Do you know what creates prejudice in an individual?

Answer 1

fear and ignorance

Answer 2

We pre-judge all the time under many different situations and for different reasons. All knowledge has costs. Knowledge is never free, including personal knowledge of another indiviual's character. To know another indiviual personally takes time and effort, time and effort paid up front, time and effort we may not have or can ill afford. Ask yourself how many indiviuals do I know intimately and personally, I guarantee it will amount to no more than 100 indiviuals at most, all others are strangers.

There is nothing inherently immoral or wrong about prejudice and pre-judgement, in fact it can save your life. Without having any personal knowledge of an indiviual coming down the street towards you, who would be more likely to mug you, a young male or an old female? A middle-aged man dressed in a three piece suit or a young male dressed in leather with a mohawk hair cut? You see a strange dog coming your way, if the dog were a poodle I'm sure you would react differently than if the dog were a pitbull.

Again, all knowledge has costs, acquiring knowledge may entail a price you may not be able to pay at a given time and place. Very often in life, more often than not, we must make decisions with only partial and imperfect knowledge, none of us is omniscient, there is nothing inherently immoral about this, including when a decision has to made about an unknown indiviual or only partially known indiviual. The physical look of a person, including race, sex, height, weight, shape, manner of speech, way of walking, can come into play when having to make a decision when full knowledge is simply unavailable and unattainable.

Prejudice becomes immoral only when there is access to full personal knowledge of an indiviual, in other words post-judgement is attainable, but one refuses that knowledge. That knowledge can be pro or con, there are parents who will refuse to acknowledge that a child of theirs has become evil, as surely as there are indiviuals that once knowing the good character of an indiviual will refuse to abandon their preconception.

Answer 3

It is part of our instinct to fear foreingers. It is neccessary for survival otherwise young animals would go off with strangers, or would accept outsiders that would take over their territory or destroy their group. It is something we all have so it is natural to feel this way to strangers and it is a good thing.
Some people however cant deal with these feelings and think there is something wrong in feeling that way so they over compensate and make out they love everyone and point the finger at anyone that doesnt claiming them to be racist, therefore making mountains out of molehills.
Most forms of racial tension dont come from people simply disliking another race but because another race is in a position that causes something negative to occer.
the KKK started not because they didnt like a certain race but because wealthy farm owners were using them as cheap labour and so putting others out of work, or making it harder to compete. The "New americans" therefore were just caught in the middle and were the scapegoats blamed for taking jobs of settled americans. Something that grew into todays ignorant prejudice.

Answer 4

Reasons for prejudice:

Fallacious extension of one's beasty negative past experiences to the general case can be harmful; it can be termed bias, or more colloquially, "lumping". If a person has developed the concept that members of one group have certain characteristics because of a sour past acquaintance with a member of that group, s/he may presume that all members of the group have such characteristics, thus adopting the prejudice known as sexism. This is typical of all prejudice: racism, linguicism, ageism, religious intolerance, heterosexism, prejudice based on differing political stances, and classism or elitism based on ones' socioeconomic status. There are prejudices towards those with disabilities, because a "handicapped" or disabled person may appear different from everyone else or unable to live the way an "abled" person can. And prejudices against people from other countries, regions and occupations as well are expressed by jokes or statements.

In other cases, it may be a matter of early education: people taught that certain attitudes are the "correct" ones may form opinions without weighing the evidence on both sides of a given question with no malice intended on the child's part. The prejudiced adult might even be shocked to hear a slew of racial slurs or comments (also based on ones' gender, religion, culture, nationality and ethnicity on some cases) and their own half-****** opinions on various groups echoed back at them from their children. In today's more diverse and sensitive society (the US, Australia and Europe in particular), it's considered taboo for persons to publicly express their prejudices as a dangerous ideology onto another race or group of people.

Common misconceptions:

Often the terms prejudice and stereotype are confused:

Prejudices are either an abstract-general preconception or an attitude towards individuals.

Stereotypes are a generalization of existing characteristics (facts), they reduce complexity and offer also opportunities to identify oneself with others.

My opinion? Negative and Positive experiences creates predjudice. Unless you are ignorant and don't have the negative or positive experiences to base your predjudice/bias.

Answer 5

I'd say there are three primary causes:

1) Being raised in a prejudiced home or taught prejudice by an influential fingure in your life.

2) Lack of understanding of other people, cultures, or subcultures.

3) A bad experience with a person or people within a people group shades someone's opinion of eveyone from that people group.

Answer 6

The bodily conception of life. One thinks we are these bodies,IE; race, color, religion, nationality, gender, job, etc. We are not this, we are eternal spirit souls, part and parcel of the Supreme Soul, Also known as Krishna, Allah, Jehovah, Vishnu, etc. We are all brothers and sisters of the one God who has many names.With out this understanding one has prejudice even towards animals and bugs etc. The quickest way to purify the heart and mind to get out of this bodily conception is to chant the Maha Mantra (the great mantra for deliverance from suffering and illusion) go to harekrishnatemple.c for details.

Answer 7

Environment. That's the answer. There's really nothing more to say except that if a newborn baby could talk, it wouldn't know how to be prejudice.

Answer 8

Well, its a cycle that does not end. One person hates someone and treats them badly so that individual holds it against anyone with the same attributes of the person that hate then and they begin to hate and hurt those people.

Answer 9

Usually it is influenced by their upbringing. How their parents felt. It can also be triggered by events that have happened to them where they fault the whole populus of a certain race just because ONE person of that race may have crossed them. Or just plain ignorance however both of those fall into ignorance...I believe in one race...the HUMAN race. God bless!

Answer 10

If my first experience with a dog is getting bit, I will be prejudiced against dogs. If my parents teach me to hate snakes or spiders, I will be prejudiced. I think the same thing happens with identifiable characteristics of humans. Race, poverty, homelessness, even wealth, blondes, fat, skinny.

Answer 11

Baba Yaga was close. That who that is unknown. It is a lot to do with our in group/out group psychology. We must be wary of the stranger, because to err in some ancient circumstances, would have been fatal. The long reach of our evolutionary history.