System Objectification Theory

843 Words4 Pages

Social injustice and prejudice has been the main cause of conflict throughout the entire world. Social status, gender, and religion have helped influence on these prejudices as acceptable and required amongst all living things. Throughout the semester we have learned about psychological theories that suggest why certain people are prejudice towards a specific group(s) of people. According to psychological science people are prejudice towards Black and Brown women. To further explain why, my partner and I have identified various theories. These theories are as followed: system justification theory, social dominance theory and cognitive dissonance theory. Throughout the semester we have learned about psychological theories that suggest why …show more content…

Thus, this theory serves to emphasize how society shapes what we think is morally correct as well as how society should be. Furthermore, this theory supports to identify how Black and Brown women are targets of prejudice through objectification. Today, all over contemporary culture we see women being objectified and reduced to being sexual objects to display through means of advertisement, TV, internet, etc. However, Black and Brown women are affected because of their race and reduced based on their body image. Black women in the media are often trivialized only for their “big butts and thin waist”. Similarly, Latina women are often seen as “hypersexual and promiscuous” and also “exotic”. These misleading images only perpetrate an illusion of beauty that make some women want to be exactly like these images, which applies to the system justification theory of us women supporting this current social …show more content…

Social dominance theory focuses on different ways that groups are perceived while mainly focusing on a zero-sum thought process that implies that every gain for an outer group is a loss for the inner group(93). This theory could lead to answer why some groups may feel more inferior to others. Other aspects of culture such as religion and politics play a big role in how inner group have this negative conception of other groups. This theory is more focused on the fear of losing your spot at the top of society. Black and Brown women have often found themselves in the middle of the prejudiced circle. Women have always been a threat to men, especially the ones who considered themselves “independent”. Most prejudiced acts are played out in business settings. The more jobs women get, the more men get unease and hostile. Institutional discrimination usually results from social dominance theory and it has been used as an excuse to spread discrimination across businesses everywhere. Of course, no one will admit to the prejudice inside a working area because many people question whether it is actually happening because of their race or because they did not do their job correctly. Since Black and Brown women are at the bottom of the corporal food chain, they tend to face a lot of discrimination in an office or in an working