Dd307 Tma5 Essay - 2286 Words

‘Social policies aimed at reducing prejudice and intergroup conflict would do well to take account of social psychological research in this area.’ Discuss this statement, making reference to relevant research in your answer. This essays aim is to discuss the possibility of reducing prejudice and intergroup conflicts in the light of how social policies can help to achieve this goal. Since the second World War, social psychology went though major changes, and specifically effected by group influences. Before WWII psychology focused on ethnic and racial tensions, biological and cultural differences that made individuals react the way they did. After WWII the focus was on faulty, implicit generalisations that lead to racial hatred,†¦show more content†¦Sherif at al developed an approach to explain intergroup relations as the `realistic group conflict theory` (RCT) (Brown, 2007), and it has a strong empirical support, and SIT also builds upon it. According to this theory, intergroup hostility is based on the competition for tangible resources, as its motivational factors. Sherif also argued that prejudice is a consequence of conflicting or compatible group goals. RCT also has its weaknesses as SIT p oints out, namely how non-material resources like a persons identity, religion, ethnicity are playing a part in prejudice and intergroup conflicts. Tajfels cognitive SIT has been supported by many theorists, but some have shown some concerns, mainly those from the discursive psychological background, like Billig (Brown, 2007). Billig believed that social categories are dynamic, flexible and actively constructed though the use of language, while Tajfel assumed that it is fixed, stable, and universal, not culturally socially or historically specific. Billing also argued that SIT doesnt explain extreme prejudice or bigotry like the Holocaust, nor hatred and other motivations for violence. To understand the cause and effect of the holocaust would fall short in Billings view. Tajfel even he was a survivor of the holocaust, didnt investigate it in terms of SIT, did not apply the theory to this shameful historical event. Emotions like hate-talk is