Title: Causes of Prejudice | Encyclopedia.com
Headings: Causes of Prejudice
Causes of Prejudice
2
Causes of Prejudice
WORDS TO KNOW
attitude:
bias:
discrimination:
emotion:
prejudice:
socialization:
What prejudice means
Stereotyping
Persistence of prejudice
Psychological explanations
A fear of diversity
Scapegoating
Sociological causes
Socialization
Discrimination and prejudice
Social status and ethnocentrism
Threats and fear
Immigration
Conformity
Economic competition
Political and religious causes
Rationalizing prejudice
For More Information
BOOKS
WEB SITES

Content: Favorable prejudices have directly produced far less damaging consequences than negative prejudices. For this reason, they have drawn far less attention from researchers and social activists. Persistence of prejudice
A prejudice often becomes a habit after having it for a time. Once formed, prejudices can have great persistence. The person comes to believe his opinion is well thought out, regardless of the amount of objective information provided to suggest otherwise. Prejudices become locked in a person's thought processes. Changing or eliminating these attitudes is difficult, and in many cases impossible, even when the person is presented with new information about the targeted group. This is not only true of prejudice against people. The same rigid adherence to prejudice occurs in other kinds of bias, such as prejudice against certain kinds of video games, reading material, or geographic locations. A reason for this inflexibility is that people are prone to overgeneralize about the world around them when trying to categorize their observations.