Prejudice, discrimination, stereotype.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present you: "Psych-er's" first entry of the week!

This entry will talk about prejudice, discrimination and stereotype. These 3 things are part of social psychology and somehow related to the way human thinks, feels and behaves about a certain group of people or even someone. Let us start with prejudice first.

Prejudice is an attitude shown based on feeling (mostly negative) toward a certain group of people. According to me, attitude is shown through our body language. How to identify that? Let say you are a victim of A's dislikeness (new noun). You know that you are a victim when:

- A avoids to talk much with you. S/he will answer whatever you asked, but in single sentence or even a word. e.g.: Ya; no; uh-huh. Mainly, A will give this "sign" to just end this via body language.

- A talks in cynical/sarcastic tone with this I-don't-like-u-just-go-away expression.

Some real life example of prejudism would be:

- this dislikeness of someone belonging to an ethnic group or religious group or races.

- in some teen-culture, dislikeness toward the nerds & geeks from those who are popular in their school. Try read Princess Diaries for more income.

Discrimination (for me) is the level 2 form of prejudice (it's lvl. 1). If prejudice is about attitude, discrimination is action. Its definition would be a negative behavior/ action that grows from prejudice. Some examples are:

- a certain groups are set asides and receive unfair treatment other than the "ok" group.

- in canteen, the nerds & geeks sit in their own table and would not be acceptable to sit with the populars unless they are invited (which most probably wouldn't happen for a really long time).

Same book applied.

Stereotype is a "label" toward someone/a group of people. When we know someone for a quite long time, eventually we could have "labeling" them with what we already learn about this person. For instance, there are 4 boys in class that are the "smartest" in my year. Since I knew them since grade 7, "smart" would be my stereotype for them.

Another example would be the role-play we conduct in Tuesday, 12/9/06. We chose a paper that has an adjective on it and it was attached on our back without looking at it. Then, we had to socialize with them and behaved according to the stereotype given. I got "violent" and people were like afraid of me; they thought I was a psycopath who brings knife everywhere. Violent could be describe as someone who always use their fist and not just knife. I thought I was a psycopath or an assassin before I could take a look at my adjective.

That's it for today. Write more later.