Prejudice
Richard Velez
Argosy University
Prejudice
Prejudice is customarily subtle and stereotyped decisions and treatment is not always deliberate. In its common literal sense, prejudice is prejudging without having sufficiently evaluated one’s own reasoning. Because diverging philosophies of prejudice fluctuate, it is important to discern how subjective principles influence our ideals. Prejudice is largely due to our own egotistic philosophies and blind confidence in our own convictions (Kenrick, 2007).
Besides not recognizing our own aptitude to be prejudice, we commonly remain unaware of the additional work we do to manage our prejudices. For example, a computer based process called the Implicit Association test (IAT) measures the response times of stereotyped decisions (Test, n.d.). The process involves how quickly a person belonging to one ethnic group associates a positive or negative label to a name belonging to a divergent ethnic group. Most Caucasian Americans, regardless of their conscious viewpoint, are noticeably faster at pairing Anglo labels with positive words. The same holds true for African Americans. Plainly stated, prejudice is not a feature, like male pattern baldness or blue eyes; rather, it is a state of perception and reasoning to which nobody is resistant.
Elizabeth’s behavior
Economic prejudice commonly involves showing bias towards a student’s socioeconomic circumstances. In the scenario, Elizabeth relates her student’s successes with her own socioeconomic conditions. The problematic effect of this behavior is that students are classified and treated as disadvantaged and dysfunctional outcasts, therefore undeserving of time and praise. To combat this effect, Elizabeth should spend time determining the areas of prejudice in her classroom and whether these actions are within herself or her curriculum. If Elizabeth is unable to identify her own bias, it may behoove her to have faculty members of divergent cultures and socioeconomic backgrounds examine the class dynamic (Helaine, 2011).
Implicit Association Test
Implicit Association Test (IAT), attempts to measure conscious and/or unconscious divergences in association. Simply put, an IAT measures and compares differences in automatic associations and how they might be different than the association that we explicitly endorse. My IAT measured my perception of attractiveness and how I associate women with "attractive" and men with "unattractive"(Test, n.d.). After the test, my association was measured with the hit-or-hold task and the results can be seen in figure 1. Your data suggest no difference in your automatic association between Men/Women and the concepts Attractive/Unattractive. | Figure 1
On the attractiveness test, my