How do you define prejudice?

Making assumptions about someone with little or no evidence to support those assumptions.

 

Prejudice people are annoying gits. I find them very close minded and pathetic. They talk behind people's backs and tend to be excluding. I find them quite snobby.

However according to wikipedia;

• Cognitive Prejudice refers to what people believe to be true: for example, in adherence to a particular metaphysical or methodological philosophy at the expense of other philosophies which may offer a more complete theoretical explanation.
• Affective Prejudice refers to what people like and dislike: for example, in attitudes toward members of particular classes such as race, ethnicity, national origin, or creed.
• Conative Prejudice refers to how people are inclined to behave. It is regarded as an attitude because people do not act on their feelings. An example of conative prejudice may be found in expressions of what should be done if the opportunity presents itself.

 

You mean intuition?

Well I agree but I'd like to add, "based on a stereotype," to your definition.

 

Judgement, based on previous experience, tradition, old data.

As reality is changing more rapidly, every use of knowledge becomes prejudice. Waking up in the morning, thinking that you are human, may already be a wild assumption in a few decades - if our bodies are transforming all the time, for example.

But no, I think that's not enough to call it prejudice. There should be some kind of bias towards new data, positive or negative. Even expectation is prejudice, caused by intuition - the function that subconsciously extrapolates data.

Hence, there's always prejudice in our thinking, unless our minds are restricted in the dimension of time to be focused completely on the now.

We can even argue this way that all human reasoning is basically wrong, and there should be no conclusions at all. We base all causations on experienced correlations, which is logically unsound. Experiencing causation is practically impossible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction

 

It isn't exactly definable, and therefore it's objective depending on the individual, or culture.

But if you're asking me personally? Well, now...that's another question entirely. There is no set definition with me. Prejudice is a feeling and it can be muted or it can be overt. I've suffered enough from it and in some ways I have problems putting my finger on it too.

I can tell you that it has much to do with being thought of as less than, or weaker than. For example, someone can say to me, "Oh, you're an eloquent speaker!" Which does not sound prejudicial, but it *is* if we're simply discussing normal, every day things. If I were giving a speech as Valedictorian to my senior class I'd be honored. If I were told that by someone in an interview, I'd be incensed.

Prejudice is situational. It's relative to the manner words are spoken, in the context its meant, and to the individual to whom its spoken. Sometimes sheer ignorance can be prejudicial (unintentional prejudice) or sometimes you know it and its overt ("I don't want any blankety-blanks ruinin' mah country with their blankety blank horseshit!").

Context to me is key.

And yep, I'm prepared to discuss this.

 

Yes, that horrible thing.

Even as a sensor I get strong feelings and vibes from people, but I conciously try and set that aside and allow them to show who they actually are over time. Even if my intuitions are often proved right after time I still think the decent thing to do is to give everyone a clean slate.

 

Ah yes,

Intuition can be a pain in the bum from time to time. Its almost like you programmed yourself to think a certian way about people and society, when something changes we have to reprogram oursleves or expand our mental library. I guess we are the "learn from mistakes and past experiences" type people. It must be interesting to be a sensor.

 

Prejudice to me means accepting of conceptions relayed by others without room to form a definition based on an impartial, personal understanding. By popular use it refers specifically to such conceptions which is designed to relegate others to a lower social class based on concrete criteria such as ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, mannerisms or other identifying factor.

 

my definition:
prejudice is when you think you know something about a person based on a false preconcieved notion about something superficial about them, and then act on those (potentially) incorrect beliefs. *I say potentially because the assumption might be right due to happenstance but the assumption in and of it's self is incorrect.