The psychology of prejudice and discrimination

What if someone felt that he is worthless and found no way to proof that he is adequate, Won’t it be a good idea to put others down in order to feel worthy? Sounds like a good solution although it’s not ethical but anyway who cares about ethics? The subconscious mind of that poor person failed to find a way to make him feel adequate, although he succeeded in his life still something is missing and he doesn’t feel complete, But then a solution appeared out of no where, why don't he find a group which appears to be better than other groups then identify with it? In this case he will lift his self worth, not because he became worthy but because he convinced himself that there are people who are less worthy than him.

Social Identity Theory

The social identity theory attempts to explain the reason behind prejudice and discrimination. It states that the person seeks a group that appears to be superior in order to lift his self worth. It's based on The same trick that I just explained, I worthy not because I deserve to be worthy but because there are others who are less worth than me. It’s the same case where a student who always gets low grades joins a group of friends who always fail just to feel that he is better than them. Instead of studying and becoming a better person he just decided to find another group of people who seem to be less worthy than him. I used the word “seem” because usually the person who judges people before knowing them well makes wrong assumptions. He creates his own fantasy world where he assigns roles to people around him just to feel good about himself then he resists everyone who tells him that this is not the reality, not because he thinks that its the reality but because its a threat to his own self worth.

People who discriminate lack self confidence

Your subconscious mind uses the same pattern of behavior that you train it on over and over. If you kept thinking that your group is better than some other groups your subconscious mind will conclude that there are other groups whom are better than yours. And so you will feel worthy when being with some people and totally worthless when being with others!!

This is the main cause of inconsistent self confidence, you incorrectly programmed your subconscious mind to prejudge people and that’s why you damaged your self confidence along the way. For example, if you think that you are better than all poor people the next time you sit with a billionaire you will feel worthless while if you didn’t prejudge poor people you will be super confident even if you were talking face to face to the president of your country .

Final words about discrimination

Its way far from rational thinking to prejudge whole groups before you even get in contact with them and even if you didn’t like the behavior of some of them you must not over generalize. How come can you judge millions of people by the behavior of few hundreds of them?

People who discriminate don’t feel worthy and that’s why they do so. If you found yourself labeling whole groups of people its must to gather all your courage then face this dream world you have created in your mind. Its time to remove the false labels you are putting everywhere around you just to feel good. Its time to convince yourself that you are really worthy, but not because you belong to a group that appears to worthy, but because you are a worthy being.

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