Discrimination



 Discrimination is behavior that achieves distance from the target person or group. After all, if you don't like someone and if you think badly of them, you don't want them hanging around! There are many ways to get distance between you and a group of people you don't like.



Gordon Allport suggested that interpersonal discrimination exists on a continum from mild to severe forms of expression. They are:

Anti-locution (calling someone a nasty name or a slur)

Avoidance

Exclusion

Physical attack

Extermination

Sometimes discrimination is even more subtle or mild than calling someone a bad name. For example, some of us try not to make eye contact with the homeless people we walk past on the street.

Sometimes we fail to verbally interact. Perhaps, when interacting with someone from a group we don't like, we use a negative voice tone or fail to respect the other person's personal space.

One way to achieve distance from someone is to cause her/him to fear you.