Decease… Death… Die…

What are the prejudices?

The prejudice is the set of the preconceived and hostile attitude towards something without sufficient for such attitude grounds and knowledge.

In respect to the ethnical groups and their cultures the prejudice is in the form of the set of the preconceived and hostile attitude towards the representatives of these groups, their cultures and towards any facts which are connected with their activities, behavior and social state.

The main factor in the origin of prejudices is inequality in the social, economic and cultural conditions of life of the different ethnical communities. They arise as a consequence of not full or preconceived understanding of the object in relation to which the set if formed. Arising at the base of association, imagination or supposition, such set with the preconceived informative component influences at the attitude of people towards the object.

It is necessary to differentiate the stereotype and the prejudice.

Stereotypes are the reflection of those features and characteristics which an intrinsic to all members of this or that group. The effusive emotional estimations are absent. That’s why the stereotypes contain the possibility of positive judgments about stereotyped group.

As opposed to stereotype, the prejudice is presenting the negative and hostile estimation of group or individual of this group only for the reason of attribution of the certain negative qualities to them. Thoughtless negative attitude towards all members of the group or the majority of its part is typical for prejudices. In the practice of the human communication, the object of the prejudices is usually people who are deeply different from the majority by some features which are calling the negative impression from the side of the other people.

The prejudices are the elements of culture because they are generated by the social and not biological reasons. However they represent the steady and wide-spread elements of the everyday culture, which are transferred by their bearers from generation to generation with the help of traditions or normative acts.

Go to next page…