Interesting quotations

• Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principals.

D. Hume

• The man who follows a crowd will never be followed by a crowd.

R. Donnel

• It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinions; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

R. Emmerson

Dicsussion

Have you ever been in situations when you experience pressure from other people? Did you go along with what people think what you should do? Why? Please, describe this situation. Who were the people in this situation? What kind of decision did you have to make? Why did pressure from those people influence your decision?

Text 3. Striking Back against Prejudice:

Techniques That Can Help

Breaking the Cycle of Prejudice: On Learning Not to Hate

Psychologist believe that children acquire prejudice from their parents, other adults, their peers, and the mass media. Given this fact, one useful technique for reducing prejudice follows logically: somehow, we must discourage parents and other adults who serve as models for children from providing training in bigotry. But it is far from simple. A key initial step, therefore, is somehow convincing parents that the problem exists. Once they come face to face with their own prejudices, many people do seem willing to modify their words and behavior so as to encourage lower levels of prejudice among their children. Another argument that can be used to shift parents in the direction of teaching their children tolerance rather than prejudice lies in the fact that prejudice harms not only those who are its victims, but those who hold such views as well. Persons who are prejudiced, it appears, live in a world filled with needless fears, anxieties, and anger. Their enjoyment of everyday activities and life itself is reduced by their own prejudice. Since most parents want to do everything in their power to further their children’s well-being, calling these costs to parents’ attention may help discourage them from transmitting prejudiced views to their offsprings.

Direct Intergroup Contact: The Potential Benefits of Acquaintance

Communities can reduce prejudice by somehow increasing the degree of contact between different groups. This idea is known as the contact hypothesis, and there are several good reasons for predicting that such a strategy might prove effective. First, increased contact between persons from different groups can lead to a growing recognition of similarities between them. Perceived similarity can enhance mutual attraction. Second, while stereotypes are resistant to change, they can be altered when sufficient information inconsistent with them is encountered, or when individuals meet a sufficient number of “exceptions” to their stereotypes. Third, increased contact may help counter the illusion of outgroup homogeneity. For these reasons, it seems possible that direct intergroup contact may be one effective means of combating prejudice.

Recategorization: Redrawing the Boundary between “Us” and “Them”

Social psychologists believe that such shifts or recategorizations, as they are termed by them, can be used to reduce prejudice. This theory, known as the common ongroup identity model, suggests that when individuals belonging to different social groups come to view themselves as members of a single social entity, their attitudes toward each other become more positive. These favorable attitudes then promote increased positive contacts between members of the previously separate groups, and this in turn reduces intergroup bias still further. In short, weakening or eliminating initial us-them boundaries starts a process that carries the persons involved toward major reductions in prejudice and hostility. Gaertner and his colleagues suggest that once crucial factor in this process is the experience of working together cooperatively.

Cognitive Interventions: When Stereotypes Shatter – Or At least Become Less Compelling

Here several techniques seem to be effective. First, the impact of stereotypes can be reduced if individuals are encouraged to think carefully about others – to pay attention to their unique characteristics rather than to their membership in various groups. Research findings indicate that such attribute-driven processing can be encouraged even by such simple procedures as informing individuals that their own outcomes or rewards in a situation will be affected by another’s performance, or telling them that it is very important to be accurate in forming an impression of another person. Under these conditions, individuals are motivated to be accurate and this reduces their tendency to rely on stereotypes.

Second, and more surprising, the impact of stereotypes can sometimes be reduced by techniques based on principle of attribution. How do such procedures work? Several are based on the fact that often, we make inferences about others on the basis of their outcomes, while ignoring factors that might have produced these outcomes. For example, suppose that you learn tha5t a stranger scored 70 on a certain exam and that 65 was passing. Thus, the outcome is “passed”. In contrast, suppose that you learn that 75 was passing and the person scored 70; here the outcome is “failed”. If you were asked the rate this person’s intelligence or motivation, the chances are good that you would assign higher ratings in the first instance than in the second, despite the fact the strangers’ performance is identical in both cases. This illustrates our strong tendency to base inferences about others on their outcomes. Now let’s apply this to prejudice, and to the task of countering stereotypes. Suppose that you learnt that a woman was promoted to a high-level managerial job in a large company. The outcome is clear: she was promoted. Would this outcome influence your estimations of her talent or motivation? Again, the chances are good that it would – and crucially, that this would be the case even if you learned that her company has a strong affirmative action programme and actively seeks to promote women and minorities. In cases like this, our tendency to base our inferences about others on their outcomes can lead us to conclusions that are counter stereotypic in nature; and the result may be a weakening of the stereotypes involved.

EXERCISE 1.

Explain in other words what the following means:

• “us-them” boundaries

• contact hypothesis

• homogeneity

• ongroup identity model

EXERCISE 2.

Match the words and their definitions:

bigotry, tolerance, to discourage, to encourage, hypothesis, similarity,

to counter, to enhance, attraction, homogeneous, contact

• to persuade someone not to do something;

• the state of touching or being close to someone or something;

• consisting of parts or members that are all the same;

• to help someone become confident or brave enough to do something;

• behavior or beliefs;

• to make something such as a taster, feeling, or ability better;

• willingness to allow people to do, say, or believe what they want;

• an idea that is suggested as an explanation of something, but that has not yet been proved to be true;

• the quality of being similar to something else;

• to react to an action, criticism, argument etc. by doing or saying something that will have an opposite effect;

• the feeling of liking someone or something very much.

EXERCISE 3.

What are the given words be likely to be followed by according to the