I’m working on a psychology discussion question and need guidance to help me study.

(Each Response a minimun of 250 words)

Peer 1

Our attitudes are our evaluations based on our feelings and thoughts towards many different encounters and things we interact with, (Feenstra, J, 2014). We may have incredibly strong negative or positive attitudes towards different groups, objects, individuals, and so on. When reflecting on my own attitude towards specific entities I look at how my attitude differs with the LGBTQ+ community.

As a member of this community myself, I find that I have an incredibly positive attitude towards our community. My own prejudice comes from being a part of this community. There are a lot of stereotypes that I have witnessed that I had considered unfair. Society seems to have painted the LGBTQ+ community as wildly separate regarding behavior in relation to their gender. Men who identified as homosexual were stereotyped as flamboyant, while women who identified as such were stereotyped as overly masculine. Whenever I have explained to my peers or colleagues that I identify as part of this community, I have been faced with questions relating to my appearance and my attitude. Despite dressing to the feminine gender norm, it was almost as though I was not allowed to identify the way that I do because I do not meet the stereotype. However, this does not mean that my peers or colleagues are not accepting of our community. Most of those whom I have met have been accepting. However, there have been those that I have met who were not understanding nor accepting due to their own prejudices and biased.

When considering how others come to their own prejudices based off stereotypes, I would relate it to cognitive dissonance. When one is faced with something that indicates an inconsistency in what they think or do, they face tension, (Feenstra, J, 2014). I find that this is what causes a lot of reactions and prejudices towards the LGBTQ+ community. When facing something out of their own norm, one may react or have a negative attitude towards the difference due to the tension. This may also relate to confirmation bias, as it does not align with one’s conformity and beliefs.

Overall, I find that the differing prejudices and biases may appear in many settings. There had been a point not too long ago where being apart of this community meant you were breaking the norm and had received different feedback from many people. When I was younger, I was not as open about my sexual identity and I remember a former partner and I waited before coming out and being open with our relatives about our relationship out of fear of backlash. When looking at a professional setting, such as work, I considered not being open about my identity due to fear of being let go based off bias. Even now, we can look at the company Chic-Fil-A. I would not work there due to the incredibly conservative beliefs held at the company. At that time, it was not as accepted in our society. At this point, we now see more advertisements, flyers, and overall, more acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community in our society. However, there are still quite a few cultures and communities that are still not accepting due to their own beliefs regarding marriage and partnerships.

Peer 2

The group I decided to choose toward which I have a strong attitude about is a political ideology.

When our founding fathers created our Constitution, it was created with the Bible being its foundation. However, somehow we have strayed away from that. Our founding fathers came to America to get away from exactly what we have become in this present day. I have read the Bible, cover to cover, and now understand how the Bible was the foundation of our Constitution and our country. The Bible is our manual for how we are supposed to live our lives and covers everything from money, government, and laws. So how did we start there and end up with racism, sexism, and stereotypes? Our politicians in America have created division in our country by labeling all of God’s people and making destructive conflicts with one another. Here recently, it has gotten much worse by the politicians, who think they are God, are canceling movies, toys, and even words out of our vocabulary. This canceled culture is going now even deeper by implying that algebra is racist and even a road. Since when were objects able to have feelings?

I have never been one to jump on the bandwagon and do something just because everyone else is or because I am told: “that is just the way it is.” I had always done my due diligence in my research to find answers when something did not sound morally right to me. However, others that have sadly been victimized through these divisions could influence their attitudes positively to political ideology by wanting more man-made laws to protect them instead of researching the truth and stopping all of these illusions

If you want to call this as some people do as “waking up,” that is fine, but I see through their evaluative conditioning, which is creating positive or negative thoughts or ideas by repeatedly showing positive or negative images or talking about an object constantly (Feenstra, 2014). I believe our political system is an illusion of control. We are all made from God, and he did not appoint one man to be over another man; we are not children but grown adults.

Suppose enough people become aware that we are no longer a free country but a communist country. In that case, we, The People, can hold our elected officials accountable through the Constitution because that Constitution was an oath for them to protect our God-given rights. By doing this, I promise you, it will eliminate much of the biases that we have today.

Peer 3

For this week’s discussion, I selected the nationalism group and political belief structure. As a political entity, the nationalism movement sits on the political spectrum’s right-wing, one step shy of fascism. The definition of a nationalist is: “the desire by a group of people who share the same race, culture, language, etc. to form an independent country” or “a feeling of love for and pride in your country; a feeling that your country is better than any other” (Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, 2021). At face value, this ideology might not seem bias; however, any group that places itself above others, even in a national context, functions with prejudice and discrimination. When considering American nationalism, the idea of “America first” could be perceived to discount other nations and cultures as inferior. This ideology aligns nicely with Feenstra (2020) mention of discrimination as “differential behavior toward individuals or groups based on group membership” (6.1 Prejudice, Stereotypes, and Discrimination Section, para. 3). If the form of this nationalist ideology also includes race, religion, or gender, this nationalist movement will span the spectrum of prejudice, including racism and sexism.

Nationalism can tend to categorize entire peoples and nations into outgroups, which are groups with which their members do not align (Feenstra, 2020). Cultural norms could also become criticized within one’s own nation when they do not align with the nationalist majority’s ideology. An example of this took place in Germany during World War II when Adolf Hitler, a nationalist, stripped Germans of Jewish descent of their rights in 1933 (Land, 2018).

Today, the nationalist movement that we see in America is not one that many Americans identify as culturally or nationally bias as they also identify within that culture. Attitudes towards nationalism, in my opinion, have the potential to see great variation depending on whether the individual identifies with the ideology or associates with a specific ethnic or political group. When American’s do not see themselves as the “typical” majority American or not within the ingroup of that culture, the nationalist movement may not appeal to their belief system. The self-perception theory can help identify an individual subscribing to the nationalism belief system through their actions and attitudes towards that political ideology. In contrast, the cognitive dissonance theory, as described by Feenstra (2020), is behavior that is “uncomfortable because it indicates an inconsistency in what people think or feels and do” (4.2 Behavior and Attitudes Section, para. 16). People experiencing cognitive dissonance may avoid nationalist beliefs as it does not align with their internal belief systems. But as American’s, we may see this belief followed as we are all American’s.

Like with any attitude towards a belief, we can reinforce internal judgments to confirm or alter that belief. When beliefs in a group are formed, people tend to experience confirmation bias to assist in their chosen belief’s mental affirmation. We see this in different political affiliations and where individuals choose to get their news from. Different news networks align with different aspects of the political spectrum from left to right-wing politics. As described in Faanstra (2020), confirmation bias takes place when “people tend to search for information that will confirm that belief” (para. 8). When we look at this phenomenon in terms of nationalism, people who hold a strong affiliation towards their nation but don’t want to subscribe to the more fascist aspects of that belief may find themselves watching news and listening to others rationalize the bias beliefs as fake.

Finally, in professional business settings, nationalist views are not considered politically correct. In most businesses, global presences are common, and one nation cannot be held in higher regard than others. Equal footing is necessary to align expectations and business objectives to benefit both companies or nations. To eliminate this type of ideology, companies align with a code of ethics for their employees to govern all their professional business dealings.