Ethnocentrism, stereotypes and prejudice “Toys guns and real fears-it’s playtime in Gaza”

Ethnocentrism, stereotypes and prejudice “Toys guns and real fears-it’s playtime in Gaza”

Nowadays social problems are the real problems, people’s relationships and social environment affect their beliefs and perceptions, and this means that all individuals are affected by the rules and norms of the society in which they live. Social processes such as ethnocentrism, stereotyping and prejudice influence to one degree or another every member of the society. In this paper we will define the three processes and use as example of them an article on Times titled “Toys guns and real fears-it’s playtime in Gaza”.

  Ethnocentrism, stereotypes and prejudice are defined by social psychology but do we need and exact definition?

The reality is that we know these processes, all of us we have seen them many times, how many times we have thought that other groups are inferior of us e.g. Greek people believe that Albanian people are inferior and dirty ,how many times we like more a person who has a bmw car because this means he or she is rich or we dislike a person because he or she is from Turkey because many years ago Greeks and Turkish were in a war?

These processes have long and universal history, white American disliked African-Americans, many neighborhood and schools stay separate and unequal, Arabs dislike Jews, Nazis believed that they were so much superior than others that killed Jews and made the other tribes work for them, France refused to take part to the war of Iraq supporting America’s military and an anti-French anger was created, Indians( native American) were denigrated by whites ,and women by men, The Chinese word for China means “the center of the world”, also American people in 1977 believed that homosexuals should not be allowed to work in the army, works as teachers, doctor and clergy, by 2003 the percentages have changed, people are showed to be less prejudiced (American Enterprise Institute, 2004),(Carole Wade & Carol Tavris, 2008).

In times of war, people are unable to avoid emotional reasoning about the enemy. They believe that the enemies are the aggressors who are creatures less than human, words such as pests, dogs or pigs have been used for them. After 9/11 anti-American demonstrators in Jakarta portrayed George Bush as a radical dog, and an American cartoonist lumped Arab Muslims and nations into a tub of pests (Carole Wade & Carol Tavris, 2008).

 All these examples are from real life, how these processes are found around the world, and examples of conflicts which have been created between groups, cultures and nations. How social psychology does defines these processes, what is exactly ethnocentrism, stereotype and prejudice? What does it mean to be prejudiced?

People are grouped into nations, religions, cultures, societies but sometimes it leads to ethnocentrism which is the idea that one’s own ethnic group, nation or religion is superior too all others. Ethnocentrism rests an essential social identity: us, on the other hand they distinguish everybody else as “not-us” or “them”, us-them social identities are strengthened especially when two groups vie with each other (Carole Wade & Carol Tavris, 2008).

Ethnocentrism has a negative meaning and this term is considered to be proportional of the term egocentrism. It is a system of thoughts which refers to the stable tendency of a person or a group or a society to adapt only social phenomena which are very familiar to them. In an unconscious way a member of a society prefers the already known models of his or her society to criticize the other societies. This phenomenon of ethnocentrism is based on the overestimate of a nation to which we belong and the underestimate of the other nations. These tendencies are found more often to psychologically disturbed people or to people out of law or to persons who generally are considered suspect(Papadopoulos 2005).

 Stereotype is a summary idea of a group of people in which all members of the group are viewed as sharing a familiar characteristic. Stereotypes are called tools by the psychological science because they have disadvantages but they have also advantages as they imitate actual differences among people, help us process new information and get back memories, guess people’s behaviors. The disadvantages are that they exaggerate differences between groups making stereotyped group  seem unknown and unsafe, they produce selective perception people have a tendency to see only the evidence that fits the stereotype and finally produce the idea that all members of other groups are the equal ( Carole Wade & Carol Tavris 2008). The negative meaning is related to racism and nationalistic positions and opinions are followed by intense and reciprocal negative feelings. The negative traits which are given to the others are common in many points, this means that stereotypes were created by historic causes and simply they are reproduced e.g. the stereotype of impious of Muslims for Christian and the opposite(.Papadopoulos 2005).

The third process we are going to define is prejudice and refer to four indirect ways of measuring prejudice.

Prejudice consists of a vigorous, irrational detest or hatred of a group based on a negative stereotype. Unfortunately prejudice does not concern only two groups or specific regions, it is a universal phenomenon and it has a long and universal history because some prejudice rise and fall with events e.g. after 9//11 many American people had anti-Arab feelings, as we mentioned above an American cartoonist lumped Muslims and Arabs into a barrel of pests.

 Sometimes prejudice is not visible because it is unconscious and implicit, so social psychology has developed four indirect ways of measuring this kind of prejudice.

The first way is the measures of symbolic racism which is when general feelings for a group may be positive or neutral but these feelings are not hostile and belong to surface attitudes e.g. The same Greeks who will say that they do not dislike foreigners might agree that “foreigners in Greece are getting too demanding in their push for equal rights”.

The second way is the measures of behavior, social psychologists and researchers study how people behave when they are found with a probable object of prejudice.

e.g.in a public room sit or stand farther away than they normally would or present other signs of discomfort.

The third way of measuring prejudice is the measures of physiological changes in the brain, social neuroscience consists of a new science which study the brain during social processes, including prejudice e.g. Activity in the amygdala is a structure of the brain realted to fear and negative emotion and it is elevated when somebody sees a picture or hears about the other group to which he is prejudiced.

The last way of measuring prejudice is based on assumption tha people are unaware of and it is called measures of unconscious associations. A test named IAT (implicit associations test) was found to measure associations between a stimulus and unconscious feelings of repulsiveness or pleasantness (Carole Wade & Carol Tavris 2008).

Prejudiced people do not feel prejudiced, they use logic and opposite  arguments and return to their prejudices with obviously accepted arguments. Prejudices are often followed by partiality, bias and falsification either consciously or unconsciously(Papadopoulos 2005).

 We will use as example of the three processes a recent article from the Times  on 21 December 2007 which refers to a social problem.

December 21, 2007

Toy guns and real fears - it's playtime in Gaza

Sheera Frenkel in Bethlehem

The guns may be made of plastic, but the scenes played out by these Palestinian children look real enough.

In war-torn Gaza and the West Bank, boys mimic the daily violence that takes place in their neighbourhoods. Using toy guns given to them during Eid al-Adha, a festival that commemorates the end of the haj, they re-create the conflict that has forged the lives of their fathers and their grandfathers.

Brandishing toy guns, they conduct mock raids of homes, where they pull one another out of the house blindfolded or handcuffed. They also play at “checkpoint”, forcing one another to line up and answer questions as though they were crossing one of the Israeli checkpoints.

Palestinian child protection groups say that children in the West Bank and Gaza are scarred emotionally by the violence. “My son sees other men in his family humiliated by Israeli soldiers. He mimics the behaviour with his friends. I do not think this is healthy,” said Suheir Bahour, 31, of Bethlehem.

This article show us the effect of the battles in the region on children, Gaza is a real example of ethnocentrism, stereotypes and prejudice.

. Gaza is considered a place of conflict between groups, it is a coastal strip of land along the Mediterranean Sea, bordering Egypt and Israel. The region takes its name from Gaza,its most important city. It has about 1.4 million inhabitants mostly Palestinians.

The Strip itself and its population nominally governed by the Palestinian National Authority, though following the June 2007 battle of Gaza, actual control is in the hands of the de facto government dominant by Hamas. Israel controls the strip’s airspace and offshore maritime access. The Gaza Strip is not at this time recognized internationally as part of any sovereign country(www.wikipedia.org).

In this place people die every day, the main reason is because Palestinians and Israeli want to govern the region but ethnocentrism, stereotypes and prejudice are very obvious too between the two nations.

Gaza was a region of battle due to its excellent geographic position, Egyptians, Ottoman and British have also occupy this region and as we said above battles are the main reason which creates and reinforces the feelings of .ethnocentrism, stereotypes and prejudice.

Unfortunately children in Gaza imitate what they see and live, their games are the repetition of the images of violence that they saw yesterday or last week, guns, soldiers, killings and blood. These children are not only prejudiced against Jews, thinking that Palestinians are superior but also fight against them imitating adults.

How to reduce such phenomena

Ethnocentrism, stereotypes and prejudice are related to the absolutist theory which requires one culture to be superior to all others. However most cultures and societies have the same basic values; they only differ in their expression of these values.

The basic arguments which refer to the reason why something would be right fore one culture but wrong for another can really be simplified to situation ethics (Lia Watkins, 2002).

As societies  have the same values, it would help to reduce conflicts between different culture by understanding them, cultural sensitivity would be a tool so as to reduce enthocentrism, stereotypes and prejudice.

Cultural sensitivity is the ability to be open up to learning about and accepting of different cultural groups (Texas Commission on alcohol and drug abuse).

Unfortunately there are many causes of these group processes: personality, social and structural. This means that the solutions are varied.

Education  is similar to persuasive communication  so it could help to persuade ethnocentric , prejudiced and stereotyped people, it could be also very successful to be used to prevent people, specially children from these negative group processes. However education’s purpose is to impart information and not to change attitudes.

Some disadvantages of this solution is that the most prejudiced people probably do not take courses which are designed to decrease ethnocentrism and prejudice. Also education would be beneficial in reducing prejudice when it is not very intense and personality disorders are not dominant. On the other hand if somebody is prejudiced due to social learning, education would be successful.

Another solution could be intergroup contact which appears more effective than education. This contact receives support in public housing projects  where people live together. It could be also found in the army. Finally school desegregation is related to decreasing the three group processes.

Sherif ‘s ‘’Robber’s Cave” experiment proves this argument. He separated a group of boys attending scout camp into two groups and after that he placed the groups in competing situations. Ultimately the two groups became very antagonistic  toward its other (Carole Wade & Carol Tavris 2008).

Other solutions could be simulation exercises and therapy.

Simulation exercise devises a situation where people who don’t normally experience prejudice and discrimination, experience them. They learn about the feeling that made them experience these them and they see by this direct method the pointlessness of these processes.

Therapy could be successful for people who suffer from personality problems, when the other solution we mentioned above are not effective. Then therapy resolves the problem that caused people to be discriminatory and convince intolerant people that these group processes are not the right attitudes that help to trade with someone’s insecurities or evils (www.delmar.edu)

Social psychology showed us  how ethnocentrism, prejudice and stereotypes work in the societies, why and how they have been created but it would be very helpful to find more ways so as to reduce such phenomena, also governments should do the same, help people avoid being discriminatory in order to facilitate people’s lives. Unfortunately many countries have not the right governments which would help their citizens, that is the reason why these countries suffer the most by discrimination. Israeli and Palestinians belong to them; their governors make them more fanatic and discriminatory making the social problems worse.