What is the cause of prejudice? This is one of the few questions of interest in the field of social psychology. This essay will evaluate the social psychological approach to understanding prejudice. Social psychology is a scientific form of explaining human behavior. Developed by Gordon Allport in 1985, social psychology focuses on the social interactions that cause various behaviors. It is scientific because behavior can be observed and therefore measured in many forms. It is an objective way of collecting data which can then be used as evidence to support a series of theories. One of the main points of social psychology is that it not only focuses on motor activities but also on behaviors such as facial expressions, which can also be observed and measured. Social psychology is concerned with the emotion caused by actions presented and affected by our thoughts. As humans, we are socialized to behave the way we do, even if that sometimes means prejudice (Hogg and Vaughan, 2011). What does it mean to be prejudiced? There are many definitions of prejudice, but the simplest answer is "being judgmental and/or having a negative attitude toward a certain individual or group of individuals." There was a saying that once went "Don't judge a book by its cover", but as humans we naturally judge people based on many factors, from the color of their hair to the way they look or more extreme judgment such as skin color, gender, culture, etc. The problem is that we live in a world where prejudice exists daily and is entirely due to the social control in which we are socialized to behave like the "norm" created by our society. As soon as an individual steps outside the “norm,” they are immediately treated and perceived differently. Due... middle of article... asked but in this case our behavior is due to the dominance of social control which can include all the aspects I described above. We have plenty of theories and data to support aspects of this phenomenon, but do we really know the true meaning of socialization and how it can affect us is the big question. Works Cited Hogg, MA and Vaughan, GM (2011). Social psychology (6th ed.). London: Prentice Hall McLeod, SA (2008). Prejudice and discrimination. Retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/prejudice.htmlRamsden, P. (2014). Conference on prejudices (01/24/2014). Accessed Huddersfield Unilearn. https://unilearn.hud.ac.uk/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_15678_1%26url%3DRhodes, C. (2013) . PY4 Section A: Controversies Handout, Oldham Sixth Form College: Psychology Lesson.