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	Social Psychology II > Prejudice and Conflict > Stereotypes and Prejudice

		Reducing prejudice Prejudice may be created and perpetuated by many different mechanisms, and so the reduction of prejudice may have to be attempted via many different routes. For example, models of prejudice and stereotyping that focus on personality tend to emphasize the roles of early socialization and childhood experience. According to this perspective, prejudice might be decreased through social learning or modeling in childhood and adolescence In contrast, motivational approaches to understanding prejudice tend to emphasize the needs that prejudices fill for the individual. From this perspective, the best path to reducing prejudice involves convincing individuals that they are not in competition for scarce resources in society (perhaps by actually redistributing those resources fairly) or creating superordinate goals that overshadow group differences <REF>(Der-Karabetian and others, 1996). Finally, cognitive theories of prejudice emphasize the pervasive, automatic, and even "normal" aspects of stereotyping. From this perspective, stereotypes are perceived as a predictable by-product of the way we process information about the world. Over the years, several general strategies have emerged as prescriptions for lessening the development of stereotypes and group biases. Comparing the approaches At this point, you may be tempted to ask, "Which type of theory best explains stereotyping, discrimination, and prejudice?" The answer is that each approach has its strengths. Perhaps the best way to think about the three types of explanation is to see them as complimentary. Personality explanations highlight the roles that culture and socialization play. They help explain why some people are relatively more prejudiced than others. Motivational explanations do a better job of predicting when prejudice and discrimination are likely to rise and provide some fairly specific prescriptions for reducing ethnic conflict. And cognitive explanations help us understand why stereotypes are so pervasive. From a cognitive perspective, the question isn't whether you use stereotypes; it is how often do you use them and to what end?
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	Click an activity to open it: • Conformity • Conformity Factors • Milgram Obedience Experiment • Why Obey • Bay of Pigs • Impression Formation • What's Going On? • In Your Face • Actors and Observers • Birds of a Feather • Ratings Game • Love Scale • Love Triangle • Attachment Style • Ad Categorization Activity • Dissonance Theater • Decision Model of Helping • Self-fulfilling Prophecy Movie • Impressions and Expressions • Reducing Prejudice • Prisoner's Dilemma • Faces of the Enemy