Editing Intercultural exchange (section)

=== Origins of Prejudices and Discrimination ===
[http://www.understandingprejudice.org Prejudices] are something that many of us know close-up and first hand. Be it about little things we have not been familiar with or have not experienced, or about someone's race, religion, or sexual orientation. In psychology, prejudice is described as an emotional unjustified, usually negative attitude towards a group of people or a favouring of ones own group. The group of people might exist as a group as such or only in the mind of the person that has prejudices. Prejudice does involve not only prejudgement but also, mostly, misjudgement (Simpson & Yinger, 1986). According to Todd Nelson (2002) and other researchers they are strongly related to stereotypes and can not been seen apart of each other. Thinking about a group will automatic elicit a schema about the group with all the related aspects, limited because of our cognitive constraints and often based on single experiences. Ashmore and Del Boca (1981, as cited in Nelson, p. 28), defines stereotypes as “a set of beliefs about the personal attributes of a group of people”, that clarifies the close relationship to prejudice. 

Discrimination itself is neutral and means to draw a distinction between things. However, as Simpson and Yinger (1986) argue on, things can be nicely distinguished and unfairly distinguished. Especially when it comes to social discrimination, discrimination is an object to subjectivity. There are some who say that they are distinguished in a fair way, but others might see and experience this differently. Antonovsky (1960, p. 81) defines discrimination as, “the effective injurious treatment of person on grounds as rationally irrelevant to the situation”, rooted in fear and prejudice. Prejudice and discrimination can exist distinct of each other as they can be the cause of each other. Most of the times they are mutually reinforcing as Simpson and Yinger point out. Certain classes, for example, might never come in contact with each other; economical differences, personal insecurities and fear facilitate prejudice. By controlling one factor, it might be possible to reduce the other.
One theory that is widely accepted as useful in the understanding the origin of prejudice is the realistic conflict theory (Nelson, 2002). The realistic conflict theory, proposed by Campell (1965), as an origin of prejudice has its roots in the notion of relative deprivation. When people think that another group has an advantage, or their ingroup as a whole has a disadvantage, regarding an important goal, people will develop feelings of hostility and prejudices towards the other group. Campell suggested that a shared goal complicated by scarcity is based on competition for real resources. However, there is a growing literature on the automaticity of stereotypes and prejudice (Nelson). Nevertheless, the realistic conflict theory might be, to a great extend, valid as Sherif et al. (1961) in their famous study showed.