Concept
Prejudice
Overview
Prejudice can be an affective feeling towards a person based on their perceived social group membership. The word is often used to refer to a preconceived (usually unfavourable) evaluation or classification of another person based on that person's perceived personal characteristics, such as sex, gender, gender identity, beliefs, values, social class, friendship, age, disability, religion, sexuality, race, ethnicity, language, nationality, culture, complexion, beauty, height, body weight, occupation, wealth, education, criminality, sport-team affiliation, fandom, music tastes, enthusiasm or other perceived characteristics.
The word "prejudice" can also refer to unfounded or pigeonholed beliefs and it may apply to "any unreasonable attitude that is unusually resistant to rational influence". Gordon Allport defined prejudice as a "feeling, favorable or unfavorable, toward a person or thing, prior to, or not based on, actual experience". Auestad (2015) defines prejudice as characterized by "symbolic transfer", transfer of a value-laden meaning content onto a socially-formed category and then on to individuals who are taken to belong to that category, resistance to change, and overgeneralization.
According to American Psychological Association (APA), Implicit Association test (IAT) is an evaluation of certain negative attitudes towards people which are usually hidden or "Implicit". It measures how much a person is prone to discriminate against a certain group of people unconsciously . In 2023 alone, more than 40 million IATs were completed by people at the Project Implicit website, which means it is the most comprehensive scales to assess hidden biases among people
The United Nations Institute on Globalization, Culture and Mobility has highlighted research considering prejudice as a global security threat due to its use in scapegoating some populations and inciting others to commit violent acts towards them and how this can endanger individuals, countries, and the international community.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Prejudice is discussed.
Prejudice is an opinion without judgment. Thus all over the world do people inspire children with all the opinions they desire, before the children can judge. There are some universal, necessary prejudices, which even make virtue.
Voltaire, Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
PRIDE IN SPIRIT.—The pride of man, which strives to oppose the theory of our own descent from animals and establishes a wide gulf between nature and man himself—this pride is founded upon a prejudice as to what the mind is; and this prejudice is relatively recent. In the long prehistorical period of humanity it was supposed that the mind was everywhere, and men did not look upon it as a particular characteristic of…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day
states what it is; names the idea; opens on it
Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, skeptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit, and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature.
Edmund Burke, The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 03
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
23. All psychology hitherto has run aground on moral prejudices and timidities, it has not dared to launch out into the depths. In so far as it is allowable to recognize in that which has hitherto been written, evidence of that which has hitherto been kept silent, it seems as if nobody had yet harboured the notion of psychology as the Morphology and DEVELOPMENT-DOCTRINE OF THE WILL TO POWER, as I conceive of it. The…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
a chapter is titled for it; names the idea; opens on it
Instead of jests he must have arguments, and while he is in this frame of mind, I am not afraid that he will be carried away by young fools; conscience and truth are on my side. If prejudice is to enter into the matter at all, an affection of twenty years' standing counts for something; no one will ever convince him that I have wearied him with vain lessons; and in a heart so upright and so sensitive the voice of a…
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile
names the idea; states what it is
Philosophers who discussed Prejudice
Related ideas
- Egalitarianism
- Belief
- Ethnicity
- Antisemitism
- Language
- Latin
- Law
- Culture
- Wealth
- Native Americans in the United States
- Neuroscience
- Linguistics
- Princeton University
- Merriam-Webster
- Religion
- Racism
- Syntax
- Social class
- Sexual orientation
- Empathy
- Theodor W. Adorno
- Aristotle
- United Nations
- Old French
Place in the tradition
Part of Atheism.