Possible motivational and Cognitive Sources of Prejudice Displayed by the Female Celebrities in Their Preference for Caucasian Partners



Possible Motivational and Cognitive Sources of Prejudice

Introduction

We have seen during the beginning of this course, how we think and know our social environment, and then we study how we influence each other. Now we must devote ourselves to study how we relate to others, each other. In this regard we note that our feelings and actions towards people sometimes negative and sometimes positive. Prejudice and aggression are two aspects that are unpleasant in human relations and social psychology which has devoted a great deal of research and studies due to its importance and relevance in social interaction. Thus it has tried to answer questions like: Why do not we like each other and even why we despise, to each other? Why and when we hurt each other? Nevertheless, fortunately human relations are also marked by pleasant aspects, which have also been interesting to study, and this is how social psychology has delved into topics such as interpersonal attraction and intimacy and altruistic behavior, looking for answers questions such as why we like or love to certain people or Caucasian? When do we offer help to friends or strangers? Finally, within the area of Social Relationships are particularly important to study the conflict and conciliation, to analyze how knowledge is developed and what gives us the social psychology to help us confront and resolve in a fair and friendly.

Prejudice: The distaste for others

What is prejudice? It is a negative preconception to a group and to its individual members. Prejudice against a person skews us solely because we identify with a particular group. Prejudice is an attitude and negative evaluations that characterize prejudice may arise from emotional associations of the need to justify the behavior, negative beliefs or stereotypes calls. Stereotyping is to generalize and such generalizations may have a germ of truth. The stereotype is defined as the belief about the personal attributes of a group of Caucasian. Stereotypes can be overly generalized, inappropriate and resistant to new information. Prejudice is a negative attitude; discrimination is a form of negative behavior. Discriminatory behavior often but not always, has its source in prejudice attitudes. Two particular forms of prejudice widely studied in the literature are: racial prejudice and gender.

Prejudice comes from various sources since it provides several functions (Herek, 1986, 1987). There are social sources of prejudice, emotional sources at the origin of prejudice and finally cognitive source of prejudice. Within the social sources of prejudice is known that the inequality of social position generates prejudice, religion is also related to prejudice, discrimination or behave according to stereotypes also generates a self-fulfilling prophecy phenomenon, group membership and the consequent social identity are a source of bias. Society often holds prejudices and even maintains institutional support practices and forms of segregation.

Although the bias is generated through social situations, emotional factors often encourage it. Frustration can promote prejudice as personality factors, such as ...