The Birth of Prejudice

My friend and I have a theory that there may be an evolutionary component to prejudice. Bear in my I do not submit this as means for someone to excuse their prejudice, or to try and make prejudice OK, merely as an attempt to explain why prejudice in humans is pretty much universal, and so easily acquired.

First off, we define prejudice: as a noun, prejudice is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary (online) as "an adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge or examination of the facts." You can be prejudiced about anything, not just people.

On with the theory:

Early humans roaming their world did not have the time or the resources to approach every single thing they encountered without any bias whatsoever: some things are too dangerous to deal with more than once, and so the next time it's encountered it's simply avoided. Our capacity for language and teaching things to others makes it unnecessary to experience things first hand. I have never been to Italy, but a number of people who have tell me there's a tower in Pisa that leans at a startling angle and I take them at their word.

Imagine this scene: You are lost in the woods and hungry. Seeing some red berries, you eat them, and several hours later throw them back up. Will you taste the next red berries you find? Probably not. This is not prejudice because you have direct experience.

Seeing signs of what you think is a town nearby, you head for it eagerly, but encounter a bruised and bloodied man coming the other way. You explain your situation to him and ask if you might find help in the town. He says he's lost too, and when he tried to get help there, the townsmen beat him and threw him out. You thank him and as he leaves you warn him about the red berries.

Do you still go to the town for help? If not, prejudice is born, not of any desire to see harm come to a particular group, but out of a simple need to survive.

Viewed this way, it's easy to see how prejudices can be so easily formed and passed around. I'm sure you can think of time when someone made a bad first impression and you told all your friends what an ass your new boss is, planting the seed of prejudice in their mind, or times when you gave into prejudice and avoided a business or person because of something someone else had said.