Paul Bloom is a Canadian- American professor of psychology and cognitive science at Yale University. In this Ted-Talk Paul goes in depth about prejudice and whether it really is all bad. The key points that I've gathered from his oration is the US v.s. THEM mentality that reaches everyone. This is because groups give us a sense of social identity; a sense of belonging in the social world. Paul here, starts off by quoting William Hazlitt by saying, "Prejudice is a child of ignorance". Right off the bat he cancels that out and continues to say how he wants to convince the audience that this is mistaken. Paul then goes on to a few examples. One of the examples that stoock out the most was the 2008 pre-election where social psychologists at which candidates were most associated with America. In the first study they compared Barack Obama with John McCain and most said McCain. They then did the same Obama v.s. British Prime minister Tony Blair and most said Blair even when knowing his occupation. Paul puts it out simply and says that it was only because of the color of his skin witch shows that if you are more so of the white race , automatically you are assumed to be 'more american looking' than that of the black race.
This emphasizes the US v.s. Them mentality in others A similar example that he also gave was one of two black men.
Psychologists explored peoples sentence for the murder of a white person. From this case study "you would be considerably more likely to be executed if you looked like the man on the right than the one on the left."- as Paul Bloom put it. Apparently this is because the man on the right looks 'more' prototypical black than the man on the left witch 'over-influences people' on what to do with him. All together, what is being shown in this case, is a bias against the accused suspect, much like the boy in the script Twelve Angry men.
In Twelve Angry Men a trial is being held on whether or not young boy is responsible for the death of his father. The setting is held in a court room with main characters Juror No. 8, 3,4 who find a way to toss and turn the case which ends up being a battle of prejudice against perspective all in the race of time. Juror No. 8 was actually the first to voice his opposing viewpoint on whether or not the boy was guilty or innocent, even though he was the only one. Much like how Paul Bloom was voicing his views on prejudice towards the audience, knowing that his viewpoint was drastically different from the norm. Juror No. 8 starts off by being the only one to vote the accused boy as innocent and decided to convince the other jurors the same. In juxtaposition to this idea was Juror No. 3. His deal along with the others was that it'd be easier to blame it all on the boy given the amount of evidence/ suspicion pinned against him. One of the things that first made the boy suspicious was the fact that he was from the slums( i.e was prone to do something like this regardless). This is a bias that most of the jurors agree on , but was also one that Juror No. 3 took very seriously on account that it was directly rooted from his personal encounters with his son. "It's the kids. The way they are--you know? They don't listen. I've got a kid. When he was eight years old he ran away from a fight. I saw him. I was so ashamed, I told him right out, ' I'm gonna make a man out of you or I'm gonna bust you up into little pieces trying.' When he was fifteen, he hit me in the face. He's big, you know. I haven't seen him in three years. Rotten kid! You work your heart out... " (Rose 21). This in itself is prejudice in the exact meaning. Simply because his son was violent, doesn't mean every young man is like that. Some of the evidence provided by their 'witnesses' were proven incorrect by Juror No. 8 and were actually proven false due to fact that they didn't add up. In one of the instances they had to check to see if the old man that claimed he made it across the room in 15 seconds to reach the door and witness the boy kill his father by reenacting it. What shocked the jurors the most was the fact that they found out that it took 30 seconds in fact to reach the door that was 20 feet away. Given that this was twice the amount of time that the old man claimed to have taken, the vote slowly went more towards the innocence of the boy to the point that only juror No. 3 was left as the only guilt vote. Ironically, the other Jurors called him brave for wanting to stand up for what he believes in- meaning his stubbornness and even more so the position that Paul Bloom is in. An unpopular opinion that can be proven and given reason as to why people should absolutely try to reach deeper than what meets the eye with biased assumptions that are just skin-deep.