Given below are the strategies for handling prejudice. Choose the odd…

Human beings have a need to interact with and relate to others and to explain their own as well as others’ behaviour. Because of these social interactions, people form attitudes about other individuals and also about different issues in life. These attitudes have an evaluative feature, are accompanied by an emotional component and a tendency to act in a particular way with respect to the attitude object. Negative attitudes towards others, called prejudices may be based on stereotypes. These stereotypes often assumes that all members of a specific group possess certain undesirable characteristics which leads to the formation of negative attitudes towards members of that group. Prejudice has many other sources and often creates conflict within a society. Awareness about these sources would be the one of the steps in handling these prejudices.

Given below are the strategies for handling prejudice. Choose the odd one out:

Answer & explanation

Correct answer: option 4

The correct answer is Option (4) → Encouraging self-fulfilling prophecy

Option (1) Education and information dissemination — A strategy (Incorrect). It corrects stereotypes about specific target groups and tackles a strong ingroup bias.

Option (2) Increasing intergroup contact — A strategy (Incorrect). Contact allows direct communication, removal of mistrust and discovery of good qualities in the outgroup, if the groups meet in a cooperative setting and are not unequal in power or status.

Option (3) Highlighting individual identity — A strategy (Incorrect). Stressing the person rather than the group weakens the group as a basis for judging the other person.

Option (4) Encouraging self-fulfilling prophecy — The odd one out (Correct). A self-fulfilling prophecy is a source of prejudice: the target group behaves in ways that confirm the negative expectations and so keeps the prejudice alive. The strategies therefore aim at discouraging this tendency among the victims of prejudice; encouraging it would strengthen prejudice.

NCERT (2025-26): “Strategies for Handling Prejudice … Knowing about the causes or sources would be the first step in handling prejudice. Thus, the strategies for handling prejudice would be effective if they aim at :

(a) minimising opportunities for learning prejudices,
(b) changing such attitudes,
(c) de-emphasising a narrow social identity based on the ingroup, and
(d) discouraging the tendency towards self-fulfilling prophecy among the victims of prejudice.…”

“…These goals can be accomplished through :

Education and information dissemination, for correcting stereotypes related to specific target groups, and tackling the problem of a strong ingroup bias.
Increasing intergroup contact allows for direct communication, removal of mistrust between the groups, and even discovery of positive qualities in the outgroup. However, these strategies are successful only if :
the two groups meet in a cooperative rather than competitive context,
close interactions between the groups helps them to know each other better, and
the two groups are not different in power or status.
Highlighting individual identity rather than group identity, thus weakening the importance of group (both ingroup and outgroup) as a basis of evaluating the other person.…”