Discrimination Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Discrimination - Term Paper Example By feeling threatened, productivity of the minority group is sure to go down to the extent that organizations and entities lose valuable human potential (Crosby, Stockdale, & Ropp, 2007). On the other hand, suits of discrimination result in costly lawsuits against the firms and can result in loss of reputation and goodwill which cannot easily be recovered. It is therefore, of utmost importance that organizations address this area by curbing discriminatory practices. The paper shall shed light on two of the most common forms of discrimination, race and sex. Before delving into specific cases of discrimination, it is important to know what discrimination is and what psychological notions give birth to it. Theories regarding the way people view themselves and how they feel about themselves are aplenty in psycho-sociological literature. Since what we perceive about ourselves is kernel to what we think we are, what we think we can do, and how best we think we can do it (Tan, Dalisay, Zhang, Han, & Merchant, 2010), one can find a vast number of studies regarding the nature of self-perception and its relation to other constructs. Because studies in this field focus on the basic human need to understand who they are and why they exist, self-perception is arguably one of the most significant cognitive structures organizing an individuals experience and, thus, has been represented as an appropriate starting point for developing a cognitive theory of how individuals learn from their past experiences (Tan, Dalisay, Zhang, Han, & Merchant, 2010). Stereotyping has been a common cause of discrimination since time immemorial. Research suggests the two most common paradigms of stereotyping are the cognitive and affective dimensions (Schneider D. J., 2004). The cognitive component delineates on the fact that stereotyping results from an oversimplification of information that is processed by our mental