Kryachkov 2!indd

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Английский язык для магистратуры
T
he –ism Schism
But perhaps the most disturbing theory is simply that prejudice is part of our very nature as hu-
man beings. One of the earliest attempts to try and understand the nature of prejudice, stated that 
prejudice was something hidden deep within each of us and ingrained in all of our personalities. 
Prejudice is the natural reaction of fear and suspicion automatically stimulated in the brain by the 
appearance of someone physically different from ourselves. This explains why humans naturally feel 
more comfortable around people of the same skin color. So to be human is to be prone to prejudice. 
In the 60s and 70s, a social psychologist with the good old American name of Henri Tajfel, con-
ducted a series of experiments that seemed to show the inevitability of human prejudice. Tajfel 
would divide people into entirely arbitrary groups. There were groups formed on the basis of 
whether you preferred one painting over another or, when you had to make a rough guess of how 
many dots were on a page, whether you overestimated or underestimated. 
Why anyone would care about a distinction so trivial is beyond comprehension. Yet, in experi-
ment after experiment, Tajfel found that such distinctions were sufficient to trigger prejudiced be-
havior. Prejudice in favor of people like you — that is, dot over-estimators. And prejudice against the 
Evil Empire of under-estimators. Such prejudices, formed in a laboratory experiment lasting only a 
few hours were in fact sufficient to overwhelm any impact of prior positive real life experiences with 
the person now viewed as belonging to the foreign group. It doesn’t exactly make you feel good 
about the human capacity for intelligence. Perhaps another way of dividing people, however, is into 
those who perpetually see the glass half empty vs. those who are bound and determined to see the 
glass half full. I suspect I fall into the latter category, because I actually find cause for hope in Tajfel’s 
seemingly damning experiments. Yes, Tajfel’s experiments point to the human propensity for preju-
diced behavior. But they also point to human malleability. For an experience as artificial and trivial as 
dot counting to have such a profound effect on our behavior, we must be mutable creatures indeed. 
Prejudice so easily formed cannot help but be vulnerable to corrective experience. A sense of oneself 
and to what one belongs that is so easily contracted, cannot, I believe, resist being expanded. 
We have sometimes seemed, in our brief history on this planet, to heap one disgraceful act on 
top of another. But our saving grace as a species has always been our capacity for change. We have 
seen how easily we can change for the worse. I have not stopped believing, however, in the pos-
sibility of our changing for the better. I believe, our large capacity for prejudice is well-matched by 
a generous capacity for change.