Sociology 100 - Social Biases

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This bias can affect my interaction with people sometimes. If I happen to meet somebody and we become friends, or friends enough that I learn they are in general a lazy person, I will most likely quit talking to them or hanging out with them. I don’t like to associate with lazy people too often because I’m worried it will rub off on me and I’ll slowly become lazier and lazier until, suddenly I’m living in a refrigerator box begging for a dime. However, sometimes you can’t avoid these people, or you care enough about them that you still continue spend time with them, even though they are lazy. In these cases I will more often than not try to help this person by encouraging them to work harder and not be so lazy. This is why I don’t really plan on changing this bias either. I think that the ways I treat people because of this bias helps society. Maybe I help 10 people throughout my life to not be so lazy and they contribute to society more, or maybe I discontinue friendships with 100 people because they are too lazy and 50 of them decide to do something about it to prove me wrong. Good! That means I helped 60 people be more beneficial to society and achieve their goals. That’s probably more than the average person will do by the time they die and probably more than the government has done, well, ever.

We all have biases and while you can’t always make them disappear completely, you can mask them somewhat and still treat people with respect. Being bias is a part of life, but the way you treat people is entirely up to you. I don’t love my biases, but I don’t think they make anybody’s life worse. I think differently about obese people, but that doesn’t change the way I talk to or treat them. In fact, wanting to change overweight people might even help me in my career one day. I also have prejudices against lazy people, and while it may hurt their feelings when I tell them to figure it out, in the long run it helps them. I’m really just out here trying to make everybody a little bit better version of themselves. So maybe we do all have biases, but sometimes, that isn’t a bad thing.