Prejudice As A Survival Skill

Author: Agboluaje Ibrahim

It was a sunny afternoon, I decided to visit a nature reserve to entertain myself, it was bustling with such infectious energy that I abandoned my careful style and lunged forward to explore on my own. Before I could realize how far gone I am from civilization, the skies around me changed and it started raining.

Alright, it was time to reassess the situation and I decided to find a safe spot till help came, I spotted a huge canopy tree and decided to stay under it but could see a snake slithering on a tree nearby, the howling of the wolves indicating their presence and the mighty lion giving me a welcome roar. Shouting for help is a no-no because they probably won't hear me and I could also attract to myself the likely predators. I grabbed a dead branch to fight off the animals just in case and wait till the rain stops, so help can arrive.

This probably looked like a far cry from reality but our early ancestors lived in a situation not so dissimilar to this, surviving was their daily job and one important ability of theirs that aided that was Discernability - The ability to distinguish between sounds, objects, beasts and even fellow humans. They were able to classify things into useful and not useful, dangerous and not dangerous, we and them etc. This however isn't void of problems as generalisation is easily established, rattlesnakes are dangerous, ergo, all snakes are dangerous, he wears the same cap as my enemy, therefore he is also my enemy.

By nature, people are group-living animals - a strategy that enhances individual survival. It was adaptive for our ancestors to be attuned to those outside the group who posed threats such as to physical security, health or economic resources, and to respond to these different kinds of threats in ways tailored to have a good chance of reducing them.

Social motivations, such as the desire to be a member of a group or to compete with others,

are among the most basic human drives.

 In fact, our brains can assess “in-group” (us) and “out-group” (them) membership within a fraction of a second. This ability, once necessary for our survival, has largely become a detriment to society.

Prejudice is defined as the attitude towards a person based on his/her group membership. It should be noted that Prejudice isn't always negative. It evolved in our early ancestors to aid their survival(escape danger mostly). At its basic, prejudice is merely the association of sensory cues ( the roar of a Lion, Snake in the grass) to an innate behavioural response (flight or fight), and so human beings adapted mechanisms to respond quickly to visual cues that our brains deem dangerous without our conscious awareness. What to take from all of this is that our brains have inherited the tendency to erroneously deem something dangerous when it is benign. I mean it is safer to make false-positive assumptions (avoid something good) than to make false-negative assumptions (not avoid something bad), isn't it?

I believe it is clear why our hostile behaviour towards a seemingly strange group or person is commonsensical at its basic, the trait has been passed down to us but does that spell inflexibility?

Prejudice as a fundamental part of what makes us human doesn't mean learning can't change place and the responses changed or are dampened. For such a change to happen, we first need to acknowledge our imperfections and admit that all of us are prejudiced in our ways and it is perfectly normal for us to be (it still comes in handy even in the present times) but we shouldn't let this lead on to discrimination(Unjustified negative behaviour toward a group or its members.)

However, it is not in the intention of the writer to justify some specific prejudices that have plagued our society e.g (Tribalism, Sexism, Religion, Sexual orientation) or make them look like it can't be helped because of their root in evolution, that is simply not the case and also wrong.

''What we think and feel and how we behave is typically the result of complex interactions between biological tendencies and learning experiences. Evolution may have prepared our minds to be prejudiced, but our environment influences the specific targets of those prejudices and how we act on them.''

                                  - Steven Neuberg

Happy New Month PsychIfe🎉