Describe institutional bias. Provide some examples of institutional biases?

What roles do
attitudes, stereotypes, and prejudices play in institutional biases? What impact does
cultural influence have on institutional biases?

Institutional bias is A tendency for the procedures and practices of institutions to operate in ways which
result in certain social groups being advantaged or favored and others being disadvantaged or devalued.
(Oxford University Reference,2011)

Some examples of institutional bias are Racial Profiling, this is where people are judged by their ethical
background in everyday America. An example myself and some of my friend went into a store that was
relatively an expensive store, we walked around for a couple of minutes until someone came an asked if
we needed help, at this time we replied no just looking. After speaking we were later followed around as if
we were going to still. The mindset that they had was all African Americans steal. Another example of
institutional bias is before working where I am now we had nothing but woman in higher power as
principals over the schools and men as assistants, now this day in time we have nothing but men taking

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over as the principals and women are now assistant principals. Now it changes things especially when it

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comes to the bathroom, now the woman must use the hall bathroom and the men use the office

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bathroom.

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Psychologists have assumed that, like other attitudes, prejudice subjectively organizes people’s

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environment and orients them to objects and people within it. Prejudice also serves other psychological
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functions, such as enhancing self-esteem (Fein & Spencer, 1997). Stereotypes are cognitive schemas
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used by social perceivers to process information about others (Hilton & von Hippel, 1996). According to
Allport (1954), discrimination involves denying ‘individuals or groups of people equality of treatment
which they may wish’ (p. 51. All of these play a major part in the how our culture is impacted. The
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reason why is because cultural bias works its way into institutional bias. For example, in locations where
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the dominant culture is individualistic, rules and procedures will be built around individualistic values. In
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a culture with more collectivistic values, there would likely exist different policies, laws, and procedures.
(Jones, 1997: 472)
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Reference
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Allport, G. W. (1954). The Nature of Prejudice. Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley.

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Fein,S.,&Spencer,S.J.(1997).Prejudiceasself-image maintenance: Affirming the self through derogating

others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 31–44.
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Hilton, J. L., & von Hippel, W. (1996). Stereotypes. Annual Review of Psychology, 47, 237–271.

Oxford University Reference, 2011

Jones, J. M. (1997). Prejudice and racism (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

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