How does observational learning lead to prejudice and discrimination

It covers theoretical frameworks for the causes of prejudice and stereotyping with attention to the various characteristics of people and situations that interact to produce them. Stangor, Charles. Stereotypes and prejudice: Key readings. Philadelphia: Psychology Press. Whitley, Bernard E. The psychology of prejudice and discrimination.

Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Designed for an undergraduate course, this book covers the formation of stereotypes and how they are applied in the form of prejudice. It has been updated with the latest evidence from the field of social psychology. Intergroup relations. Yzerbyt and Demoulin write about the theoretical background of group formation and in their discussion go over what kinds of prejudiced behaviors arise in different situations because of the nature of group formation and social hierarchy.

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You make some very interesting points. Bandura , molded these concepts together as modeling and reciprocal determinism to form the context of social learning theory and his take on cognitive psychology. This was some interesting stuff! As Bandura departed from the notion that learning occurred as a result of some form of reinforcement behaviorism , he explored the concept that learning occurred by observation and instigated the cognitive processing of behavior.

This concept, then explore further by his notion on reciprocal determinism—for which both the actor and environment are intimately involved whereby one influences the other and vise versa.

This then clearly translates into a learning theory that best supports the entire picture surrounding learning—the environment, cognition, and behavior all play a pivotal role in the development, efficacy, and instance of learning Bandura, This then helped support the development of cognitive behavioral theories. Not to jump too far off the bandwagon, but, based upon the logic that learning is founded by observation, then how would you explain the creation of prejudice from the beginning? I would posit that a great deal of this is explained by natural tendencies in like group participation and variances between in and out groups based upon locality and social structure.

The self system in reciprocal determinism. American Psychologist, 33 4 , Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective. Annual Review of Psychology, 52 1 , So up until about five minutes ago, I would have to say that I completely agreed with your post.

And although I am not saying that you are wrong in your writing, I just read an article that gave me a somewhat different perspective and I really would like to share it with you. Does anyone try to stop them? The treatment of the teenagers in the video demonstrates the concept of racism. Why are these aspects of an unfamiliar person so important?

Although these secondary characteristics are important in forming a first impression of a stranger, the social categories of race, gender, and age provide a wealth of information about an individual. This information, however, often is based on stereotypes. We may have different expectations of strangers depending on their race, gender, and age. What stereotypes and prejudices do you hold about people who are from a race, gender, and age group different from your own?

What are some stereotypes of various racial or ethnic groups? Racism exists for many racial and ethnic groups. Mexican Americans and other Latino groups also are targets of racism from the police and other members of the community. For example, when purchasing items with a personal check, Latino shoppers are more likely than White shoppers to be asked to show formal identification Dovidio et al.

In one case of alleged harassment by the police, several East Haven, Connecticut, police officers were arrested on federal charges due to reportedly continued harassment and brutalization of Latinos.

Have you witnessed racism toward any of these racial or ethnic groups? Are you aware of racism in your community? Sexism is prejudice and discrimination toward individuals based on their sex. Typically, sexism takes the form of men holding biases against women, but either sex can show sexism toward their own or their opposite sex.

Like racism, sexism may be subtle and difficult to detect. Common forms of sexism in modern society include gender role expectations, such as expecting women to be the caretakers of the household. For example, women are expected to be friendly, passive, and nurturing, and when women behave in an unfriendly, assertive, or neglectful manner they often are disliked for violating their gender role Rudman, Research by Laurie Rudman finds that when female job applicants self-promote, they are likely to be viewed as competent, but they may be disliked and are less likely to be hired because they violated gender expectations for modesty.

Sexism can exist on a societal level such as in hiring, employment opportunities, and education. Have you ever experienced or witnessed sexism? Why do you think there are differences in the jobs women and men have, such as more women nurses but more male surgeons Betz, ? People often form judgments and hold expectations about people based on their age.

These judgments and expectations can lead to ageism , or prejudice and discrimination toward individuals based solely on their age. Typically, ageism occurs against older adults, but ageism also can occur toward younger adults.

Think of expectations you hold for older adults. Ageism is widespread in U. Some cultures, however, including some Asian, Latino, and African American cultures, both outside and within the United States afford older adults respect and honor.

Ageism can also occur toward younger adults. What expectations do you hold toward younger people? Does society expect younger adults to be immature and irresponsible? How might these two forms of ageism affect a younger and older adult who are applying for a sales clerk position? Another form of prejudice is homophobia : prejudice and discrimination of individuals based solely on their sexual orientation. Like ageism, homophobia is a widespread prejudice in U.

Negative feelings often result in discrimination, such as the exclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender LGBT people from social groups and the avoidance of LGBT neighbors and co-workers.

This discrimination also extends to employers deliberately declining to hire qualified LGBT job applicants. Have you experienced or witnessed homophobia? If so, what stereotypes, prejudiced attitudes, and discrimination were evident?

Some people are quite passionate in their hatred for nonheterosexuals in our society. This passionate response has led some researchers to question what motives might exist for homophobic people.

In this experiment, male college students were given a scale that assessed how homophobic they were; those with extreme scores were recruited to participate in the experiment.

In the end, 64 men agreed to participate and were split into 2 groups: homophobic men and nonhomophobic men. Both groups of men were fitted with a penile plethysmograph, an instrument that measures changes in blood flow to the penis and serves as an objective measurement of sexual arousal.

All men were shown segments of sexually explicit videos. One of these videos involved a sexual interaction between a man and a woman heterosexual clip. One video displayed two females engaged in a sexual interaction homosexual female clip , and the final video displayed two men engaged in a sexual interaction homosexual male clip. Changes in penile tumescence were recorded during all three clips, and a subjective measurement of sexual arousal was also obtained.

While both groups of men became sexually aroused to the heterosexual and female homosexual video clips, only those men who were identified as homophobic showed sexual arousal to the homosexual male video clip. While all men reported that their erections indicated arousal for the heterosexual and female homosexual clips, the homophobic men indicated that they were not sexually aroused despite their erections to the male homosexual clips. Adams et al.

Prejudice and discrimination persist in society due to social learning and conformity to social norms.