry, anxious, or threatened, the default position is to activate their blind spots.
We have the human qualities of intelligence and deep emotions, but they are dumb, they are crybabies, they don’t know the meaning of love, shame grief, or remorse. 2
The very act of thinking that they are not as smart or reasonable as we are makes us feel closer to others who are like us.. But, just as crucially, it allows us to justify how we treat them.
The hallmark of prejudice is that it is impervious to reason, experience, and counterexample. Once people acquire a prejudice, therefore, it is hard to dislodge.
As the great jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said, “Trying to educate a bigot is like shining a light into the pupil of an eye – it constricts.”
Think about this infamous line: “But some of my friends are . . .”
It persists because it is such an efficient way of resolving the dissonance created when a prejudice runs headlong into an exception.
When someone doesn’t fit our stereotype, we are able to feel open-minded and generous, while maintaining our basic prejudice toward the whole category of them.
- “Stereotypes as Energy Saving Devices.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
- “More Human Than You: Attributing Humanness to Self and Others.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology