Prejudice
Prejudice is a negative or hostile attitude toward a distinguishable group of people, based solely on their membership in that group.
Prejudice is ubiquitous; it affects all people, majority group members as well as minority group members. Prejudice is not healthy, fostering negative consequences from lowered self-esteem to genocide.
Although over the past 30 years, blatant discrimination has been reduced, prejudice still exists in society and sometimes in blatant forms. A member of an oppressed group often reduces a person’s self-esteem. There are broadly two components of prejudice, as follows:
The Affective Component: Prejudiced people usually direct their prejudice towards members of the group as a whole, ignoring distinguishing characteristics
The Cognitive Component : A stereotype is a general concept about a group of people in which identical characteristics are assigned to virtually all members of the group, regardless of actual variation among the members.