Oxford English Reference Dictionary defines 'bias' as: "a predisposition or prejudice".
It defines 'prejudice' as: "a preconceived notion; bias or impartiality; intolerance of or discrimination against a person or group, esp. especially on account of race, religion, or gender; bigotry (racial prejudice)."
We the English world use 'bias' to mean "predisposed", and prejudice to mean "intolerant discrimination". Astner's using them synonymously because he's Swedish.
Originally posted by Astner
Then perhaps the next time you see some asking you to back up your statements with evidence, it may be a good idea to take a second and examine the context to figure out exactly what's being requested.
I... I did that... I got dictionary definitions for you, then you said that wasn't good enough and requested something that I not only had previously said wouldn't exist, I even made a comment suggesting they shouldn't exist.
I know this might come as a surprise to you, but psychologists are a little more interested in understanding the behaviours produced by biases and prejudices than the minutia of how those things might differ in proper semantic usage. A "psychological distinction" between the terms is useless and irrelevant to the field.
Originally posted by Lord Lucien
Oxford English Reference Dictionary defines 'bias' as: "a predisposition or prejudice".It defines 'prejudice' as: "a preconceived notion; bias or impartiality; intolerance of or discrimination against a person or group, esp. especially on account of race, religion, or gender; bigotry (racial prejudice)."
We the English world use 'bias' to mean "predisposed", and prejudice to mean "intolerant discrimination". Astner's using them synonymously because he's Swedish.
You're welcome.
Originally posted by Omega Vision
I'm sure ON will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that prejudice is simply a subset of bias, which is hardwired into humans.
Originally posted by Astner
I've always thought of prejudice as a subconscious survival tactic stemming from correlation between an object and your experiences with said object.
It is generally thought to be fairly close to what both of you are saying, with some major caveats. Astner is explaining more the way things are grouped into categories and our evaluations of them whereas OV seems to be alluding to the fact that humans even have such group and categorical based learning in the first place.
There are types of stimuli, however, that it appears we have biases toward even without prior learning. the 4 F reflexes (fighting, fleeing, feeding, "mating"😉, fears of things like snakes and spiders, very basic perceptual/attentional/cognitive biases, etc, challenge the idea that all bias would be learned through association (Astner: the technical term used sometimes is environmental contingency between expectation and outcome).
This is relevant to human prejudice, because in its most common usage, prejudice talks about negative evaluations of people based on some apparent feature (gender, race, ethnicity, religion, etc). Some of these things we have to have learned to hate. We can't biologically be predisposed to hate another's religion specifically, this is obviously something learned by culture. Secondly, the mere existence of categories does not necessitate some value based judgement on them. When we select a stool with 4 legs to sit on, we are not also saying we want a political structure that takes away the rights of 3-legged stools (less congruent with out category of "stools"; this is part of an idea known as cognitive schemas, which are relevant, but not essential here, let me know if you want me to expand, but I think you guys get the idea intuitively anyways). So it isn't simply that we make categories and learn things that way that produces hate toward others, and the specifics of that hate has to be cultural.
However, the broader question becomes about whether value-based outgrouping of other groups is genetic or not, and there is some evidence to suggest there is. For instance, we show patterns of fear-learning with other races that are similar to those of spiders and snakes, models run looking at the natural growth of early agricultural groups requires a mix between in grouping and out grouping for success (totally empathic or totally hostile groups fail), and the race stuff: Races are 100% genetically insignificant, but the phenotypic changes we see are those which are the most salient to our perceptual systems, so much so that we are able (cross-culturally) to identify different racial groups from silhouette.
The obvious answer is that it isn't all one or the other, but the question of where and why this values based out-group tendency exists in the first place are still unanswered to any really satisfactory degree.
[go at it Astner]
Originally posted by Omega Vision
It was my epistemology professor who said (and he was quoting an epistemologist whose name I can't remember) that without biases (including prejudice) we wouldn't be able to function because of the epistemic chaos that would result.
prejudice in the very broad sense, where it means any type of selective criteria for one thing over the next, sure. We can learn that some berries produce non-pleasurable sensory experiences therefore we are prejudice against eating them.
Also, I'd just add, that even if prejudice were natural, there is no real reason to think we are cursed to always endure it. Think of the difference between toilet training a human versus a dog or cat. These animals evolved on the ground, and their "droppings" were very behaviourally important (either to mark territory or in needing to be concealed). They were born essentially predisposed to poop where we want them to. Humans come from apes, which lived in trees and had much less to be behaviourally concerned about with their waste, and would basically just "let it go" off a branch. Because of this, it takes years of training to get a human child to use and recognize the need to use a toilet. But they can. It can become so ingrained you face massive embarrassment to go in other places, even with no witnesses. More than anything, our genetics predispose us to adapt to the environment we grow in. We have biases, to be sure, but we are much more plastic than that. The blank slate is more the predisposition to be written on than no predisposition at all, if that makes sense.
Originally posted by Omega Vision
It also ties into Hume's critique of Induction.
it would...
Originally posted by Astner
I never asked for that. Why would I? I was the first one to check the dictionary in this thread.I specifically asked for the source of the supposed psychological terminology you were using.
where did you get the idea I was using "supposed psychological terminology" given I've expressed amusement at the idea it would even exist?
Originally posted by Oliver North
where did you get the idea I was using "supposed psychological terminology" given I've expressed amusement at the idea it would even exist?
Originally posted by Oliver North
at least in psych, the terms aren't seriously differentiated.Its used more like prejudice is a specifically negative and generally values-based type of bias. All A are B not all B are A sort of thing.
and if you do a quick search on pubmed, you will be made immediately aware of the truth of that sentiment
EDIT:
search for "bias psychology"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=bias%20psychology
search for "prejudice"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=prejudice
what would be more acceptable proof of the negative for you? Its hard to prove people don't contrast the terms in a meaningful way, you know?
I think so, but only in terms of like a linguistic anachronism. In common usage, "prejudice" is only synonymous with "bias" in certain instances, the same way "robin" is sometimes synonymous with "bird".
Like, it would be confusing to try and describe your preferences as prejudices, but apparently it is a "proper" usage.