Sociology
Sociology
Prejudice and Discrimination
Social mechanisms of communicative interaction influence and are influenced by mental mechanisms of representation, inference, and emotion. Discrimination is an important problem that results from social causes such as institutions but also from psychological causes such as prejudice. Prejudice operates in individual minds through representations and processes that include concepts, images, beliefs, rules, and emotions. Emotions are a key part of the force of prejudicial concepts, not just because of their general negativity but also because of specific emotions such as fear, anger, hatred, resentment, contempt, and disgust. Important sociological ideas such as identity, social norms, and institutions can be deepened by understanding how concepts and rules operate in human minds. The semantic pointer theory of communication provides the social mechanism that complements the cognitive mechanism of conscious and unconscious rule operation.
Keywords: communication, discrimination, institution, prejudice, semantic pointer, social mechanism, social norm, sociology, stereotype
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
