(PSYCHOLOGY) Reducing Biases and Prejudices By becoming conscious of your biases and prejudices and following certain strategies, you can reduce your biases and prejudices and minimize their influence on your decisions and judgments. You acquire most biases through ignorance or fear. You feel secure in an environment that is familiar to you and threatened by values and beliefs that are different from yours. Exposing yourself to other cultures and races by learning about them through books, magazines, the Internet, movies and even traveling can have the following positive effects: make you more flexible in your thinking and attitudes help you get rid of rigid beliefs help you understand other cultures, values, and beliefs introduce you to new ways of thinking and lifestyles By consciously interacting with people who are not part of your ingroup, you can become familiar with people outside your ingroup. You will become aware of the many similarities that exist among people in different groups. One does not have to accept other people’s values and beliefs as one’s own but one can learn to accept differences as something natural and respect differences as being an important component of human diversity.
