In a new article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science<\/em>, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, Arne Roets and Alain Van Hiel of Ghent University in Belgium look at what psychological scientists have learned about prejudice since the 1954 publication of an influential book, The Nature of Prejudice<\/em> by Gordon Allport.<\/p>\n People who are prejudiced feel a much stronger need to make quick and firm judgments and decisions in order to reduce ambiguity<\/strong>. \u201cOf course, everyone has to make decisions, but some people really hate uncertainty and therefore quickly rely on the most obvious information, often the first information they come across, to reduce it\u201d Roets says. That\u2019s also why they favor authorities and social norms which make it easier to make decisions. Then, once they\u2019ve made up their mind, they stick to it. \u201cIf you provide information that contradicts their decision, they just ignore it.\u201d<\/p>\n Roets argues that this way of thinking is linked to people\u2019s need to categorize the world, often unconsciously<\/strong>. \u201cWhen we meet someone, we immediately see that person as being male or female, young or old, black or white, without really being aware of this categorization,\u201d he says. \u201cSocial categories are useful to reduce complexity, but the problem is that we also assign some properties to these categories. This can lead to prejudice and stereotyping.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n People who need to make quick judgments will judge a new person based on what they already believe about their category. \u201cThe easiest and fastest way to judge is to say, for example, ok, this person is a black man. If you just use your ideas about what black men are generally like, that\u2019s an easy way to have an opinion of that person,\u201d Roets says. \u201cYou say, \u2018he\u2019s part of this group, so he\u2019s probably like this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s virtually impossible to change the basic way that people think. Now for the good news: It\u2019s possible to actually also use this way of thinking to reduce people\u2019s prejudice.<\/strong> If people who need quick answers meet people from other groups and like them personally, they are likely to use this positive experience to form their views of the whole group. \u201cThis is very much about salient positive information taking away the aversion, anxiety, and fear of the unknown<\/strong>,\u201d Roets says.<\/p>\n Roets\u2019s conclusions suggest that the fundamental source of prejudice is not ideology, but rather a basic human need and way of thinking. \u201cIt really makes us think differently about how people become prejudiced or why people are prejudiced,\u201d Roets says. \u201cTo reduce prejudice, we first have to acknowledge that it often satisfies some basic need to have quick answers and stable knowledge people rely on to make sense of the world.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the Association for Psychological Science press release: Where does prejudice come from? Not from ideology, say the authors of a new paper. Instead, prejudice stems from a deeper psychological… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[28,81,12,203],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":535,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534\/revisions\/535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/images\/blogpics\/Rejection.jpg\" "\\"prejudice\\"")
Where does prejudice come from? Not from ideology, say the authors of a new paper. Instead, prejudice stems from a deeper psychological need, associated with a particular way of thinking. People who aren\u2019t comfortable with ambiguity and want to make quick and firm decisions are also prone to making generalizations about others.<\/strong><\/p>\n