INDEX

1. Introduction.4
2. Objective..6
3. The nature of prejudice................7
4. Bases of prejudice9
5. Out-group homogeneity..11
6. Cognition in children..14
7. Prejudice in childhood15
8. Dealing with prejudice19
9. Summary.20
10. Conclusions and implications.21
11. Bibliography....23

INTRODUCTION
In sociology and social psychology, an ingroup is a social group to which a person psychologically
identifies as being a member. By contrast, an outgroup is a social group with which an individual does
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not identify. For example, people may find it psychologically meaningful to view themselves according
to their race, culture, gender, age, or religion. It has been found that the psychological membership of
social groups and categories is associated with a wide variety of phenomena.
The terminology was made popular by Henri Tajfel and colleagues during his work in formulating social
identity theory. The significance of ingroup and outgroup categorization was identified using a method
called the minimal group paradigm. Tajfel and colleagues found that people can form selfpreferencingingroups within a matter of minutes and that such groups can form even on the basis of
seemingly trivial characteristics, such as preferences for certain paintings.
Prejudice is a baseless and usually negative attitude toward members of a group. Common features of
prejudice include negative feelings, stereotyped beliefs, and a tendency to discriminate against members
of the group. While specific definitions of prejudice given by social scientists often differ, most agree
that it involves prejudgments (usually negative) about members of a group. Allport (1954) recognized
that attachment to one's ingroups does not necessarily require hostility toward outgroups. Yet the
prevailing approach to the study of ethnocentrism, ingroup bias, and prejudice presumes that ingroup
love and outgroup hate are reciprocally related. Findings from both cross-cultural research and
laboratory experiments support the alternative view that ingroup identification is independent of
negative attitudes toward outgroups and that much ingroup bias and intergroup discrimination is
motivated by preferential treatment of ingroup members rather than direct hostility toward outgroup
members. Thus to understand the roots of prejudice and discrimination requires first of all a better
understanding of the functions that ingroup formation and identification serve for human beings.
Although standardized measures of prejudice reveal high levels of ethnocentric bias in the preschool
years, it may reflect in-group favoritism or out-group prejudice. A measure that partially decouples the
two attitudes was given to White children between 4 and 7 years of age to examine the reciprocal
relation between and the acquisition and correlates of in-group and out-group attitudes. The two attitudes
were reciprocally correlated in 1 sample from a racially homogeneous school but not in a 2nd sample
from a mixed-race school. In-group favoritism did not appear until 5 years of age but then reached
significant levels; it was strongly related to developing social cognitions. Out-group prejudice was
weaker, but its targets suffer from comparison with the high favoritism accorded in-group members.

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Prejudice and discrimination can affect peoples opportunities, their social resources, self-worth and
motivation, and their engagement with wider society. Moreover, perceptions of equality and inequality
are themselves drivers of further discrimination. Consequently, establishing, promoting and sustaining
equality and human rights depends on understanding how people make sense of and apply these
concepts in their everyday lives.
Structural inequalities pervade society, and map onto differences in social class, ethnicity and
socioeconomic categorisations. To some extent legislation and the direct provision of services and
resources can redress such inequalities, but they cannot on their own deal with embedded social attitudes
that give rise, whether deliberately or otherwise, to discrimination. Moreover, structural interventions
usually apply to particular groups or categories (as in the case of failing schools, or entry criteria to
Oxbridge from the state sector) but potentially ignore other axes of inequality. Indeed, new social
categorisations constantly arise. For example,politicians and the media regularly identify new alleged
threats from, for instance,immigrants of particular types, particular practices adopted by religions,
threats to institutions such as marriage, and so on. Consequently, the targets of prejudice and
discrimination may change faster than legislation can possibly respond.

OBJECTIVE
The objective of this project is to study the in-group bias and out-group prejudices in youth. This project
tries to understand what are the factors that give birth to out-group prejudices in youth and how do they
express their criticisim for people belonging to out-groups. This project attempts to reason the thinking
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of the youth about the out-group people and how those thoughts subconsciously lead to disliking of the
other groups. It attempts to understand how young people try to reason out their thinking about the outgroup people and how they start creating theories and reasons to support their view point and how that
affects their mental and social growth.
Stereotypes and prejudices need not necessarily be negative. Many stereotypes attribute positive
qualities to an entire group, such as the athleticism of Black people, or the warmth and charm of the
Irish, or in the case of young people the idealism of youth. Often such stereotypes can be seen to
romanticise the group in question. While this might seem harmless enough, it still amounts to a
simplification of a complex social reality, and in many cases is patronising in tone and disempowering in
effect.

THE NATUE OF PREJUDICE

Prejudice is defined in this report as bias which devalues people because of their perceived membership
of a social group.
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The social psychology literature highlights four areas that we need to understand:
1. The intergroup context
This refers to the ways that people in different social groups view members of other groups. Their views
may relate to power differences, the precise nature of differences, and whether group members feel
threatened by others. These intergroup perceptions provide the context within which people develop
their attitudes and prejudices.
2. The psychological bases for prejudice
These include: peoples key values; the ways they see themselves and others; their sense of social
identity, and social norms that define who is included in or excluded from social groups. Prejudice is
more likely to develop and persist where:
groups have different or conflicting key values
others are seen as different
people see their identity in terms of belonging to particular groups, and
their groups discriminate against others.
3. Manifestations of prejudice
There are many ways in which prejudice can be expressed. Stereotypes can be positive or negative, and
may be linked to a fear that other groups may pose a threat. Some apparently positive stereotypes (as
sometimes expressed towards older people or women, for instance) may nonetheless be patronising and
devalue those groups.Different stereotypes evoke different emotional responses. These include
derogatory attitudes or overt hostility. Peoples use of language, behaviour, emotional reactions and
media images can all reflect prejudice too.

4. The effect of experience

This has several dimensions. First, peoples experiences do not always match others views about the
extent of prejudice. For instance, few people express negative prejudice towards older people, yet older
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people report high levels of prejudice towards them.Secondly, contact between groups is likely to
increase mutual understanding, though it needs to be close and meaningful contact. A third factor is the
extent to which people wish to avoid being prejudiced. This is based on personal values, a wish to avoid
disapproval, and wider social norms. Each of these offers a means for potentially preventing the
expression of prejudice and discriminatory behaviour.

THE BASES OF PREJUDICE

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Prejudice can have a variety of bases. This section considers the values people apply to intergroup
relationships, the way they make use and apply categories to define those relationships, and the
importance of these categories for peoples sense of identity. Another basis for prejudice lies in peoples
personality, but as it is arguable whether this is amenable to change it is not discussed in detail in this
section. It is covered briefly in the section on engagement.
Prejudice is an issue we have faced time and time again. In the media today, we often witness how
movies, television shows, and music fortify and proliferate negative stereotypes, stereotypes that have
caught the eyes and ears of human-rights groups constantly throughout the past century.
For years, people have pondered the origins of prejudice and have often only resorted to speculation.
Recent studies, however, have suggested a new alternative that suggests that prejudice and racial
stereotyping might, in fact, be genetic. Children with a genetic condition known as Williams Syndrome
do not display the tendency to stereotype other people based on their race, a tendency that most children
have from a very early age.
Previous studies have shown the presence of racial stereotypes to be prevalent in children as early as age
three, to the same extent that these stereotypes are present in adults. Additionally, racial stereotyping has
been found to be present in children with autism who have difficulties in social interaction and the
development of social knowledge. However, according to www.labspaces.net, in this new study by
Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg of the Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim and the University of
Heidelberg in Germany, researchers showed children a series of pictures having people of different races
and genders, and asked the children to assign positive or negative features to them. Typical children
made strong stereotypical assignments for gender roles as well as for race, which was similar to results
of older studies. However, in children with Williams Syndrome, almost no evidence of racial bias
whatsoever was found.
Williams Syndrome is a rare neurodevelopmental disorder caused by deletions of about 26 genes from
the long arm of chromosome seven. Children with Williams Syndrome are known to have unusually
friendly natures because they lack the sense of fear that other people feel in various social situations. As
this is the case, the findings in this new study support the notion that prejudice and racial stereotyping
may be the result of social fear.

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OUTGROUP HOMOGENEITY
The out-group homogeneity effect is one's perception of out-group members as more similar to one
another than are in-group members, e.g. "they are alike; we are diverse".The term "outgroup
homogeneity effect", or "relative outgroup homogeneity" has been explicitly contrasted with "outgroup
homogeneity" in general, the latter referring to perceived outgroup variability unrelated to perceptions of
the ingroup.
The out-group homogeneity effect is part of a broader field of research that examines perceived group
variability. This area includes in-group homogeneity effects as well as out-group homogeneity effects,
and it also deals with perceived group variability effects that are not linked to in-group/out-group
membership, such as effects that are related to the power, status, and size of groups.
The out-group homogeneity effect has been found using a wide variety of different social groups, from
political and racial groups to age and gender groups.
The implications of this effect on stereotyping have been noted. Perceivers tend to have impressions
about the diversity or variability of group members around those central tendencies or typical attributes
of those group members. Thus, outgroupstereotypicality judgments are overestimated, supporting the
view that out-group stereotypes are overgeneralizations.
The outgroup homogeneity effect is sometimes referred to as "outgroup homogeneity bias". Such
nomenclature hints at a broader meta-theoretical debate that is present in the field of social psychology.
This debate centres on the validity of heightened perceptions of ingroup and outgroup homogeneity,
where some researchers view the homogeneity effect as an example of cognitive bias and error, while
other researchers view the effect as an example of normal and often adaptive social perception.
However, this concept has been challenged due to some cases in which in-groups view themselves as
homogeneous. Researchers have postulated that such an effect is present when viewing a group as
homogeneous helps to promote in-group solidarity. Experiments on the topic found that in-group
homogeneity is displayed when people who highly identify with a group are presented with stereotypical
information about that group.

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A self-categorization theory account

Self-categorization theory attributes the outgroup homogeneity effect to the differing contexts that are
present when perceiving outgroups and ingroups.For outgroups, a perceiver will experience an
intergroup context and therefore attend to differences between the two groups. Consequently, less
attention is paid to differences between outgroup members and this leads to perceptions of outgroup
homogeneity. When perceiving ingroup members a perceiver may experience either an intergroup
context or an intragroup context. In an intergroup context the ingroup would also be predicted to be seen
as comparatively homogeneous as the perceiver attends to the differences between us and them (in
other words, depersonalization occurs). However, in an intragroup context the perceiver may be
motivated to attend to differences with the group (between me and others in the group) leading to
perceptions of comparative ingroup heterogeneity. As perceivers are less often motivated to perform
intra-group outgroup comparison, this leads to an overall outgroup homogeneity effect.
The self-categorization theory account is supported by evidence showing that in an intergroup context
both the ingroup and outgroup will be perceived as more homogenous, while when judged in isolation
the ingroup will be perceived as comparatively heterogeneous.The self-categorization theory account
eliminates the need to posit differing processing mechanisms for ingroups and outroups, as well as
accounting for findings of outgroup homogeneity in the minimal group paradigm.
A social identity theory account
Another body of research looked at ingroup and outgroup homogeneity from the perspective of social
identity theory. While complementary to the self-categorization theory account, this body of research
was concerned more with specific homogeneity effects associated with the motivations of perceivers.
They derived from social identity theory the prediction that comparative ingrouphomogeneity will at
times arise due to demands to establish a positive and distinct social identity. For example, members
of minority groups would be particularly likely to accentuate intragroup solidity through the emphasis of

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ingroup homogeneity. This is because minority group members, due to their minority status, are likely to
experience threat to their self-esteem. This was empirically supported.
Within the same tradition it was also hypothesised that an ingroup homogeneity effect would emerge on
ingroup defining dimensions for both minority and majority group members. This too was empirically
supported. Recent research also has reaffirmed that this effect of in-group homogeneity on in-group
defining dimensions and out-group homogeneity on out-group defining dimensions may occur because
people use their ratings of perceived group variability to express the extent to which social groups
possess specific characteristics. Like the self-categorization theory account, this recent research also
suggests that the effect may occur independent of the motivational concerns described in social identity
theory.

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COGNITION IN CHILDREN
Children will model what they see and hear their parents and caregivers and other close adults say and
do. They soak in the assumptions and prejudices around them and take them in by way of vicarious
learning (in which they model the behaviors and attitudes they see) without thinking about what they are
learning with any critical awareness. Children who observe their parents (or aunts, uncles, cousins,
grandparents, clergy, friends, etc.) making racist, prejudiced remarks or acting in prejudiced and
discriminatory ways learn to be racist, prejudiced and discriminatory in those same ways. Such children
may find themselves discriminating against others "just because". They won't have thought such
behavior through carefully; they will simply act it out on the unjustified assumption that such behavior is
justified. In light of how easily children pick up prejudicial attitudes and behaviors from the adults in
their lives, it is vital that parents and caregivers closely examine their own beliefs, comments, and
behaviors and ask themselves what their children are seeing, learning and copying.

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PREJUDICE IN CHILDHOOD
An alternative approach is to consider how prejudice develops in the first place.First, we have to
remember that prejudice can fluctuate from situation to situation and, as new intergroup comparisons
and conflicts occur, so prejudice shifts.However, it is probably also true that childhood offers a period
during which deeplyrooted prejudices can be avoided, challenged or changed. Psychologically the basis
for this is that children have not laid down strong associations and memory traces, they are able to learn
and unlearn more readily than adults, and it is easier to build up both good and bad habits in childhood.
It is not uncommon to hear people describe young children as innocent, as if this might imply they are
without prejudice. In fact, years of research in developmental psychology show that prejudice appears
early in childhood (see Aboud, 1988; Levy and Killen, 2008; Nesdale, 2001; Quintana and McKown,
2008; Rutland, 2004). Thisbody of research has studied the development of prejudice in its many
multifaceted forms and shown both age-related and contextual influences on childrens prejudice.These
findings are important since they suggest that understanding the origins,functions and moderators of
prejudice in children should be a high priority if we are to establish effective policy and combat its
negative consequences.Given thatstereotypes and prejudice are hard to change in adulthood, most
psychologists agree that interventions must be implemented early in life to be successful (Aboud and
Levy, 2000).Because of the changing nature of prejudice in childhood, developmental scientists employ
a variety of methods to study childrens prejudice.Three of these are: childrens explicit preferences for
members of their own versus other groups,sometimes reflected in biased judgements about the
characteristics of groupmembers; implicit biases; and the exclusion or rejection of individual peers in
intergroup contexts.
Explicit prejudice in childhood
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Research on childrens explicit preference for one social group over another has largely focused on
racial or ethnic preference, with fewer studies on gender and national groups. Clark and Clark (1947)
showed that Black American children in segregated schools preferred white dolls to black dolls,
evidence that was influential in the Supreme Court case that outlawed school segregation in the United
States.More recent techniques, including the Preschool Racial Attitudes Measure (PRAM;Williams,
Best, Boswell, Mattson and Graves, 1975) and the Multiple-response Racial Attitudes measure (MRA;
Doyle, Beaudet and Aboud, 1988) ask children to attribute positive (such as clean, smart) and
negative (such as mean, dirty) characteristics to a white child or a black child or, in the MRA, to both
children. Ingroup biases on these measures emerge from four to five years of age among ethnic majority
children (for example, Aboud, 1988, 2003; Augoustinos and Rosewarne, 2001; Doyle and Aboud, 1995),
but the biases tend to decline from approximately seven years of age (for example, Black-Gutman and
Hickson, 1996; Doyle and Aboud, 1995). It is worth noting that much of this research was carried out in
the US or Australia, but the pattern of findings is the same in the UK (for example, Rutland, Cameron,
Bennett and Ferrell, 2005; Rutland, Cameron, Milne and McGeorge, 2005).An important limitation of
all this research is that the evidence is typically based on small numbers of children (fewer than 200)
within particular schools in specific regions. There is very little evidence about the generality or contextsensitivity of childrens racial prejudice across the UK. Rutland, Cameron, Bennett and Ferrell (2005)
conducted a small-scale national survey of childrens racial attitudes funded by the BBC. They found
that children living in multi-ethnic and diverse areas showed more positive racial attitudes. Childrens
attitudes to the opposite sex are usually negative between four and five years of age (Bigler, 1995), and
this is also shown in regionally based UK research (Yee and Brown, 1994). However, gender biases
generally do not decline from middle childhood onwards (Powlishta, Serbin, Doyle and White, 1994)
but, rather, gender bias transforms and is modified by shifts in peer group activity, physical maturation
and ideas about complementarity between genders (Abrams, 1989).Understanding children and young
peoples gender-role assumptions (for example, about caring and working) should be fundamentally
important for tackling various forms of social exclusion for both men and women. Developmental
research on national prejudice, mostly conducted in the UK, also shows that explicit national intergroup
biases appear later in childhood than racial or gender bias but then persist throughout middle childhood
and early adolescence (for example, Barrett, 2007; Abrams, Rutland and Cameron, 2003; Bennett,
Lyons, Sani and Barrett, 1998; Rutland, 1999; Rutland, Cameron, Milne and McGeorge, 2005; Rutland,
Killen and Abrams, 2010; Verkuyten, 2001). Therefore, explicit gender and national prejudice seems
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pervasive and there is a real need to understand the development and durability of these biases in a
national sample of children of different ages. However, it is unclear whether (and no one has tested this)
an all-out assault on prejudice would be a more effective strategy than dealing with each type of
prejudice separately. Given that prejudices towards different groups appear to have different
developmental trajectories, it seems likely that the latter approach might work better.

Childrens implicit biases

A few recent studies have shown that implicit biases - that is those that children cannot control and are
not necessarily aware of - emerge early in childhood (see, for example, Baron and Banaji, 2006;
McGlothlin and Killen, 2006; Rutland, Cameron, Milne and McGeorge, 2005). For example, Rutland,
Cameron, Milne and McGeorge(2005) found that, using a child-friendly pictorial-based Implicit
Association Test (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee and Schwartz, 1998), six- to eight-year-old white British
children showed implicit racial and national biases. The IAT measures the relative strength of
association between concepts (for example, white British or black British) and attributes (for
example, good or bad). Implicit bias was present if the children show faster reaction times for
stereotypical (for example, white British and good) than counter-stereotypical (for example, black
British and good) associations. McGlothin and Killen (2006) examined another indirect form of bias.
They found that six- to nine-year-old European American children were more likely to believe there
were negative intentions when shown an ambiguous situation where an African American was a
potential perpetrator (for example, standing behind a swing) and a European American a possible victim
(for example, sitting on the ground in front of a swing) than vice versa. Use of these indirect measures is
informative because it can often get around language and other barriers. If we are to gauge the extent of
childrens prejudices across equality strands it seems likely that these types of methods will be useful. At
present there are hardly any studies of this sort globally, and especially in the UK. Future research
should examine the relationship between explicit and implicit prejudice at a national level, and their
respective roles in influencing childrens behaviour (for example, racist bullying/victimisation).
Social exclusion of peers
Another way of understanding childrens prejudices is to examine how children make decisions about
who to include and exclude from their social relationships in everyday intergroup contexts (Abrams and
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Rutland, 2007; Killen and Stangor, 2001; Nesdale, 2007). Recent UK research has shown that children,
adolescents and adults all have strong negative reactions to being excluded by peers (Abrams, Weick,
Colbe, Thomas and Franklin, 2010) and, as children get older, they use more systematic strategies to
enhance their group identity by psychologically embracing supporters and rejecting those who threaten
or challenge their groups. This means that sometimes members of out-groups are welcomed, and
sometimes members of in-groups are rejected. What seems especially important to children is that
theirown groups norms are defended (Abrams and Rutland, 2008; Abrams, Rutland and Cameron, 2003;
Abrams, Christian and Gordon, 2007; Abrams, Rutland, Pelletier and Ferrell, 2009. So whereas five- to
seven-year-old young children prefer good people over bad people and in-group members over outgroup members, older children prefer people who show support for their group over people who do not,
sometimes regardless of which group those people belong to. In short, their groups become more than
just flags of convenience: instead they become part of an identity to be defended. As Abrams, Rutland,
Pelletier and Ferrell (2009) have shown, what seems to be happening is that older children have learned
to expect social pressure from others if they do not conform, and have learned that group loyalty is
valued by their peers.As they get older, children increasingly place the pressures and needs of the group
above other considerations when making judgements about who it is right or wrong to exclude. This is a
relatively new line of research that has primarily considered childrens attitudes to members of outgroup nationality or schools. Thus, there is much to explore (for example, whether it applies in the same
way across all six equality strands). However, it opens many doors for intervention. For example, the
fact that it is possible to get children to be enthusiastic about individual out-group members shows that it
should also be possible to transform their views of those out-groups as a whole. Future studies should
include larger national samples andlook at multiple forms of social exclusion (for example, race,
ethnicity, religion, gender, body image, disability).

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DEALING WITH PREJUDICE

Prejudice is a natural by-product of making choices in life. We are presented with a diversity of choice
daily, from which we are required to select what matters to us most, what we like best, the things which
keep us in our comfort zones and anything that enhances us the most, while resisting the rest. From
choosing a partner to choosing a fashionable item, we are exercising the prejudice of accepting one thing
while rejecting another. So we are all guilty of exercising prejudice in some form and we all have our
prejudices relating to lifestyle and culture.
However, such prejudices become an issue where those choices are made out of deliberate malice to
show dislike, to stem personal fear, to demonstrate superiority, to exclude others and to denigrate or
deny their presence and rights. In fact, prejudice becomes intolerable when it is applied to people who
cannot change their colour, their disability, gender or sexuality. One always has the opportunity to lose
weight, if one is too big, to stop smoking, if the smoke offends others, or to stop behaving badly, if it
annoys one's peers. But prejudice against people who cannot change who they are, or their identities,
hits below the belt and becomes unacceptable.
Dealing with such prejudice is often a traumatic process for those on the receiving end, especially if they
are not supported by the system, by neighbours or the community. People affected by mindless prejudice
often feel impotent to deal with it and many are left scarred by its effects. However, the room for those
malicious types of prejudice is gradually contracting because of the global exposure to difference, the
networking opportunities to deal with people of different cultures and communities, and the educational
advantages available.
In fact, the vast amount of information available on the Internet and elsewhere, the dramatic increase in
travel over the years and the proliferation of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, are
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doing more to break down such prejudices, and the barriers to the acceptance of diversity, than anything
that has gone before them. They now make it difficult to exercise real prejudices, especially when one
has been out of one's locality or is trying to make 'friends' on a global scale.
Dealing with prejudices have never been easy, and prejudices will always be there. But thanks to
education, technology and greater exposure to one another, such prejudices can gradually be minimised
instead of being allowed to cause real damage.

SUMMARY
Prejudices emerge towards different groups during different periods of childhood and adolescence.
There are well-developed methods for measuring childrens attitudes towards members of their own and
other groups, both in terms of their explicit choices or statements and in terms of developing implicit
associations or learning of stereotypes. The evidence shows that children learn negative evaluations of
various social groups at a surprisingly young age, suggesting that combating prejudice insociety requires
early and continuous efforts to intervene. Children may exhibit prejudice not just through overall
feelings and evaluations about groups as a whole but also by selectively including or excluding
individual members of different groups from their social networks. This group-based aspect of exclusion
may be especially worthy of attention in schools.
Various intervention techniques for reducing prejudice have been tried with children but rarely have they
been properly evaluated. There is some evidence that multicultural curricula can be effective, but the
results are not conclusively positive. In the UK, multicultural readers have been found to be effective in
promoting positive attitudes towards different ethnic groups and children with disabilities.
However,direct discussions of racism and prejudice do not always produce the desired effects.
Research shows that children in mixed-group environments do not always sustain intergroup contact,
and may begin to self-segregate as they get older. It seems that the contact must involve activity that ties
the groups together, such as learning one anothers languages or engaging in cooperative learning tasks.
There is some hope that encouraging empathy and perspective-taking could reduce prejudice among
children. However, the evidence here is not yet well established, and there is some evidence that
children with better perspective-taking ability may actually be more adept at knowing how to exclude as

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well as include other children from their social networks. As well as being able to take the others
perspective, prejudice reduction may depend on children being motivated to ensure members of other
groups have a positive relationship with them.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

It is important to distinguish awareness of group differences from bias and prejudice.Some groups are
manifestly unequal: they are poorer, less well educated, have had fewer opportunities, and visibly have
lower occupational positions, worse health or engage in more crime. Some groups have more power
than others in society. It is not prejudiced to be aware of, and concerned about, these differences. On the
other hand, peoples knowledge is often incomplete or wrong, and they may also inappropriately
generalise their knowledge, resulting in bias and prejudice.For example, it is false and clearly prejudiced
to assume that every Muslim in the UK poses a terrorist threat. It is true that mothers are women, but
false to assume thatall women are (or should be) mothers. It is true that elderly people are generally less
physically mobile than younger people but false that all people with reduced mobility are elderly.
Actions or policies intended to help certain groups of people who are assumed to be dependent or needy
(for example, through free bus passes or maternity leave) involve assumptions that may well result in
disadvantages to other categories of people that are assumed to be independent. These assumptions are
prejudices and for particular individuals may be just as damaging as direct hostility. So from a policy
perspective, an important task is to identify which prejudices are consequential and which are harmful,
and to target these.
Efforts to understand prejudice across equality strands do not imply that prejudice is a generic
phenomenon. Although some people may generally be more prejudiced than others, it is more often the
case that some groups are targets of prejudice much more than others, or that prejudices take different
forms depending on the group towards which they are directed. Prejudice can be understood as a set of
common but dynamic processes that reflect peoples understanding of their various intergroup
relationships.
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At present there is substantial laboratory-based evidence but relatively little field research testing the
efficacy of different interventions to reduce prejudice. There is little informative intervention research
because the outcomes of most interventions to reduce prejudice are rarely evaluated adequately, and
most often they have no comparison or control conditions against which to judge change. If we are to
tackle prejudice effectively it will be necessary to conduct interventions at local, regional and national
levels that are evaluated against non-intervention baselines and comparison conditions.
Researchers are developing promising tools for reducing prejudice, particularly among children. It is
also known that various commonly used techniques can be counterproductive if applied inappropriately.
These include direct attempts at persuasion and diversity training. On the other hand, facilitating positive
intergroup contact, empathy and role-taking, and the use of multicultural curricula all offer positive
prospects. Much larger longitudinal and intervention studies will be required before we can be confident
about what will work best, where and when.
To link research evidence more directly to policy formulation it is essential to pursue an integrated
approach to prejudice and discrimination, with better coordination in terms of what is measured, how
and when. This will allow firmer conclusions to be drawn about the scale, focus and nature of
prejudices, and whatcountermeasuresmay be required. An integrated approach needs to accommodate
the distinctive features and issues that affect different equality strands, but sustain coherence across
strands in the way this is done.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. www.sociologyguide.com/
2. http://www.isa-sociology.org/
3. http://www.sociosite.net/
4. www.psychwiki.com/wiki/Prejudice
5. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
6. http://www.youth.ie/sites/youth.ie/files/
7. http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/
8. http://www.randomhouse.com.au/
9. http://www.sosyalarastirmalar.com/
10. http://sociologyindex.com/
11. http://remember.org/guide/
12. http://mscyprah.newsvine.com/
13. Contemporary Sociology by M. Francis Abraham
14. Psychology by Robert A. Baron
15. Social Psychology by Robert A. Baron

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