Prejudice And Discrimination In The Workplace Essay

Prejudice and discrimination have many undesirable impacts. In the workplace setting, they are related to workplace bullying, lower productivity, lower employee engagement, turnover, workplace deviance, and burnout. (Deitch et al., 2003; Ragins & Cornwell, 2001). From the societal aspect, they might result in social unrest, riot and ethnic cleansing that could cause destruction, affecting tourism and foreign company investments (Ahmed, 1995; Green & Seher, 2003). These could have a disastrous impact on both the politics and economics of the country (Ramasubramanian, 2015). It is, therefore, crucial to promote intergroup harmony while understanding the antecedents behind discriminations in an attempt to prevent such disasters from occuring. While understanding the social influences to discrimination is crucial, understanding individual differences’ susceptibility towards prejudice is also indispensable so that policies, programs or interventions could be tailored and targeted to specific groups of people to be more effective in encouraging intergroup harmony. Findings of how personality could affect prejudice and discrimination will be discussed below.
Need for Closure (NFC) — Individuals high in NFC prefers structure and dislikes …show more content…
Maintenance of self-image is one of the most important and persistent human goals (Hales, 1985). Knowing that one is discriminatory can hurt own self-image. Neutralising and rationalising that discrimination is morally acceptable and appropriate allow people to behave discriminatorily without experiencing discomfort from adopting a behaviour that is discrepant from one’s self-image — one that is fair and moral. Being able to rationalise and neutralise that ethnic persecution and aggression is morally acceptable and appropriate might, therefore, result in the promotion of such