I always viewed acts be prejudiced only if somebody dislikes a person being part of a group. Discrimination; is more likely to be a social phobia as there is an intense, purposeful and deliberate form of hatred towards a group: gender, race, like when you just hate basketball players when you're a soccer player. Discriminatory acts are prejudiced, like how that soccer player is not immersed to basketball culture — he is biased. Discriminatory acts, however, can stand without prejudice. A soccer player can have a reasonable argument like if he was a basketball player before. Being one of that culture/group, the soccer player can argue that basketball is way more tiring etc.

But no, I would not think it is social phobia, because if it were to be a phobia, you are fearful towards societal characteristics of every principle. The concept of society just revolts your mind. The biasedness of prejudiced motivations and beliefs is proof that the person does not dislike every societal characteristics, but only a selected group, and its supporting ideologies.

Er ... I meant ALL prejudices are basically just types of phobia underneath - be due to fear of change or of non-change. I didn’t mean “fear of society”.

To add, “phobia” means irrational fear.

My bad.

I'll start off by saying that I take the word "phobia" is a loaded gun, used as a political tool and popular because of its insidious claim but perhaps not a word a serious philosopher should be using. Phobia is a philosophical/political interpretation of a lot of things but prejudice is a big one, I think in examples like transphobia and Islamophobia prejudice against these groups would for many be sufficient to make a claim of transphobia or Islamophobia by itself. Using that interpretation it's self-evident that prejudice is a phobia but if you actually think there's some real truth to this, I don't know what to say, that's a bad sign.

There are all kinds of prejudices, thinking they're all irrational fear lacks any kind of nuance and I don't think it's even a truth claim, I assume there's some other kind of motivation at play (like a political or interpretative one).

So, I would prejudice against someone with a rat tail, mohawk or goth attire without any negative feelings towards them, it just seems obvious to me that a person with that kind of attire lives a certain kind of way. I would assume they don't have a great job, that they aren't that articulate, that they don't go to fancy restaurants and a whole plethora of other things. Most of those things, there's not that many possibilities for someone who looks like that to have a successful job, as either a business owner or employee, only a few kinds of jobs would allow for it and they're not that well paying. If they are, they're not necessarily good jobs that put them high on any social hierarchy. Now I'll give the individual chances to prove me wrong but my assumptions aren't positive but there's certainly no irrational fear lol.

People also make positive assumptions, one that I see a lot is assuming good looking people are above average intelligence, have good paying jobs, they're popular and they get high-quality girls/guys very easily. The opposite is true for unattractive people, it's clearly got nothing to with fear.

In fact, I prejudice against people on this forum, I don't need much, I see a really stupid name and it's already a bad first impression. What about Wallows, thread names? As soon as I saw them, I'm not scared of wallows, let me assure you of that but of course, I start making all kinds of assumptions about who in their right mind could make those threads - if we even generously assume he's in his right mind at all.

Do you actually have some kind of argument? Or do you just more so wish it were the case that it was so?

I do my best to avoid saying that all of any widespread behavior should be interpreted to denote some particular mental content, because that never pans out. Different people think about the "same thing" in different ways.

I found your response a little confusing in places. “Phobia” does mean, psychologically speaking, “irrational fear”.

Anyway, I think there is something we can get our teeth into here maybe?:

So, I would prejudice against someone with a rat tail, mohawk or goth attire without any negative feelings towards them, it just seems obvious to me that a person with that kind of attire lives a certain kind of way. — Judaka

I am not entirely sure what you mean by “prejudice” without “negative feelings” unless you consider such attire to be positive? Which would still be prejudice in the strictest sense of the word only with negative weight pointed away from such people ... here there is a point to be had!

I certainly would say I prefer some people’s company over others and I must therefore hold prejudice, yet I haven’t made the distinction between affiliation with a person/s and purpsoeful avoidance of others. I am mistaken in my assumption that having a “preference” isn’t necessarily a “prejudice”? If so I’m curious as to how a purposeful avoidance of some people could be seen as not being due to fear of some kind (rationally or not).

I have to grant I did delete a paragraph from the OP prior to posting. My example would be “racism” as one such irrational fear - I generalised to see what would be brought up and to explore where people would choose to draw the distinctions between various different prejudices.

My thinking was that it is useful to view strong dislikes towards people as a result of fear and that such can be confused easily with “phobia”. I was not suggesting that all social fears are social phobias, but I do see sexism and racism as phobias. I most certainly wasn’t trying to set up a position from which we should listen claims of such prejudices as being actual phobic reactions as the very people making such claims may be the ones suffering with phobia; not to mention that there could well be some underlying phobia on both sides (which would be a VERY difficult social situation from which to disentangle each party!)

If someone thinks that blacks are less likely to work hard, say, and they think that's due to genetic factors, so that the person in question is a racist, then if that person refrains from hiring a black candidate for a job, what would be our basis for saying that they're acting out of a fear or phobia rather than just ignorance?

So what's obvious to me is that a prejudice is a type of interpretation, people you think are being particularly malicious and narrow-minded are possibly neither of those things. If you treated your interpretation of people like you did everything else, what does that look like?

People very much care about the appearance of things, most items lose almost all of their value with the slightest flaw or damage. It's an attitude widespread enough to have wide-scale value implications for items, there's likely something necessarily human in thinking that way. What if we extend that kind of attitude to people though? Suddenly that's supposed to be all out the window? People prejudice against all kinds of things ALL the time, not just people.

The word prejudice is fine but not when you start insisting that it can't be compared to any kind of interpretative distinction based on appearance or trait, positive or negative. It's a word but that doesn't change the properties of what is going on here. I thought you understood this based on our discussions in the consistency of the criticism against the alt-right thread, people think in these kinds of ways and it's unavoidable.

My main problem with racism is that race barely tell us anything about a person but people use race as though it does. It's the same with biases against gender, you really don't know enough about a person based on that alone to say anything about them, so you shouldn't try to.

So clearly with racism, things are blown out of proportion but what about a choice to have a rat tail? There are certain types of people who simply won't or can't have a rat tail and that means if you have one, you're not one of those people. Office jobs mostly won't allow a rat tail, it's unlikely you are running a business seriously if you haven't changed to a reasonable hairstyle and so far, all my prejudice is fairly well backed-up.

Fear can lead to prejudice or be a product of prejudice but not usually and your examples make me think you are probably more in-line with what I think which is that people shouldn't make conclusions about people without sufficient information. You especially shouldn't blame an individual for your problems with a group. These are the kinds of prejudices which bother me.

A fair point. The only counter I could offer to that is that root cause would be due to fear passed on to them and/or fear of knowledge.

It is quite reasonable to argue that “fear of knowledge” can hardly be called a “phobia” though (gaining knowledge is a tough and dangerous path). So I guess it doesn’t hold up at all in that light.

I thought you understood this based on our discussions in the consistency of the criticism against the alt-right thread, people think in these kinds of ways and it's unavoidable. — Judaka

Yep. Just looking at possible methods of damage control.

Just making the problem worse by purposefully misunderstanding it imo but whatever.

Thanks for that helpful comment ;)

Er ... I meant ALL prejudices are basically just types of phobia underneath — I like sushi

No, its not. Racism which stems from a prejudice, does not indicate an irrational fear...

I was not saying that the biological/survival mechanisms at play are “phobias”, yet in a social setting they seem to be about irrational fear - although to say fear of understanding the unknown is a “phobia” may be too much of a stretch.

I prejudice is generally framed as “ignorance” or hatred. This is certainly part and parcel of the ‘fight or flight’ mechanism.

Personally I think the idea in the OP falls down because if someone is sexist they may act in this manner to ‘fit in’ knowing that they’ll not be accepted if they voice their disagreement. It becomes acceptable and even though there is fear of not being socially accepted it is not entirely an irrational fear.

I would say that it intially stems for fear though because we’re naturally fearful of unknown for obvious reasons. In a social space I would say that this basic survival mechanism is often misplaced and therefore irrational; in part at least.

If you could elaborate more than that on your “...” it may be useful.

Thanks

if someone is sexist they may act in this manner to ‘fit in’ knowing that they’ll not be accepted if they voice their disagreement. It becomes acceptable and even though there is fear of not being socially accepted it is not entirely an irrational fear. — I like sushi

So with that in mind what about someone who is sexist due to their socialization? There are plenty of families whose culture raise boys with this "sexist" mentality. For example look at Saudi Arabia and how even in that country women are said to walk behind men. The religion of Islam states that men and women are equal, yet the culture represents otherwise. A Bedouin boy raised in that environment is not trying to fit in because like other Bedouin boys this is how their culture has raised them to be. Why is that?

To this using your comment in the above post you may say:

I would say that it intially stems for fear though because we’re naturally fearful of unknown for obvious reasons. In a social space I would say that this basic survival mechanism is often misplaced and therefore irrational; in part at least. — I like sushi

I would agree in that perhaps to bring true equality to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia one may need to alleviate themselves of the patriarchal mindset of gender roles. Although the Kingdom of Saud is an absolute monarchy the problem is more complex.

It doesn’t appear to me that you expanded from your “...”

Maybe my use of terms is unclear? I was trying to differentiate “Social Phobia” from inbuilt behavioral patterns. We don’t disagree that fear of the unknown exists, and I was trying to view items such as “racism,” “sexism” and other such “-isms” as being misplaced extension of our more “primal” attitudes towards novelty and the unknown (of course there is a pull between curiosity and fear).

We use the term “homophobia” to express can easily be comparable to “sexism”. Either the term “homophobia” is misplaced or the term “sexism” is misplaced. If “racism” isn’t anything to do with phobia how is “homophobia” a phobia? In both cases hatred is being expressed toward an arbitrary group of people - this seems irrational to me even though the underlying “wiring” that protects us from the “unknown” is obviously of use to us as creatures inhabiting a world that is constantly changing.

I am not saying this is or isn’t correct, just merely a perspective to consider. It will have holes in it the most obvious one to me being the use of political language to frame “homophobia” as a fear based problem and “sexism” as a attitude problem. Just maybe looking at them all as phobias could work toward a way of reaching out to some of these people - sympathy/understand toward the enemy by viewing them as “scared” and victims of poor socialization (although in some cases there are likely those that are so far gone we’re fighting a needless battle.)

Prejudice can be rational or irrational, phobia can't be rational.

To add a little to this thought here’s a quote from Schiller:

Man as a slave to nature as long as he merely felt it; he became its sovereign once he began to think it. What had previously ruled over him as force is now the object of his judging gaze.

... Fear only has a place where ponderous and shapeless mass rules, its indistinct outlines shifting between insecure boundaries; man has the advantage over any terror in nature once he knows how to lend it form, and transform it into his object.

Friedrich Schiller, “On the Aesthetic Education of Man” - 25th Letter