Last Updated on December 12, 2022 by Mike Robinson

When someone is treated unfairly just because they belong to a particular group, that is discrimination. It refers to people committing noticeable, overt acts against other group members.

Two of the most common types of discrimination are racism and sexism. When someone exhibits this behavior toward a specific racial group, it is referred to as “racist” and “sexism” when it targets a person because of their sex. Typically, discrimination is the result of prejudice and stereotypes.

An attitude toward members of a group that is typically unfavorable is referred to as “prejudice.” It is the judgment of someone based on their race, sex, religion, or just the fact that they are a member of a different group than oneself.

Stereotypes are beliefs that group members share a particular characteristic, which can be positive or negative. Although it is well known that these stereotypes are false, they serve as a representation of what is believed to be known about members of particular groups. For instance, Americans are obese, Germans are unfriendly, and older people are weak.

Causes of Discrimination

Numerous studies have been conducted to examine the concept of discrimination and its potential causes. They have identified a variety of factors, each of which contributes to discriminatory practices. They include motivational, sociocultural, personality, and cognitive factors.

We will now carefully examine each of these factors and each of their various components.

Motivational factors

According to this theory, a person’s tensions, emotions, and fears are what cause discrimination. By engaging in discriminatory behavior, one can alleviate unpleasant emotions. Following are some distinctions among the motivating factors:

• Frustration and scapegoats: According to Berkowitz, frustration caused by obstacles to achieving one’s goals results in emotional activation (anger), which can occasionally lead to aggression. According to the theory of the scapegoat, displaced aggression caused by life’s many frustrations is frequently directed toward members of groups to which we do not belong.

• The theory of social identity: According to this theory, our social and personal identity influences our motivation to maintain a favorable overall opinion of ourselves. Personal accomplishments and how we value them in comparison to others form the basis of personal identity. On the other hand, social identity is based on belonging to specific groups. Typically, we give the groups to which we belong a higher value and a lower value to those to which we do not belong. Our social identity develops in this way by favoring the perceptions of our groups and ignoring the groups to which we do not belong.

Sociocultural factors

According to some researchers, prejudice and discrimination are both learned behaviors.

Typically, three sources are responsible for this learned behavior:

• Parents and relatives: In the 1950s,  Bird, Monachesi, and Burdick conducted a study. They found that almost half of the white families they interviewed had forbidden their children from playing with black children. In addition, these parents put special emphasis on any news of criminal acts by this group to prove their point of view. As a result, another study conducted in the 1990s by Rohan and Zanna concluded that the levels of racial prejudice among parents matched those of their children to a large extent. There is another consequence of this discrimination factor concerning children from different countries or regions of the same country. They tend to learn to hate different ethnic groups depending on the norms in their respective regions.

• The mass media.  Efforts in recent years to prevent the communication of prejudiced or discriminatory information through the media look promising. However, sexist or racist attitudes still exist in advertisements, television shows, etc., albeit in a more subtle or unnoticeable manner than in the past.

Personality factors

Some personality types are more prone to practicing discrimination than others. Individuals with an authoritarian personality type tend to be more racist, according to a number of studies. Studies confirm that personality traits can also affect whether someone engages in discrimination or not.

Like other factors, it is not always a determining factor. It may happen that an individual has an authoritarian personality but never gets to practice discrimination.

Cognitive factors

Anger toward a group and subsequent discriminatory actions are the result of the perception that they possess undesirable traits. The prejudices against that group are the primary factors in discrimination.

For instance, spreading false information about Jews was a key component of Nazi campaigns against them. They defended the arrests and the murders that followed in this way. They painted the Jews as traitors, filthy, and dangerous, so it was important to keep them under control. There are two processes that can contribute to the development of these discriminatory stereotypes:

• Categorization: A stereotype is a generalized opinion about a certain category of individuals. People may have this expectation of every member of a given group. Expectations can take many forms, relating to a group’s personality, interests, appearance, or skill. Stereotypes can occasionally be true, even when they are overgeneralized, unreliable, and resistant to new knowledge. When applied to specific individuals, these generalizations about groups of people may be accurate, but they may also be incorrect, which is one of the causes of prejudice.

These prejudices are once again often learned from parents, peers, and institutions. They also acquire them through their experiences with this group, which are generalized to all members of the group.

• Selective information processing: On the one hand, people tend to see what they want to see. We pay special attention to the information that confirms our expectations or stereotypes and ignores the information that goes against our beliefs. Additionally, research has also shown that we tend to remember information that is consistent with these stereotypes. Cohen was an interesting study by Cohen in 1981. In it,  participants watch a video of a woman dining with her husband to celebrate her birthday. When the subjects learned that the woman was a waitress, they remembered that she drank beer and watched television. When told that she was a librarian, they remembered that she was wearing glasses and was listening to classical music. The stereotypes they had about waitresses and librarians made them remember only the data that was consistent with those beliefs.

Therefore, even when stereotypes or negative beliefs about a group are untrue, you form biases when you interpret information.

Consequences of discrimination

The following are some of the effects of discrimination at various levels:

1. For the victim or target of discrimination

Minority members who are victims of discrimination are worse off than they would be if there were no biases against them. It has effects on the mind, the body, and the economy.

According to some studies, being a minority can increase your risk of developing mental illnesses like depression or anxiety. Furthermore, compared to members of the majority, members of minority groups hold less prestigious positions. Also, they have fewer jobs, struggle more to find employment, and earn less money.

Additionally, people who are members of minority groups are more likely to become the targets of violence committed by people who are members of the majority groups.

2: At the community level

Discrimination impacts various facets of society, frequently impeding their development because it causes a social rift and obstructs the advantages of diversity.

The affected group also frequently experiences marginalization, with people avoiding them and society not accepting them. Typically, this marginalization leads to more serious issues, like the creation of gangs that commit crimes and violate the law.

3. Negative attitudes

People who experience discrimination also develop a variety of unfavorable attitudes and behaviors. Behaviors such as hostility and aggression toward individuals who are not in their group.

This frequently results in verbal and physical abuse between members of various groups, which can have very bad outcomes like murder.

Ways to combat discrimination

As we have seen, discrimination has many different root causes, making it challenging to eradicate discrimination and harmful prejudices completely.

However, numerous studies with the goal of reducing them by following new and useful strategies.

1: Conscious control of stereotypes

Patricia Devine conducted several studies at the end of the 1980s that showed even subjects who, in theory, do not have prejudices occasionally exhibited discriminatory behaviors or thoughts because a number of prejudices are acquired unconsciously.

Devine suggests that it is possible to overcome ingrained prejudices, even though doing so will take effort, time, and attention. It involves consciously managing how stereotypes affect assessments of minority groups.

Additionally, she concluded from the same research that those who lack prejudice actively manage their thoughts about the minority group. They are aware of the unfavorable stereotypes associated with the group, but they do not believe them and do not use them as a justification for discrimination.

This author, therefore, suggests that it is possible to overcome ingrained prejudices, even though doing so will take effort, time, and attention. It involves consciously managing how stereotypes affect assessments of minority groups.

2. Legislation against discrimination

Because you cannot control the prejudices and stereotypes of other people, just as you cannot control your own thoughts, it seems difficult to eliminate discrimination through laws.

However, laws can ensure that equal treatment occurs for minorities, and laws against discrimination lessen the severity and frequency of these offenses.

Establishing norms and defining what is and is not acceptable in society is another purpose of the law. A person will be less likely to engage in these behaviors if they are aware that their environment does not accept discrimination.

Non-discrimination becomes a habit as anti-prejudice attitudes internalize over time and become routine behaviors. The change happens either because people already recognize it as improper behavior or out of fear of the law.

3. Contact between majority and minority groups

According to Thomas Pettigrew, the contact hypothesis postulates that interactions between members of various groups result in improved attitudes toward one another. The purpose of this interaction is to dispel any false stereotypes that the majority group may have about the minority group.

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This contact needs to possess a number of qualities in order to be effective in combating discrimination. It’s important that the meeting take place in a setting where members of the two groups are cooperating and that the participants have a general sense of social standing.

The earlier this contact occurs, the easier it will be for children to change their prejudices than it will be for adults who have held a particular belief for a long time.