[Music] in this quick video i just want to break down some terms that we use in psychology that kind of get used in the same way out in the world but we actually gain a lot by being able to see how these words are different from each other and those words are stereotypes prejudice and discrimination and sometimes we use these words interchangeably but i want to just quickly go over how they're different and what each of them means and we can apply what psychologists sometimes call the abc's understanding what the differences are the a stands for affect psychologists use this word differently than most people you might see this and see the word effect but when psychologists see this word they pronounce it affect and when they pronounce it that way they mean feelings so our affect is our mood our feelings experience are our emotional experience etc so we can think of a for affect we can also think of a for attitude and that belongs to prejudice so when we talk about prejudice we're talking about our attitudes and it really just means our overall positive or negative association with a particular social group so if someone has a prejudice about a group it means they generally see that group as positive or as negative usually when we use the word prejudice we're thinking of the negative side of things right so if one group says i hate this other group right if you think of anti-semitism right we'd say that's a harsh negative prejudice about jewish people and that's usually the kind of prejudice that we're talking about these negative prejudices but you could have positive prejudices as well if you go oh i love canadians that would be a positive prejudice right it's an overall generally positive association you have with that social group so affect or attitude goes with prejudice the b in our abcs is behavior these are the actions that we take the choices that we make how we treat other people and discrimination is the behavioral side of this equation so discrimination is what happens when you treat someone differently based on the group they belong to right so if there's a reliable pattern where someone is treating some people better or worse than others and the primary difference between them is their um social identity their social category the group that they belong to we'd call that discrimination right so if you notice that someone at restaurants always tips white waiters higher than black waiters that would be discrimination this person hasn't necessarily said anything or thinks anything about this group but what we're looking at are their actions their choice to tip a higher amount is being driven by the race of the person that's receiving that money and that's just one example so discrimination is what happens when our actions are biased by the social category that the other person belongs to the final part of the abcs is our c which stands for cognition in psychology we use this word cognition to talk about thinking and what happens mentally our beliefs and our thoughts this is cognition and that is what belongs to stereotypes so stereotypes are beliefs we have about another group the assumptions that we make the expectations we have so if we've come to associate canadians with a smiling disposition that's a stereotype right if i expect a canadian to be a happy-go-lucky person just because they're canadian if that's all i know about them i'm stereotyping right i have a belief about this group and the kind of people they are and i'm using it to bias my expectations of a particular person because they belong to that group so those are our abcs prejudice which is the attitude overall positive or negative judgment of another group discrimination which is our behavior how we're acting in response to one group versus another and stereotypes the beliefs we have about the other group now of course i've made a big deal about how these three things are separate from each other but oftentimes they're related right when someone has negative beliefs about a group they expect them to act poorly they think they have a bunch of negative qualities that is likely to be associated with a negative prejudice toward that group right if i believe that you have all these bad qualities i probably don't like you very much right so those two things would go together but they don't have to right someone can have a belief about a group that has nothing to do with prejudice right if i think canadians smile a lot okay that's a stereotype but it has no effect on whether i like this person or not because they are canadian you could also have prejudice and stereotyping without it necessarily leading to discrimination although sure if people expect some groups to be mean or rude their behavior toward those groups might be one of avoidance or not engaging very respectfully with them and so sure people's behaviors can be tied to their stereotypes or if you don't like a particular group you might act more rude or aggressively toward that group right so it makes logical sense that prejudice and stereotypes would be related to discrimination but they don't have to be people could have stereotypes they could have prejudice and not act on them right so again these things can be separated from each other and our job as psychologists is to understand those dynamics when are they connected to each other when are they not but it's important for us not to lump all these three terms together because when we distinguish them the the questions that we get to ask become a little more sophisticated and nuanced and we get a better sense of how these things work okay quick review i'm going to show you a handful of statements that a person might make and i want you to guess whether we're talking specifically about a stereotype that this person has or a prejudice that this person has number one let's say somebody says librarians are old is that a stereotype or a prejudice in this case it's a stereotype it's a belief somebody has about librarians there's not necessarily any judgment in it there's not necessarily any feelings in this it's just somebody's expectation that if they meet a librarian they're probably going to be older than someone in another occupation okay number two teenagers don't work hard what is this stereotype of prejudice in this case we're talking again about a stereotype it's a belief about teenagers it's this expectation that people from this group don't work as hard sure maybe that might lead to prejudice but all by itself this statement is not prejudice it's just a stereotype okay what about someone who says i hate gamers stereotype or prejudice [Music] here we're talking prejudice this is a judgment they're not endorsing any belief about gamers they're not saying what gamers are like or what characteristics they have they're just saying that they don't like them it's a negative prejudice toward this group okay last one let's say someone says i love southerners is this a stereotype or a prejudice here we're talking prejudice just like before it's maybe modestly tricky because it's a positive prejudice and it's not usually what we think of when we think about prejudice but this person is not saying anything in particular about what southerners are like or their characteristics or attributes they're just saying they have a overall positive feeling about this group and so therefore we'd call that a prejudice okay that's the difference between stereotypes prejudice and discrimination hopefully knowing the distinctions between these terms helps you identify them differently when you see it in the world around you and as a result you can appreciate some of the nuance behind the psychology of these three things how they're related and when they're related and when they're not for more social psychology subscribe to this youtube channel or check out my podcast at opinionsciencepodcast.com