Prejudice between cultural groups is a favourable, unfavourable or otherwise evaluative attitude toward people because they are perceived as belonging to a particular cultural group. It can involve feelings, judgments, expectations and predispositions concerning members of another cultural, ethnic, national, linguistic or religious population. Prejudice differs from a neutral awareness of cultural difference because it involves evaluation rather than simple recognition.
Negative prejudice may involve dislike, suspicion, distrust, fear or hostility, while positive prejudice can involve idealisation or assumptions that a group possesses uniformly desirable qualities. Both can distort individual perception because they treat group membership as more informative than personal evidence. Prejudice may be explicit and consciously expressed, or implicit and reflected in automatic associations or responses. It can occur between individuals, within institutions or across wider societies. The term therefore describes an attitudinal or evaluative dimension of intergroup relations, whereas discrimination generally refers to behaviour or unequal treatment and stereotyping refers primarily to generalised beliefs or representations.
Prejudice can develop through social learning, categorisation, perceived competition, historical conflict, institutional narratives and repeated cultural representation. People may acquire attitudes from family members, peers, educational environments, media and political or social institutions. If a group is repeatedly described as threatening, inferior or incompatible with the values of another community, such representations can contribute to negative attitudes. Competition for employment, housing, political influence, resources or social status can also increase hostility when groups perceive their interests as conflicting.
Historical conflict can leave memories and narratives that influence attitudes long after the original events. However, the existence of social competition does not automatically produce prejudice because people interpret circumstances differently and institutions can encourage cooperation. Prejudice therefore results from interacting psychological and social processes rather than having one universal cause.
Stereotypes and prejudice are closely related but conceptually distinct. A stereotype is a belief or representation concerning a group, while prejudice involves an evaluative attitude toward the group or its members. A person might hold a stereotype without expressing strong positive or negative feelings, although stereotypes frequently contribute to prejudice. Conversely, prejudice can influence which stereotypes a person accepts because unfavourable attitudes may encourage selective interpretation of information. Discrimination adds another dimension because it concerns treatment or behaviour.
Someone may hold prejudiced attitudes without acting on them, while discriminatory behaviour can sometimes result from institutional rules or routines even when individual decision makers do not consciously hold hostile attitudes. Ethnocentrism, xenophobia and cultural intolerance can overlap with prejudice but describe particular patterns or intensities of intergroup attitudes. Maintaining these distinctions is useful when analysing the causes and consequences of intergroup relations.
Prejudice can affect social perception by changing how ambiguous behaviour is interpreted. If someone expects members of another cultural group to behave negatively, an uncertain interaction may be interpreted as evidence of hostility, dishonesty or disrespect rather than being attributed to ordinary misunderstanding or individual circumstances. Positive behaviour may receive less attention because it conflicts with the existing attitude.
This can create feedback loops in which people expect poor relations, behave defensively and then interpret the resulting tension as confirmation of their expectations. Prejudice can also influence willingness to form friendships, cooperate, employ, teach or provide services to members of another group. The effects can occur even when the person experiencing prejudice is unaware of the specific belief driving the behaviour. These mechanisms help explain why intergroup attitudes can persist even when individuals have limited direct evidence supporting them.
Cultural prejudice can operate at interpersonal, institutional and societal levels. Interpersonal prejudice occurs when one person evaluates or treats another person negatively because of perceived cultural membership. Institutional patterns arise when rules, routines or organisational practices systematically disadvantage a cultural group, whether intentionally or through established structures. Societal prejudice refers to broader patterns of attitudes and narratives that become widespread across communities and institutions. These levels can interact.
For example, widespread cultural assumptions may influence individual expectations, while repeated interpersonal experiences can reinforce wider social narratives. At the same time, institutions can reduce prejudice by establishing fair procedures and creating opportunities for interaction between groups. It is therefore insufficient to analyse prejudice solely as an individual's personal attitude when broader historical and institutional conditions shape the information and opportunities available to individuals.
Prejudice can have consequences for social cohesion, trust and access to opportunities. People who repeatedly experience negative treatment may become less willing to interact with institutions or members of the groups associated with the prejudice. Communities can become socially segregated when people avoid one another or when discriminatory practices restrict opportunities for contact. Prejudice can also influence educational experiences, employment relationships, healthcare interactions, housing access and participation in public life when attitudes translate into discriminatory behaviour. At the same time, individuals and communities often develop strategies for resisting prejudice, including cultural organisations, advocacy, education, intercultural programmes and community networks. The consequences therefore include both harmful exclusionary processes and the development of social mechanisms intended to counter them.
Reducing prejudice generally involves addressing the conditions through which negative intergroup attitudes are learned and maintained. Meaningful contact can be helpful when groups interact under conditions of relative equality and shared objectives. Education can provide historical context and challenge unsupported assumptions, while diverse representation can broaden the range of images associated with cultural groups. Institutional procedures can reduce opportunities for individual prejudice to determine access to services or employment by using transparent criteria and accountability mechanisms.
Dialogue can also help people distinguish personal experiences from general claims about entire populations. However, no single intervention eliminates prejudice automatically, and poorly designed interventions can sometimes reinforce group boundaries. Effective approaches therefore tend to combine interpersonal, educational and institutional measures while recognising that prejudice is influenced by broader social conditions.
Prejudice between cultural groups is best understood as an evaluative component of intergroup relations rather than simply as a synonym for cultural difference or disagreement. People can disagree about cultural practices without necessarily holding prejudiced attitudes toward the people who practise them, although persistent negative judgments about a cultural population can become prejudice. Similarly, cultural curiosity or recognition of difference is not inherently prejudicial.
The relevant issue is whether group membership becomes a basis for unfavourable or otherwise distorted evaluation of individuals. A comprehensive analysis should therefore distinguish prejudice from stereotypes, discrimination, xenophobia, ethnocentrism and cultural intolerance while examining how these phenomena can interact. Understanding the distinction between attitudes, beliefs and behaviour is particularly important because changing one dimension does not automatically change the others.
