Association and Generalization in Stereotyping and Prejudices

In an article entitled “Automatic and Controlled Components of Implicit Stereotyping and Prejudice” I found myself mesmerized by a psycho-analytical approach to understanding and explaining social bigotry. I thought it was an interesting perspective, an addition to what we are reading about, that is more scientifically measured. This article suggested aspects of human recognition and association. It described how children associate by color, which is a fundamental part of the human mind… sorting information and association. The author, Dr. Jeff Sherman explained how when adults were given a paper with the word BLUE written in red ink, the adults were tested and responded that the ink was blue. They stated the written word instead of the color. Children that were studied however responded correctly to the question saying that the ink was red. The author goes on to say that the children will eventually develop a habit to ignore the color recognition and observe the word instead. Sherman observed that this may be an underlying attitude that contributes to developed prejudices and stereotyping. He also wrote about how light is associated with “good” and dark is associated with “bad” which may also contribute. This was a fascinating article to look over with a more scientific angle on understanding the underlying factors of prejudice and stereotyping.
I also found an article that was more qualitative. It really helped me understand the roots of prejudice more. I thought it was fascinating that, “Ethnic and cultural pride begins with the emphasis of differences and quickly progresses to claims of superiority in some respect or another”. In researching different articles about stereotyping and prejudices, I found that most of them had to do with either classification or superiority. Different classifications were associated with behaviors and qualities of being and superiority justifies explicit, negative statements about those classifications and associations. Beginning with a rudimentary mental predisposition to sort by category and associate, everyone has and develops stereotypical thinking. An example in this article was how all people have developed the prejudice against moving cars… that they go fast and they will hurt or kill. This is a prime example of how the mind evolves over learned experience or the word of society. This article goes in depth with different kinds of stereotypes and prejudices and the differences between them.
What I got out of my research this week was a lot of self-reflection, observance of others, and a pain-staking realization that I am a participant in a negative and hurtful component of society. Stereotypes and prejudices are not only unfair to those who are victimized by them, but are hurtful to ourselves in truly believing generalizations about fellow people of humanity. It has the power to prevent people from what they believe “they can do” in their “classification” and it limits the freedom of mind and soul in society. As a last note, I would like to add another article that I found that I looked through. It was about how stereotyping and prejudices are especially harmful for children. This article explains why I now feel that stereotyping and prejudices are so harmful to our youth and our society. No one know what the future holds and it is not fair to train our youth that they are restricted by their race, gender, sexual orientation, or culture. It is not fair to spread the lesson to judge before knowing! (564)

http://www.apa.org/science/psa/sb-sherman.html
http://www.friesian.com/discrim.htm
http://utopia.utexas.edu/explore/pred/adults/ster.html