Introduction

Georgia (main character, is a female and is a black) who lived in the convent

when she was young, experienced a number of prejudice and discrimination because of

her skin colour and her background for being born out of wedlock. She had always been

the scapegoat of an elder nun in the convent to express frustration and anger. When she

was fifteen, she suffered an unexpected betrayal from her foster father (a white family).

However, as a victim, she was blamed for behaving as a whore. Most of the societies

were pointing at her. Her boyfriend’s parents stopped him from meeting her since the

incidence. She decided to escape. Years past, her resilience and determination had led her

to reach her fierce ambition. But when she came to the top, she found that the scars of her

past would ruin her in just a night.

In the novel ‘Georgia’ by Lesley Pearse, the cases of prejudiced against minority

had directly complied the reality in society. Prejudice, stereotype and discrimination are

common in the society today. Even though they are gradually being reduced, it remains

as a serious problem. Everyone has the potential to become the victims and perpetrators

of prejudice, stereotype and discrimination. It does not mean that only the minorities will

be the victims and the majority will always be the perpetrators.

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Question1. Explain the definitions of “prejudice”, “stereotype” and

“discrimination”. Later distinguish these three concepts by providing real life

examples.

According to the definition in the book, ‘Social Psychology, 8th edition’,

prejudice is having a hostile or negative attitude toward a distinguishable group of

people based solely on their membership in that group. Typically, prejudice can be said

as an ‘unfair’ attitude towards someone. When we are prejudice against a certain group,

we tend to form stereotypical beliefs and discriminate these prejudice victims. For

example, if a person is prejudiced against senior citizens, he or she might feel that senior

citizens are incompetent and senile, and tend to behave coolly or hostilely towards the

elders.

A stereotype is a generalization about a group of people in which identical

characteristics are assigned to virtually all members of the group, regardless of actual

variation among the members (Social Psychology, 8th edition). A stereotype is a cognitive

process that can be either positive or negative. It is a belief in which a person classifies

others into specific categories without looking at individual distinctiveness. For example,

when someone believes that Asian people are smarter than others, they tend to assume

that every Asian is smart without realizing the individual differences among the group, in

which some of them are less competent than others.

Discrimination is an unjustified negative or harmful action towards a member of

a group, simply because of his or her membership in that group (Social Psychology, 8th

edition). Discrimination is the unfair treatment caused by prejudice. Besides, there are

many types of discriminations including age, gender, religion, races and so forth. For

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example, black men are usually being treated differently from the whites in Western

countries. The landlord of an apartment rather rents his unit to a white than the black,

even though both of them are able to fulfill the conditions set by the landlord.

In general, prejudice is an affectively based attitude, which is more on the

feelings and emotions towards the object while stereotype is primarily based on beliefs

and thinking. On the other hand, discrimination will always involve behavioural

component or actions. For instance, people often feel awkward to see boys learning ballet

(prejudice). Most of them think that all boys who learn are girlish and sissy (stereotype).

Therefore, they might want to be distant from the boys who are learning ballet or even

snickered behind them and give them scorns.

There are factors that lead to these three phenomena. Firstly, the pressure to

conform normative rules shows that when a society is common with the stereotypical

information and discriminatory actions, the people living there will have a high tendency

to practise prejudice in daily life. Next, social categorization refers to the situation that

people have the tendency to group someone based on their traits and characteristics. They

also tend to see identify their own group as the superior one compared to others, behaving

in an ethnocentric way by rating the characteristics of in-group members as better.

Besides, human tend to form attributional biases which lead them to fundamental

attribution error. Finally, realistic conflict theory holds that limited resources lead to

conflict between groups and results in increased prejudice and discrimination. When

people are trying to win out a competitive situation, they tend to be prejudiced against

others.

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Question 2: Identify FIVE (5) criteria or factors employed as the basis of prejudice

and apply each criteria or factors with the “failure of logic”.

There are reasons why people will have “failure of logic”. People who have

strong prejudiced against certain group, tend to form illusory correlation, which is the

tendency to see relationships between two events which are unrelated. When people have

persistent perceptions in their mind, they might establish any illogical theory which can

keep them in their stand of view and it becomes difficult to argue with them even with

logical reasons.

Besides, people like to perceive and categorize people based on the outer or

external features of a targeted group which cause them to form prejudice, stereotype and

discrimination. There are five criteria or factors employed as the basis of prejudice and

“failure of logic”:

Races and nationality

People make judgements of others based on their races, skin colours, religions and their

culture, which is known as racial prejudice without evidence. In Malaysia, which is a

multi-ethnic nation, we always generalize that Indian as aggressive. When an Indian is

fighting with a Chinese, most of the people will think that the Indian is cause of the fight.

We also tend to judge Malays as lazy while Chinese are petty of minor event. In reality,

these generalizations are out of logic and relationship without proven evidence.

Gender

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Females have a higher possibility to be the basis of prejudice compared to men. For

example, females are deemed to be more talkative than men. However, both men and

women actually speak almost the same amount of words per day. ‘Females are better in

doing house chores.’ In the actual world, not every female knows how to do housework.

Instead, some of the males are the one that often help out at home.

Appearance

People make automatic judgments of others base on physical appearance, that influence

how they respond to those people. People believe that ‘what is beautiful is good’, in

which physical attractiveness is related with the positives, or vice versa. As an example,

people think that those who have heavy weight can hardly run fast. Or, those who look

muscular are healthy. In the other side, people also think that people who walking in the

street and wearing formal attire with an office bag must be a high educated and

knowledgeable person. In fact, appearance is not related with education background.

Profession

People also make judgement based on professions. For example, people will always think

that professionals can make big money due to the profession they obtain. However, in

fact, not all professionals are rich as it depends on the effort to work and get good pay.

People also believe that experts are always right in what they have said. Actually, the

experts might only be professional in the fields that they specific in.

Social class

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A social class is a group of people in a society who share a similar social and economic

status. Class differences normally involve inequalities and prejudices between members

of the different groups. For instance, people think that lower class people are uneducated

and upper class people are often being respected.

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Question3. First, conduct a randomized survey in UTAR campus by recruiting 10

UTAR’s students who would be interviewed in regards of their impression or

perception pertaining all of the following groups:

a) Orang Asli

b) Single mothers

c) Younger husbands and older wives

d) Homeless senior citizens

e) Rape victims

Remember to record down all of the interviews into a video.

Next, observe and analyze the adjectives used by interviewees in describing the five

groups and relate them with the concept of stereotype.

Analysis of the Interviewees ‘s Perception Towards The Minorities Group

Orang Asli

Most of the interviewees are having negative stereotype towards Orang Asli. They judge

Orang Asli based on their appearance and ability, like naked or unknowledgeable and

even contribute nothing to a nation. The interviewees are using internal attribution to

view the Orang Asli, leading them to have negative stereotype on the minorities.

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Single Mothers

Interviewees see single mothers in two ways which is positive and negative. Some of

them have positive stereotype towards her ability of taking care her children by herself.

Others have negative stereotype towards her, believing that she must have hostile

behaviors since she was dumped by her husband or boyfriend. It depends on the

interviewees’ internal attribution.

Younger Husbands and Older Wives

There are almost equal amount of interviewees who are having positive and negative

stereotype towards this minority group. Some think that age is not a distance between

true love. But others think that the younger husband being together with and older wife is

because of her money. The interviewees view this case according internal attributions

which lead them to form positive and negative stereotype

Homeless Senior Citizens

Part of the interviewees show sympathy to them, thinking that they do not deserve this

treatment. Some of the interviewees judge them based on their appearance and their

lifestyle. Most of them think that homeless senior citizens are dirty. They judge them by

applying external and internal attributions. Those that judge them by using internal

attribution will form negative stereotype while from external attribution, they will have

positive stereotype.

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Rape Victim

Interviewees think that rape victims are quite pity, if they were innocent. But on the other

hand, they judge rape victims by saying that the victims wear too sexy to attract the rapist

to rape them. They judge this case by using external and internal attribution. Those who

perceive them as unfortunates are having external attribution as they are considering

situational factors. Those that emphasize on the personality of the victims are having

internal attributions which lead to negative stereotype.

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Question4. What are the impacts of stereotype on the lives of ALL five groups

respectively? Give your personal arguments whether those impacts are positive,

negative or both. Justify your arguments.

Stereotype is a cognitive process that can be either positive or negative. A

particular behavior can always be viewed as appropriate or vice versa depending on a

person’s perception on a group of people. According to the University of Toronto

Scarborough’s Michael Inzlicht, people have the tendency to perform badly when they

feel that they are in the situation of being stereotyped. Using negative stereotype to judge

others, might jeopardize how they perform in the stigmatized group. There are impacts

due to stereotype, such as self- fulfilling prophecy, stereotype threat and loss of self-

esteem.

Loss of self-esteem

Those who are being labeled negatively might end up with a lasting detrimental

impact, such as loss of self-esteem. Once people think in terms of the labels formed

towards them, they tend to lose self confidence in themselves as being stereotyped can

always change a person’s view on himself or herself. As a result, people who are often

being negatively stereotyped will end up in absence of positives in themselves.

People are more likely to assume that females who involve in sexual attacks have

no one to blame for being targeted as rape victims. These are actually faulty assumptions

which lead to victim blame, causing the rape victims to be stigmatized and feel ashamed

of their life. They might suffer from depression, humiliation, low self-esteem in many

areas of their lives and other physical or mental obstacles. It will be hard for them to cope

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with the unexpected incidence and at the same time the discrimination from the society.

Stigma associated with rape victims impact negatively on them which might possibly

drives them out of rationality and act in the way of hurting themselves due to profound

impact of depression they encounter.

Moreover, stereotype due to normative views create great negative impacts on the

homeless senior citizens. Stereotyping without true evidence will create unreasonable

fear of homeless people. This fear might unconsciously inhibit others to provide aids, and

make some who initially want to help become unwilling to do so. They will also form

perception that this is what the homeless earn, they have no one to blame to and they

should feel shameful for themselves. They receive judgement from others. They lose

confidence as they are expected for being incompetent, and there will be no employment

for them. Instead of being stereotyped by others, they rather choose to give up their

attempt to search for jobs.

The loss of self-esteem will lead to unconscious assimilation of society’s negative views

towards a particular group. These internalized feeling lead to self-fulfilling prophecy

and stereotype threat.

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Self-fulfilling prophecy shows that, when people have an expectation on others,

which influences how they act towards the person, causing that person to behave

consistently with peoples’ original expectations and making the expectations to come

true.

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The Orang Asli who are the aborigines and minorities in Peninsular Malaysia

have always being stereotyped and treated unfairly. According to the Associate Professor

Dr Alberto Gomes, an anthropologist at Australia’s La Trobe University, this negative

stereotype has led the Orang Asli to carry a ‘double life’ which means having a set of

rules within their own community but present a different face to the outsiders. From the

views of outsiders, Orang Asli are considered timid, shy and lack intelligence. In reality,

they are egalitarian, respectful of individual dignity and non-aggressive instead of

behaving like a beast. Besides, they have learned to protest their own right. This shows

that the way society expect and treat them cause them to behave as what is assumed but

not the true-self in front of the society.

This happens on the homeless senior citizens too. People tend to form expectation

that these senior citizens are lazy to seek for work. These expectations cause the society

to act in a way which makes their expectations come true. As an example, when the

employers think that the senior citizens are lazy and incompetent, they become unwilling

to employ them, causing them to become jobless and by the way, fulfill their expectation

that this group of people is lazy because they have no job.

Stereotype threat

Stereotype threat is the apprehension experienced by members of a group that

their behavior might confirm a cultural stereotype. In the other way of saying, people

know the existence of stereotype towards their group and attempt to avoid what is

assumed to be.

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For younger husbands and older wives relationship, people always judge that

this type of relationship is more likely to be troubled as it deviates from social norms and

has large age difference. They will label these older women who involve with younger

men as ‘cougar’. These negative core beliefs bring to unhelpful assumptions which might

be indirectly humiliate or insult the true love that develops. In this sense, older wives and

younger husbands might try to protect and success in managing their marriage but fail to

experience a fulfilling and open relationship due to the fear of how society views them

which will in turn results in failure.

Stereotypes as a source of motivation

However, not everyone in the stigmatized group will behave as expected; some

will even be motivated to perform better to prove to the society. As an example, being a

single mother has a lot of stigma attached to, such as lack of ability to raise their children

and can hardly provide their children with sufficient welfare, and depend mostly on

government and society aids. But, there are many single mothers nowadays do well in

balancing their life between raising their children and holding a job. They are able

manage the stereotypical views and treat them in a positive way, which enable them to

accomplish their goals and prove to the society that they are distinctive from the ‘typical’

single mothers.

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Question 5: Demonstrate how the SIX (6) conditions of the “Contact Hypothesis”

can contribute towards alleviating the negative impacts of stereotype on ANY ONE

of the group in question 3.

The problem of discrimination and stereotype towards the minorities like the

Orang Asli, is a common behavior practised by most of the people. Although this is a

very common phenomenon exists in the society, but it must be stopped before it

exacerbates and becomes a bad culture of human being, as it is rather unfair to the Orang

Asli. Hence, the social scientists discover a way to cope with this problem and they name

this theory as the Contact Hypothesis. It is one of the vital ways to strengthen

relationships among human and reduce prejudice towards other ethnicities and minority

groups. It states that a better understanding and acceptance of others’ culture will be

established, if people were having appropriate interpersonal contact which is under

favorable situations. For the Contact Hypothesis to take place, some important

prerequisite like common goals, mutual interdependence, equity in status and support

from institutions, law or customs should be present.

Firstly, the majority group and the Orang Asli must have mutual

interdependence (the situation that exists when 2 or more majority groups need to

depend on one another to accomplish a goal that is important to each of them). In order to

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reach the common target, both of the majority group and Orang Asli must be working

together and no rivalry action among each other. Not only the majority group shall

prevent stereotype on the Orang Asli, the Orang Asli shall not perceive that the majority

is still disdains them. Everyone will be cooperating in succeeding the goal, if both of the

groups believe on each other, show understanding, tolerating or even adopting the unique

culture of each other. In brief, the intergroup cooperation and interaction could definitely

make our country a harmonious one and diminish stereotype and discrimination.

Secondly, everyone of us needs to establish a common goal, which is important

to both Orang Asli and the majority group. By having a common goal as the guide of

living, the society, no matter the minority or the majority, will have to work together to

achieve that goal. As a Malaysian, we hold the responsibility to achieve our goal which is

to create a multi-culture and peaceful country with no prejudice. Our goal would not

realize in the absence of coorperation of any ethnics in our country as every group will be

are required to form comprehension and toleration towards the distinctive cultures and

traditions of various groups. If we were having a stereotypical thinking on the Orang

Asli, we might assume that they were totally different from us or they were still lagging

behind, then we might despise and repel the Orang Asli from our society, which will

become an obstacle for us to achieve our goal. Hence, by having common goals and

induction of the Orang Asli to our big family, stereotype and prejudice against them will

not happen.

Thirdly, every citizen in our nation shall know that everyone is in equal status

that is no one has a higher position to control other’s life. There is no doubt to conclude

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that by practising democratic values and Egalitarian norms, the prejudice issues can be

minimized. The society must provide equal opportunity, welfare and treating both of the

majority group and Orang Asli fairly. When both of the groups are equity in status, no

slavery or destining the fate and life of others will happen. Hence, no sense of stereotype,

prejudice and discrimination will arouse, making each other to interact intimately and

living peacefully with each other.

Next, contact hypothesis will be more effective if it occurs in a friendly and

informal setting. In-group can interact better with out-group individually when the

situation is less tense which helps to reduce the hostile feeling and negative stereotyping

between each other. Surroundings play an important role to affect one’s behavior

whereby a not suitable or stressful situation will cause both parties to become more

cautious to each other if both of them behave unfriendly or even hostility. On the other

hand, when the members of both groups are given an opportunity to interact with each

other personally, they will have a tendency to develop a better understanding between

themselves which will soon eliminate the in-group’s stereotypical beliefs towards the out-

group.

Furthermore, an individual of the majority should realize that the out-group

members are typical of their group with multiple group members. They should attempt

to communicate to the distinct individuals of the out-group and they will be able to find

that not all the members in an out-group have similar characteristics. So, they will not

generalize everyone in a group with the same personality. As an example, an orang asli

who has achieved a highly authorized position in the society should not be viewed as an

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exception. People should know that within the orang asli community, every individual

has distinctive personality and ability which will result in different performances.

Moreover, social norms that promote and support equality among groups are

essential to make the Contact Hypothesis to be carried out efficiently. Institutions and

authority that both groups made sense of, can give a clear definition regarding the proper

social norms, which can benefit both of the group, in the same time, perform surveillance

functions of the behavior of both groups. The social norms or laws that have been

legalized shall have the function of instilling positive experiences and image rather than

neutral image. For an example, a law like liberty of speech is to provide constructive

opinions, which are to bring improvement, but not to give a rise of controversy issues. In

brief, support of the institutions, law or customs could prevent amplification of pre-

existing negative impression among the groups, which is indirectly alleviating the

impacts of stereotype.

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Conclusion

In conclusion, the society today is still practicing prejudice, stereotype and

discrimination. However, since the social norms are strongly discouraging the practices

of these stereotypical attitudes and behaviors, people are gradually decreasing them. But,

instead of eliminating the prejudice attitude, people are ‘performing’ it in an implicit way

rather than explicit attitude. They might consciously announce that they have neither

prejudice nor stereotype towards the minority, but at times, they will involuntarily display

it.

Prejudice, stereotype and discrimination bring both positive and negative impacts

towards victims. The negative impacts will torment one’s mental and bring down his or

her positive thinking. By viewing in another way, it can also be a motivating source to

encourage and build up the one’s cognition to keep on moving forward. There are also

ways to prevent and reduce prejudice to ensure the peace and harmony in a society.

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Reference

Aronson, E., Wilson, T. D., Akert, R. M. (2013). Prejudice. Social Psychology. (8th ed.). New Jersey: Pearson Education.

Cherry, K. (n.d.). What is prejudice. Retrieved March 14, 2013 from http://psychology.about.com/od/pindex/g/prejudice.htm

Grobman, G. M. (1990). Stereotypes and prejudices. Retrieved March 14, 2013 from http://remember.org/guide/History.root.stereotypes.html

Michael, E., May Chuen, E. (2012). Education and health awareness among indigenious people: A study in Perak, Malaysia, Journal of Science and Technology, 2(8), 745-746. Retrieved from

http://www.ejournalofscience.org/archive/vol2no8/vol2no8_9.pdf

Prejudice. Allydog.com. 1998. http://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.php?term=Prejudice (14 March 2013)

South Carolina Human Affairs Commission. (n.d.). Case examples of discrimination. Retrieved 14 March, 2013 from http://www.state.sc.us/schac/case_examples_of_discrimination.htm

Stereotype. Allydog.com. 1998. http://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.php?term=Prejudice (14 March 2013)

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