STEREOTYPES, PREJUDICE & DISCRIMINATION

In this course you will gain a basic understanding of what stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination are. You will learn how they develop, what influences and maintains them, and what functions they serve. We will challenge ourselves to think about the experience of being stigmatized as well as holding the stigmatizing views ourselves.

In our first class, we will define stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination. We’ll talk about how they differ, what the relationships are between the three, and how we can recognize them when they happen.

Pre-lesson task: Watch TED Talk ‘’The danger of a single story’’ by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Today we will talk about five different theories of prejudice and discrimination and see how they help us better undertand the functions they serve.

IN ADDITION: Read two chapters of the book called ‘’Blink’’ by Malcolm Gladwell.

Today we are going to talk about research processes and methods used to study stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination. 

IN ADDITION: Complete the Implicit Association Test (IAT) at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html

This lesson will about the typical cognitive processing leading to stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination. We already mentioned this when talking about the Cognitive theory of prejudice in discrimination but now we will talk about some more concepts and discuss it in more detail.

IN ADDITION: Read these notes on the Tajfel and Turner study and feel free to look for more information about this study online if it would help you better understand it.

Why are stereotypes so difficult to change? How come they persist even when we rationally know that they can be untrue and hurtful? We will try to answer those questions by looking at some cognitive processing that plays a role.

IN ADDITION: Watch a short video on Pygmalion Effect here. Also, as we agreed on yesterday, please think of an example of a stereotypical view or instances of prejudice and discrimination in a TV show, advertisement, news, books or any form of mass communication. It would be great if you could share one such example in class!

We are starting the second week of classes by talking about different forms of prejudice and how they might have changed over time. 

IN ADDITION: Please watch this short video on empathy here.

Today we will learn about how prejudice develops in children. We will talk about different research methods to study this topic and different ways of explaining prejudice development with the support of psychological theories.

Knowing about how stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination develop and how they are maintained, in this second to last class, we will focus on the experience of belonging to the group(s) that those are directed towards. We will mostly focus on the concept known as stereotype threat – so you may want to take a look at a short video explaining it.

IN ADDITION: Here is a link to the video about stereotype threat.

Today we will continue our conversation about stereotype threats and then turn our discussion to the experience of vulnerability and shame, both closely related to the experience of being stigmatised and discriminated against. We will also have time for any questions you might have about anything we have covered so far!

IN ADDITION: Please watch this TED Talk on the topic of vulnerability.