Ayushi Rajpura AU2120021

Psy 101 Assignment 4

Discriminatory practices in the society.

How can social psy can prevent this.

Social Psychology

Social psychology is the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, beliefs, intentions, and

goals are constructed within a social context by their actual or imagined interactions with others. The

subfield of social psychology is concerned with how people influence other people’s thoughts,

feelings and actions. Humans are social animals who live in a highly complex world. Because almost

every human activity has a social dimension, research in social psychology covers expansive and

varied territory : how people perceive and understand others, how people function in group, why

people hurt or help others, why people stigmatize and discriminate against certain others, why people

fall in love.

According to Social identity theory (Tajfel,1982; Tajfel & Turner, 1979), ingroup

consist of individual who perceive themselves to be members of the same social category.

Inherent in social identity theory is the idea that people value the groups with which they

identify and in doing so also experience pride through their group membership. Whether it is

pride in your school, your ethnicity, your country, and so on, defining yourself by that group

status is part of your social identity. One consequence of categorizing people as ingroup or

outgroup members is ingroup favouritism.

The emphasis on conduct is an essential aspect of any definition of discrimination.

Discrimination differs from racial prejudice (attitudes), racial stereotypes (beliefs), and

racism (ideologies), all of which can be related with racial disadvantage. Discrimination may

be driven by prejudice, stereotypes, or racism, but the concept of discrimination does not

imply any particular underlying reason.

Ayushi Rajpura AU2120021
Psy 101 Assignment 4

Discrimination has an impact on the victims' everyday lives in areas such as job,

income, financial possibilities, housing, educational chances, and medical care. Even with the

same degree of education and years of experience, ethnic minorities in Canada are 40% less

likely to get called back for an interview after applying for a job (Oreopolous, 2011). Even

after adjusting for other variables such as amount of health insurance, Blacks have higher

mortality rates than Whites for eight of the ten top causes of death in the United States

(Williams, 1999). They also have less access to and get lower-quality health care. Suicide

rates among lesbians and homosexuals are significantly higher than rates in the general

population, and it has been suggested that this is due in part to the negative consequences of

discrimination, such as unfavourable views and the ensuing social isolation (Halpert, 2002).

Discrimination can even take the form of hate crimes, such as homosexual bashing, in rare

situations.

People may have preconceptions and biases because they perceive members of

outgroups to be different from them. We may become anxious that our encounters with

members of various racial groups may be unpleasant, and these concerns may cause us to

avoid interacting with such people (Mallett, Wilson, & Gilbert, 2008). This shows that

assisting people in making greater ties with members of diverse groups is a smart method to

lessen bias. People will be more tolerant of others when they come to regard them as more

similar to themselves, as closer to the self, and as more worried about them.

The jigsaw classroom is a method of teaching in which students from various racial or

ethnic groups work together to master content in an interdependent manner. The class is

organised into small learning groups, with ethnic and gender diversity in each group. The

given learning material is divided into as many portions as there are students in the group,
Ayushi Rajpura AU2120021
Psy 101 Assignment 4
and members from various groups who are assigned the same work meet together to help

build a solid report. Each student next learns his or her own piece of the subject and delivers

it to the other students in his or her group. As a result, the students in each group are

interdependent in learning all of the material. Many schools throughout the globe utilise a

variety of tactics based on jigsaw classroom ideas, and research on these approaches has

indicated that cooperative, interdependent encounters among kids from diverse social groups

are helpful in decreasing negative stereotyping and prejudice.

Discrimination is not the only factor contributing to racial disparities in the United

States. Indeed, persistent racial and ethnic disparities are the result of complex and

multifaceted influences. Nonetheless, the weight of existing evidence suggests that

discrimination continues to affect the allocation of contemporary opportunities; and, given

the often covert, indirect, and cumulative nature of these effects, our current estimates may in

fact underestimate the extent to which discrimination contributes to minority groups' poor

social and economic outcomes. Despite significant improvement since the early 1960s, racial

discrimination remains a significant element in defining modern patterns of social and

economic inequality.
Ayushi Rajpura AU2120021
Psy 101 Assignment 4

Bibliography:

1. Allport, F. H. (1920). The influence of the group upon association and thought. Journal of
Psychology, 3(3), 159.
2. Tajfel, H., Billig, M. G., Bundy, R. P., & Flament, C. (1971). Social categorization and
intergroup behavior. European journal of social psychology, 1(2), 149-178.
3. Oreopolous, P. (2011). Why do skilled immigrants struggle in the labour market? A field
experiment with six thousand résumés. American Economic Journal, 3(4), 148-171.
4. Williams, D. R. (1999). Race, socioeconomic status, and health: The added effect of racism
and discrimination. In Adler, N. E., Boyce, T., Chesney, M. A., & Cohen, S. (1994).
Socioeconomic status and health: The challenge of the gradient. American Psychologist, 49,
15-24.
5. Halpert, S. C. (2002). Suicidal behavior among gay male youth. Journal of Gay and Lesbian
Psychotherapy, 6, 53–79.
6. Mallett, R. K., Wilson, T. D., & Gilbert, D. T. (2008). Expect the unexpected: Failure to
anticipate similarities leads to an intergroup forecasting error. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 94(2), 265–277. doi: 10.1037/0022–3514.94.2.94.2.265