Hello fellow social psychians,
Just a posting to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this week’s lecture on prejudice and stereotypes. My blog 1 topic is on stereotypes and the lecture offered me much food for thought. It was somewhat upsetting to discover though that as a species, us humans may be innately destined to be prejudiced. Although sad to hear, it did offer me some comfort… as strange as that may sound. You see, I always wondered why we hadn’t learnt yet how to just be nice! I mean, why do we still continue to discriminate people based on such silly superficial characteristics? We have come so far, in the way of medicine, technology and education, however we still go to war, stigmatize, discriminate, and stereotype people different to us. If we can’t really help this prejudiced way of acting then I suppose it’s not that all that bad now is it… We are after all only animals, maybe that’s all we are really capable of being? Animals, who fight, challenge others, and who are wary of strangers… Animals with the addition of ipods and trendy designer clothes… maybe we have no control over our tendency to behave in this manner… Or maybe there is more to acting in a prejudiced way than simply following our innate drives? Not all of us act on these negative feelings… perhaps we all secretly hold these prejudiced thoughts, but only some of us act on them… of course I am not being serious here and this premise is far from what I believe… but it is an interesting idea… Any thoughts?
Clare.
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7 comments:
Its almost as if its a spiritual war within us. To be nice or not to be nice, what shall I choose today. I guess as long as we look at each other and see something different we will probably have prejudices. Differences abound ideology, theology, and physicality. Maybe one day man and woman will be "fully alive". Maybe then we will see a time of perfect peace.
Clare,
I can see you playing with letting go of the puritan, idealistic idea of humans being perfect, logical and ration, and opening up to the gnarliness of us being animals.
But as the textbook indicates about prejudice, although much of it may be innate, there are individual differenes in the extent to which we learn and choose to consciously override these natural prejudices. And that seems to me part of our individual and collective intelligence, to at least have the capacity to override prejudices.
Hi Clare:
Thanks for your comment, I did my concept in microsoft word.
I just used the drawing tool and then the 'abc' tool to do the typing.
I then did the cntrl A thing (Select all) and pasted it into paint. It saved itself as a picture and then I just posted it as a picture.
Good Luck with your blog. I really liked your ideas about 'maybe we just cant help it'. It is very true. I too believe that maybe those facets of us are inbuilt.
Good Luck. xx
Clare,
I know what you're trying to say about innate prejudice. We would all like to 'think' that we're not racist or prejudiced, but unfortunately i am realising more and more as we explore these social psychology topics that we all have tendencies to stereotype, reject, and even fear the unknown... i think a covert but obvious example is who you're attracted to, and sometimes you find people saying or thinking 'oh id never date a croatian, or an indian, or a chinese man'... whether or not these opinions/ideas/values are innate (which i doubt they are being specific examples, and its more likely that prejudice as a general concept is innate) it is true that people express them overtly to differing degrees, and often in the case of attraction, once you get to know the person their race doesnt matter in the slightest! (as it shouldnt!) I hope im not rambling here!
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