Psychology System04104: Literature Review on Discrimination

This literature review examines the major sociological issue of discrimination based on race in Australian society, exploring its relationship with psychological concepts. It focuses on how public perception, emotions, and social psychology influence discriminatory behavior. The review discusses the impact of emotions on health psychology, the role of perception in shaping attitudes, and how social psychology influences societal views. Key research findings from various scholars are integrated to highlight the connections between emotions, perception, and discriminatory practices, concluding that understanding these psychological factors is crucial for addressing and mitigating racism and gender discrimination. The review also emphasizes the importance of health and social psychology to promote positive changes in societal attitudes and behaviors.

Running Head: Psychology
Psychology
Literature Review
System04104
8/18/2019

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Literature Review
The major sociological issue in Australian society is discrimination with people based
on race. It has been often found that there are many psychological concepts are related with
discrimination. One of the important aspects of public perception about the people.
Generally, it has been seen that people avoid making relationship with black people and this
shows the poor perception of people. Apart from this feeling is an important factor which is
associated with discrimination and biasness with people based on their race and gender. For
most of the people, feeling or emotions are almost similar concept. However, most of the
people perceive them as the synonyms of each other, but these two are different things and
are dependent on each other. Emotions include various mental states such as happy, angry,
stress, sadness, or anxiety etc. Gloria & Steinhardt (2016) included in their article that
emotions are directly related to health psychology as it affects the mental status and
wellbeing of people. Emotions are also responsible for treating people unfairly in the country.
It has been seen in shadow of nationality and superiority which are the common aspects of
emotions, people treated others with wrong perception and emotions play an important role in
it. Sunderland (2018) said that every people have a different approach to handle his or her
emotions in their life and it is crucial for people to self-regulate the emotion that harm others
feeling of creating self for others or for self as well. However, it can be said that emotions can
determine the way of behaviour of people and it depends on people that how people can
control their emotions to drive their life towards an ethical behaviour which is good for all
(Nesse, 2015).
Perception of people makes the person different from other people in terms of
thinking and identifying emotions or things. Wang, Tan, Wu, & Luo (2019) included in their
article that the perception of people could also help the people to look the concern from a
different perspective. However, it is really important to encounter the racism in the country to
change the perception of people about others. The emotions of people are directly connected
with the perception of people and affect people’s perception as well. The researchers who
study perception found that it is the emotion that directly affects the people’s perception of
people because emotion is based on visual perception of people (Kristoffersen, Lundqvist, &
Russell, 2019). However, if a positive emotion can change the perception of people towards

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the society and give them ability to see the society with different perspective rather than
biased one which discriminate people based on their colour, gender, or nationality.
Health psychology helps to understand the psychological and behaviour process in
health and illness. The emotion is a part of human psychology. Understanding of human
emotions and their feelings are the primary requirement in health psychology (Sunderland,
2018). It has been researched that human psychology is helpful in finding the mental status of
people and the relation of emotional status with the current health situation of people. The
health psychology helps the doctors to understand how people react in a particular situation
and recover from illness. The American Psychological Association (APA) is more devoted to
health psychology and they find in their research that emotions play an important role in
health psychology (Yoo & Miyamoto, 2018). However, this is a very new and young field of
study in health psychology but it is emerging since 1970. It is crucial to know that health
psychology deals with human behaviour and emotions are one of the key elements that force
people to behave in a particular way (Yoo & Miyamoto, 2018). Therefore, the study of health
psychology is directly related to emotions and mental state of people. For example, a diabetes
patient knows that eating sugar is dangerous for their health, despite being the patient
consumed sugar products and ignores the long-term or short-term consequences of it
(Sunderland, 2018).
Another aspect which is related with this social issue is social psychology. Social
psychology determines the way of thinking of people about the societal context. Social
psychology is a branch of anthropology that studies human culture. The perception of people
is directly related to social psychology, as people look the society according to their own
perception (Wang, Tan, Wu, & Luo, 2019). Here a positive change in the attitudes and
behaviour of people can bring a drastic change in the society and it can be helpful in
removing the racism from the society. People generally learn, behave, and think like other
people because people learn to act and think from other people in society (Sawers, Samuels,
& Kaplan, 2017). The social psychology of people also enables the people to look at the
situation in different ways than other people and it is based on the perception of people that
how people understand the situation.
In conclusion, it can be said that all four sub-disciplines are part of human psychology
and determine the behaviour and emotions of people in case of racism and gender

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discrimination in the society. These factors are also associated with the behaviour and attitude
of people that encourage them to behave and act in particular way in the society.

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Reference
Gloria, C. T., & Steinhardt, M. A. (2016). Relationships among positive emotions, coping,
resilience and mental health. Stress and Health, 32(2), 145-156.
Yoo, J., & Miyamoto, Y. (2018). Cultural fit of emotions and health implications: A
psychosocial resources model. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 12(2),
e12372.
Sunderland, M. (2018). Draw on your emotions. UK, London: Routledge.
Nesse, R. M. (2015). Evolutionary psychology and mental health. The handbook of
evolutionary psychology, 6(5), 1-20.
Kristoffersen, E. S., Lundqvist, C., & Russell, M. B. (2019). Illness perception in people with
primary and secondary chronic headache in the general population. Journal of
psychosomatic research, 116, 83-92.
Sawers, K. M., Samuels, J. A., & Kaplan, S. E. (2017). Social psychology theories as applied
to Behavioural Accounting Research. The Routledge Companion to Behavioural
Accounting Research, 8(12), 77-91.
Wang, P., Tan, C. H., Wu, W., & Luo, X. M. (2019). Social dominance orientation and
stereotype influence perception of social distance between classes. Social Behavior
and Personality: an international journal, 47(4), 1-8.