A photo shows a writing pad chair. Text beside the photo reads, Stereotypes, Discrimination, and Prejudice. Attitudes are complex and only sometimes related to our behaviors. Like most attitudes, prejudicial attitudes can be connected with our cognitions about groups of people, also known as stereotypes, our negative attitudes and feelings about others, also referred to as prejudice, and our behaviors, discriminating against others. Understanding how and when these pieces connect to each other is an important goal of social psychology. Jane Elliott’s classic Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes exercise helps demonstrate how stereotypes, discrimination, and prejudice may be connected.
A flowchart shows Prejudicial attitude toward others classified into three categories with accompanying text as follows;
Cognitive component, beliefs and ideas, - We tend to categorize people in terms of the in-group, the group to which we belong, and the out-group, people different from us in some way. Stereotypes are beliefs or assumptions we hold about people, based on perceived differences we think describe members of their group.
Affective component, emotional evaluation, Prejudice, or feelings of hostility, anger, or discomfort toward members of out-groups.
Behavioral component, the way we respond, Discrimination, or treating others differently because of their affiliation with a group. Can include showing hostility or anger to others, or can be more subtle, such as different body language or tone of voice.
Text below the Affective component reads, Social psychologists often use prejudice to refer to both these negative attitudes and the negative feelings tied to them. Two dotted arrows from the text Prejudicial attitude toward others and Affective component point to this text.
Cognitive component leads to Stereotype. Two illustrations are shown below Stereotype. First illustration shows eleven pairs of brown eyes. Second illustration shows seventeen pairs of blue eyes. Text between two illustrations reads cleaner, more civilized, smarter.
Another text below the illustrations reads, When Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior, was assassinated in 1968, a teacher named Jane Elliott gave her students a lesson about discrimination. Because no African Americans lived in their Iowa town, she knew students would have trouble understanding what motivated the terrible act. Elliott invited the class to join her in an exercise in which one set of students was segregated into a negatively stereotyped out-group; Suppose we divided the class into blue-eyed people and brown-eyed people…Brown-eyed people are better than blue-eyed people. They are cleaner . . . more civilized . . . smarter. Citation, Peters, 1971, page 20-21.
Affective component leads to Prejudice. An illustration shows two intersecting circles. First circle is labeled Prejudice and second circle is labeled Discrimination. Text in the first circle reads, Brown-eyes dislike blue-eyes, but have to be nice while in class. Text in the second circle reads, Brown-eyes, who are required to sit at the front of the room, do not sit with blue-eyes, who must sit at the back. Intersecting area of the circles reads, Brown-eyes dislike blue-eyes and exclude them from games at recess. Text below the illustration reads, in her exercise, Elliott created a situation in which discrimination initially existed without the presence of actual feelings of hostility or anger. Although prejudice and discrimination often go hand in hand, either condition can exist independently.
Behavioral component leads to Discrimination. A photo shows a teacher taking a class. Text below the photo reads, During the exercise, a list of rules governed behavior for both groups. For example, only children with brown eyes were allowed to sit at the front of the room near the teacher. The effect of this manufactured discrimination surprised even Elliott. The brown-eyed children quickly became openly hostile toward the blue-eyed children. And the blue-eyed children were miserable. Their entire attitudes were those of defeat. Their classroom work regressed sharply from that of the day before. Citation, Peters, 1971, page 25.