Abstract
Prejudice is a psychological, cognitive, and social phenomenon characterized by a negative attribution, judgment, or assumption directed toward an individual because of his belonging to a specific social group. Prejudice, discrimination, and inequality are part of the human relations in different social contexts and historical periods. In the Brazilian context, among the factors that constitute the social vulnerability of many children and adolescents, the relationship between violence and racism stands out. Considering these aspects, this chapter has the objective of discussing prejudice and the specificities of racism in order to enable the construction of interventions that aim to reduce racial and social exclusion. One way of preventing and reducing prejudice, and more specifically racism, is related to empathy, a psychic process that is essential to the viability of social coexistence, and perspective taking – the ability to understand the conditions and psychic experiences of other people. To arouse empathy toward an individual, under certain conditions, can lead to a reduction of the prejudice directed to the group to which the individual belongs. In this sense, this chapter concludes that, based on experimental research that relates these theoretical constructs, interventions substantiated on empathy and perspective taking can be developed with the objective of preventing or reducing prejudiced and racist attitudes.
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Verzoni, A., de Macedo Lisboa, C.S. (2017). Discussion on Prejudice and Empathy in Children and Adolescents in Situations of Social Vulnerability: Proposition of Interventions. In: Dell'Aglio, D., Koller, S. (eds) Vulnerable Children and Youth in Brazil . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65033-3_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65033-3_7
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