No prejudice or stereotypes eh?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110425153551.htm

One might view the individuals in this article and judge them for being prejudice or having stereotypes. What if I told you that it was highly likely that YOU also stereotype others and these stereotypes may lead to prejudiced behaviors. In today’s society it is largely inappropriate to discriminate others. America values equality and speaks out against racism. Racism still exists today but is more subtle in manner than it was in previous times when individuals could speak out publicly against other types of people. Moreover, many individuals have a self-concept of viewing others as equal and will not consciously accept that stereotypes may guide their manner of thinking.

We have mentioned before that humans have the tendency to be cognitive misers, or to conserve thinking and this situation is no different. Stereotypes can be quite useful in inferring large amounts of information about an unknown person, but can be subject to errors and overgeneralizations. You may be shocked to find out that these stereotypes are from the automatic processing system. This means that you may hold these stereotypes and not even consciously know about it! In fact, while examining non-prejudiced people and overtly prejudice people, researchers found that both groups held stereotypes in their automatic processing system. The difference was that non-prejudiced individuals consciously override the automatic system to produce thoughts and behaviors that rejected these stereotypes. The implicit association test is used to measure those automatic attitudes that we carry unconsciously. Our implicit attitudes guide many of our actions and appraisals of ambiguous situations, so having these tested can allow conscious correction for these underlying attitudes. A whole new spin on getting yourself tested ; )