Prejudice in AP Psychology

In AP Psychology, prejudice is an unjustified, usually negative attitude toward a group and its members. It is often built on stereotypes and implicit attitudes. Prejudice is the attitude (what you think and feel), while discrimination is the behavior (what you do).

What is Prejudice?

Prejudice is a prejudgment. It's an attitude toward a whole group, and it usually isn't based on reason or real experience with the people in it. In AP Psych terms, it's an attitude, which means it lives in your head as beliefs and feelings. It is not an action. When prejudice turns into unfair treatment, that's discrimination.

The CED explains where prejudice comes from. Stereotypes are generalized concepts about a group. They're mental shortcuts that reduce cognitive load, and they are frequently the basis of prejudiced attitudes. Prejudice can also be implicit, meaning a person holds it without being aware of it or without admitting it. The CED points to four biases that show negative implicit evaluations of others: the just-world phenomenon (assuming people get what they deserve), out-group homogeneity bias ("they're all the same"), in-group bias (favoring your own group), and ethnocentrism (judging other cultures by your own culture's standards).

Why Prejudice matters in AP® Psychology

Prejudice sits in Unit 4: Social Psychology and Personality, under Topic 4.2 Attitude Formation and Attitude Change. It is the central idea in learning objective AP Psych 4.2.A, which asks you to explain how stereotypes and implicit attitudes contribute to prejudice and discrimination. It also connects to AP Psych 4.2.B. Belief perseverance and confirmation bias explain why prejudice is so hard to change, and cognitive dissonance explains one way it can change. On the exam, prejudice works as a hub concept. Questions rarely ask you to define it on its own. Instead, they test whether you can link it to the biases and attitude-change processes around it. For the full topic, see the 4.2 Attitude Formation and Attitude Change study guide.

How Prejudice connects across the course

Stereotype (Unit 4)

Think of a stereotype as the belief and prejudice as the feeling stacked on top of it. The CED says stereotypes save mental effort by lumping people into categories. That shortcut is also what makes it easy to slide into judging a whole group before you've met anyone in it.

Discrimination (Unit 4)

Prejudice is the attitude and discrimination is the action. A manager who privately dislikes a group is prejudiced. The manager who refuses to hire someone from that group is discriminating. The CED pairs the two in 4.2.A because one often fuels the other, though they don't always appear together.

Belief Perseverance and Confirmation Bias (Unit 4)

These explain why prejudice sticks around. With confirmation bias, a prejudiced person notices the examples that fit the stereotype and ignores the ones that don't. So the belief survives even when the evidence says it's wrong. That survival is belief perseverance.

Cognitive Dissonance (Unit 4)

Dissonance is one way prejudice can actually shrink. Say someone holds a negative attitude but keeps cooperating with members of that group and having good experiences. Their behavior and their attitude now clash, and that feels uncomfortable. Changing the attitude is one way to make the discomfort go away.

Is Prejudice on the AP® Psychology exam?

Prejudice usually appears in scenario-based MCQs and research-method questions, not in plain definition questions. Expect stems like these:

• Implicit vs. explicit attitudes. A study compares people's self-reported attitudes with their Implicit Association Test (IAT) results. You need to explain why someone can sincerely claim no bias and still show implicit prejudice.
• Priming studies. Questions based on Devine (1989) briefly flashed stereotype-related words below conscious awareness. Participants then rated a race-neutral person in an ambiguous situation as more hostile. You should recognize this as evidence that stereotypes can be activated automatically.
• Where prejudice comes from. Some items ask which framework best explains how repeated exposure to biased media turns stereotypes into prejudiced attitudes.
• Reducing prejudice. A scenario describes cooperative tasks between groups that lead to less prejudice. You explain the change using attitude-change concepts like cognitive dissonance.

No released FRQ has used "prejudice" verbatim. Still, the term fits FRQ prompts that ask you to apply a concept to a scenario. If you use it, always tie the attitude to a specific behavior or bias.

Prejudice vs Discrimination

Prejudice is an attitude, made of the negative thoughts and feelings about a group. Discrimination is a behavior, the unfair treatment of people because of their group. You can have one without the other. A person might hold prejudice and never act on it, or might discriminate because of a rule they follow without personally feeling hostile. A quick test on the exam is to ask whether the scenario describes something happening in someone's head (prejudice) or something someone did (discrimination).

Key things to remember about Prejudice

• Prejudice is an unjustified, usually negative attitude toward a group, which means it is a thought or feeling and not an action.

• Discrimination is the behavioral side of prejudice, so the key difference is attitude versus action.

• Stereotypes reduce cognitive load by generalizing about groups, and those generalizations are frequently the basis of prejudiced attitudes.

• Prejudice can be implicit, so a person can show bias on a test like the IAT while sincerely reporting no prejudice.

• The just-world phenomenon, out-group homogeneity bias, in-group bias, and ethnocentrism are the CED's examples of negative implicit evaluations of others.

• Belief perseverance and confirmation bias keep prejudice alive, while cognitive dissonance from positive cooperative contact can help change it.

Frequently asked questions about Prejudice

What is prejudice in AP Psychology?

Prejudice is an unjustified, usually negative attitude toward a group and its members, often based on stereotypes rather than experience. It falls under Topic 4.2 and learning objective AP Psych 4.2.A in Unit 4.

What is the difference between prejudice and discrimination?

Prejudice is the attitude and discrimination is the behavior. Disliking a group is prejudice. Refusing to rent an apartment to someone because of their group is discrimination.

Are prejudice and stereotypes the same thing?

No. A stereotype is a generalized belief about a group, such as "they're all lazy." Prejudice is the negative attitude that often grows from that belief. The CED says stereotypes are frequently the basis of prejudiced attitudes, but the two are separate concepts.

Can you be prejudiced without knowing it?

Yes. Implicit attitudes are ones you hold but may be unaware of or not acknowledge. Studies using the Implicit Association Test (IAT) show people who report no bias can still respond with implicit bias. Devine (1989) found that stereotype words flashed below conscious awareness made people rate an ambiguous person as more hostile.

How can prejudice be reduced, according to AP Psych?

One route is positive cooperative contact with members of the other group, which can create cognitive dissonance between a negative attitude and good experiences. People reduce that discomfort by changing the attitude. Belief perseverance and confirmation bias work against this, which is why prejudice is hard to change.