I'm intrigued by.........
The topic in social psychology that seems utterly
fascinating to me is Social Cognition, specifically Schemas. The reason behind
this is because schemas are our own general ideas and thoughts about the world,
and we all know that with each person the schema is vastly different. How we perceive
the world varies by person and it is that thought process which is a mystery
and almost always can explain the behaviors of certain people. It is this type
of thinking that inhibits us from allowing any other information to be
processed and leads to prejudice. What I find so amazing about this, is that it
is the influences of the outside world that ultimately influences are views on the
world. We have a certain amount of knowledge that we can process effectively
but should we be overloaded new almost shut down and are unable to process that
info, thus we file away key pieces into categories that don’t even apply to it.
However with that also comes the fact that we are constantly reviewing and
changing our views because of new information. The ability to either go with
the flow or become a rock in a moving stream is neat.
The following link is to an article that speaks on racism
and the unconscious racism. She goes on to say that society is subjected to
certain viewpoints derived from certain sources and more times than not those
sources are biased towards a certain thought, racial group, etc. Since we only
process certain things because we refuse to allow our thoughts and views to
change thus only stick with those biases.
Summary:
"In the blink of
an eye, unconscious bias was visible to me, an African American. A man saw my
face as I [author Jean Moule] walked into the store and unconsciously checked
his wallet. On the street, a woman catches my eye a half block away and moves
her purse from the handle of her baby's stroller to her side as she arranges
the baby's blanket. In the airport, a man signals to his wife to move her purse
so it is not over the back of her chair, which is adjacent to the one I am
moving toward. What is happening in these instances? Were these actions general
safety precautions? If so, why did the sight only of my brown face, not the
others who moved among these individuals, elicit these actions? I believe these
are examples of 'blink of the eye' racism. Such unconscious biases lead to
unintentional racism: racism that is usually invisible even and especially to
those who perpetrate it." (Phi Delta Kappan) Author Jean Moule reviews
current studies and research on people's unconscious racism and stereotypes.
Moule concludes that "Individuals need to become less focused on feeling
very tolerant and good about themselves and more focused on examining their own
biases" and to search for the cause of the bias, stressing how "One
must realize and accept that the foundation and continuation of a bias may
have, at its root, personal and group gain."
“And when we receive evidence that confronts our deeply held
and usually unrecognized biases, the human brain usually finds ways to return
to stereotypes. The human brain uses a mechanism called "re-fencing"
when confronted with evidence contrary to the stereotype.” It is this type of
behavior, this type of social cognition that intrigues me, because how can a
person structure their views and allow certain parts to be altered but others
to not? Why does it almost always come down to race and or ethnicity?
Shifting gears we are confronted in situations where we or
others can highly underestimate the power of what is going on. We try to
explain certain thoughts or behaviors but can’t or won’t open our eyes to the
blatant truth because of our biases. One instance was that my dad always called
me the protector of the underdogs. I was always trying to find the good or the
slightly positive side to things. I remember as a small child hearing about a
fight between two people that was based on racism issues. I tried to explain
away the behavior of the person at fault because at that point I didn’t grasp
the whole concept of the fight to begin with. I didn’t realize it was because
one person called the other a derogatory name pertaining to their race. All I
knew was that two people were fighting and one started it and that was the
person I was trying to defend. I didn’t grasp the power of the situation and
the true meaning.
References
Moule, J. (2009, Understanding unconscious bias and
unintentional racism. Phi Delta Kappan Vol.90 no.5, , 321-326. Retrieved from http://sks.sirs.com
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