Prejudice

In a classic social psychology example, Jane Elliott, a third grade school teacher, divided her students into blue-eyed students and brown-eyed students to reproduce racial discrimination. She then alternated days on which she favored the blue-eyed students and the brown-eyed students. The students that were being praised on a specific day adopted the belief that they were superior to the other group and began discriminating against the other group. Likewise the group not favored began doing more poorly in academic work and showed signs of distress. This example shows how quickly stereotypes and discriminatory behavior can form and create prejudices. Additionally, the students gained insight into how it feels to be discriminated against providing a possible means to guarding against initiating prejudicial behaviors. Read more about the Class Divided Experiment here (a link to a documentary film is also on this page).

Respond to the following questions:

Are there times that you see either first-hand or read/see reports of competition contributing to prejudice between groups?

Based on the readings, is there anything that can be done to reduce prejudice resulting from this type of competition?