Unit VII Reflection Paper SP

1

Unit III Scholarly Activity

Justin Erby

228342

PSY 3140-18I-6A21-S1,

Social Psychology

2

Prejudice

The halo effect is described as the overall impression of a person (Perera, 2021).it is a

cognitive bias whereby the perception of a person is influenced positively by other people’s

opinions an example of the halo effect is the attractiveness stereotype which tends to judge

physically attractive people to positive qualities. However, different people have different views on

attractive people, for example, some link beauty to positive personality traits while others say that

good looking individual are likely to be dishonest and they are likely to use their beauty to

manipulate others. Halo has different impacts on real-life settings, an example is in the classroom

whereby teachers are prone to the halo effect when evaluating students, teachers tend to assume

that a well-behaved student is bright and this leads to teachers developing expectations of them

based on their appearance and not on the school records. The halo effect also impacts judgments in

the sentencing of crimes, according to a study the society holds a perception of more attractive

individuals has better prospects for the future than less attractive people. In a burglary, an

attractive person is likely to receive a lenient sentence than an unattractive person.

Prejudice is defined as a negative attitude towards members of a group (Cherry, 2020).

Prejudice strongly influence how people behave and interact with others, prejudice often includes

negative feelings, discrimination towards others and stereotyped beliefs. There are several

processes used to reduce prejudice. The first is self-esteem people with self-esteem show less

prejudice, therefore people need to gain awareness of self-awareness. The second theory is social

contact, it reduces prejudice by reducing the anxiety encountered by out-group members. The third

criteria that can be used are cooperation, research shows that cooperating with people outside of

3

our social groups reduces biasness, lastly, the law can be used to reduce prejudice, it is illegal to

discriminate against people based on their color, sex, religion or race.

The most important criteria which reduce prejudice is cooperation, although prejudice still

exists in American schools systems and leads to discrimination against students of colour,

cooperative learning however has brought students together and under these conditions, students

are likely to interact in positive ways such as positive independence and when they share

information and resources, they create emotional support towards one another and reduce

prejudice, positive independence enables students to cooperate when learning and each student is

held accountable for fulfilling their role(Ryzin, Roseth&Mcclure, 2020).

A prejudice reduction cooperation program that I would come up with would be to enhance

cooperation, it will include a clear intergroup cooperation, each person in the group is required to

value the other, and all participants should promote empathy and perspective-taking. Law is the

second most important criteria, a prejudice reduction program would include involving

government officials to help teach the public more about moral education and creating awareness

on equality. This program will be implemented in schools and workplaces, it will target the public

in general, I believe it will be effective because when a person practices empathy and puts

themselves in other peoples shoe, it changes their perception of how they view other people and

this improves their interaction.

4

References

Cherry, K (2021). How Peoples Prejudice Develop. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-

prejudice-2795476

Prera, A (2021,). Why the halo effect affects how we perceive others. Simply Psychology.

https://www.simplypsychology.org/halo-effect.html

Van Ryzin, M. J., Roseth, C. J., & McClure, H. (2020). The Effects of Cooperative Learning on

Peer Relations, Academic Support, and Engagement in Learning among Students of

Color. The Journal of educational of research. Vol 113 (4).

https://doi.org/10.1080/00220671.2020.