Prejudice
prejudgment, or forming an opinion before becoming aware of the relevant facts of a case
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.
Etymology
The word prejudice has been used since Middle English around the year 1300. It comes from the Old French word préjudice, which comes from Latin praeiūdicium which comes from prae (before) and iūdicium (judgment).
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Prejudice” as prejudgment, or forming an opinion before becoming aware of the relevant facts of a case. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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This entry incorporates text from “Prejudice” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.