Question

1. What are some social psychological factors illustrated in the behavior of the friends who are trying to force their friend to admit he is gay? (You will want to view the What Would You Do? Video in Module 7). Do you think there is any justification for the friends to behave this way?

2. Students will also Post in Discussion 7 a more detailed posting that reflects Student Learning Outcome #2: Analyze stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination, and explore purposeful methods to reduce them through self-assessments and a reaction paper.

This Post is a reflective Post looking at three concepts: Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination from a personal standpoint. In other words, either you or someone you know has experienced these concepts first hand. (You may refer to yourself, a family member, friend, co-worker, or significant other.). While the Post is reflective and descriptive, please thoroughly explain why each of the three situations falls into each of these categories:

Stereotypes

Prejudice

Discrimination

Answer 1

Being straight or otherwise is a personal lifestyle and a personal decision. Some people may say it out openly, while some others would not do so fearing discriminations from people around them. Anyone has no right to force anybody. The psychological thought process behind such behaviour can be a sense of superiority, and wanting to mock/hurt the person. Such stereotypes can be removed by proper education to kids in school, to respect anybody's will to admit or not admit that they are otherwise, based on their will. To stop such incidents from happening in future, schools should make rules against such behaviour.

Prejudice: People in the community often fall prey to prejudice of the society. My friend was denied marriage by the Church. He wished to get married to his friend after being together for 2 years.But when he set out to look for a Church, most of them denied him saying it was against the natural law. Such incidents can be avoided by creating rules for the gay community.

Stereotypes: My friend, who worked in a big multi-national company, was often asked by his colleagues, how he managed to be so successful. They thought this way because they were under the impression that such people are supposed to wear a fancy dress, and not work as a respectable position in office. To control such stereotypical thoughts, proper education must be given in different parts of the society to respect these people.

Discrimination: Gaypeople, more often than not, face discrimination. They are usually mocked in the society, which is wrong. These are the people who should be respected because of the choice that they have made. Discriminations include legal discriminations, jurisdictory discriminations, social discriminations and cultural discrimination.