Can you discriminate without prejudice

What stereotypes and prejudices do you hold about people who are from a race, gender, and age group different from your own? What are some stereotypes of various racial or ethnic groups? Racism exists for many racial and ethnic groups. Mexican Americans and other Latino groups also are targets of racism from the police and other members of the community.

For example, when purchasing items with a personal check, Latino shoppers are more likely than White shoppers to be asked to show formal identification Dovidio et al. In one case of alleged harassment by the police, several East Haven, Connecticut, police officers were arrested on federal charges due to reportedly continued harassment and brutalization of Latinos. Have you witnessed racism toward any of these racial or ethnic groups?

Are you aware of racism in your community? Sexism is prejudice and discrimination toward individuals based on their sex. Typically, sexism takes the form of men holding biases against women, but either sex can show sexism toward their own or their opposite sex. Like racism, sexism may be subtle and difficult to detect.

Common forms of sexism in modern society include gender role expectations, such as expecting women to be the caretakers of the household. For example, women are expected to be friendly, passive, and nurturing, and when women behave in an unfriendly, assertive, or neglectful manner they often are disliked for violating their gender role Rudman, Research by Laurie Rudman finds that when female job applicants self-promote, they are likely to be viewed as competent, but they may be disliked and are less likely to be hired because they violated gender expectations for modesty.

Sexism can exist on a societal level such as in hiring, employment opportunities, and education. Have you ever experienced or witnessed sexism? Why do you think there are differences in the jobs women and men have, such as more women nurses but more male surgeons Betz, ? Women now have many jobs previously closed to them, though they still face challenges in male-dominated occupations.

People often form judgments and hold expectations about people based on their age. These judgments and expectations can lead to ageism , or prejudice and discrimination toward individuals based solely on their age.

Typically, ageism occurs against older adults, but ageism also can occur toward younger adults. Think of expectations you hold for older adults. Ageism is widespread in U. Some cultures, however, including some Asian, Latino, and African American cultures, both outside and within the United States afford older adults respect and honor. Ageism can also occur toward younger adults. What expectations do you hold toward younger people?

Does society expect younger adults to be immature and irresponsible? How might these two forms of ageism affect a younger and older adult who are applying for a sales clerk position? Another form of prejudice is homophobia : prejudice and discrimination of individuals based solely on their sexual orientation.

Like ageism, homophobia is a widespread prejudice in U. Negative feelings often result in discrimination, such as the exclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender LGBT people from social groups and the avoidance of LGBT neighbors and co-workers.

This discrimination also extends to employers deliberately declining to hire qualified LGBT job applicants. Have you experienced or witnessed homophobia?

If so, what stereotypes, prejudiced attitudes, and discrimination were evident? Some people are quite passionate in their hatred for nonheterosexuals in our society. This passionate response has led some researchers to question what motives might exist for homophobic people. In this experiment, male college students were given a scale that assessed how homophobic they were; those with extreme scores were recruited to participate in the experiment.

In the end, 64 men agreed to participate and were split into 2 groups: homophobic men and nonhomophobic men. Both groups of men were fitted with a penile plethysmograph, an instrument that measures changes in blood flow to the penis and serves as an objective measurement of sexual arousal. All men were shown segments of sexually explicit videos. One of these videos involved a sexual interaction between a man and a woman heterosexual clip.

One video displayed two females engaged in a sexual interaction homosexual female clip , and the final video displayed two men engaged in a sexual interaction homosexual male clip. Changes in penile tumescence were recorded during all three clips, and a subjective measurement of sexual arousal was also obtained.

While both groups of men became sexually aroused to the heterosexual and female homosexual video clips, only those men who were identified as homophobic showed sexual arousal to the homosexual male video clip. While all men reported that their erections indicated arousal for the heterosexual and female homosexual clips, the homophobic men indicated that they were not sexually aroused despite their erections to the male homosexual clips.

Adams et al. Prejudice and discrimination persist in society due to social learning and conformity to social norms. If certain types of prejudice and discrimination are acceptable in a society, there may be normative pressures to conform and share those prejudiced beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. For example, public and private schools are still somewhat segregated by social class. Historically, only children from wealthy families could afford to attend private schools, whereas children from middle- and low-income families typically attended public schools.

In contrast, the without prejudice rule can apply to settlement discussions which take place after employment has ended. It is also necessary for the employer to have made some settlement offer or proposals during the discussion — simply holding a conversation about ending employment without discussing agreed terms will not fall within the PTN rules.

It would therefore cover, for example, unlawful discrimination against an employee during settlement discussions. The Acas Code of Practice on settlement agreements Acas Code contains examples of improper behaviour, which include harassment, bullying and intimidation.

Another example is putting undue pressure on a party, such as by not giving them reasonable time for consideration of a settlement offer or saying before any form of disciplinary process has begun that the employee will be dismissed if the offer is rejected. Adopting a negotiating tactic that the amount offered reduces progressively while the employee is considering the offer could be considered as applying undue pressure on the individual to rush their decision.

The Acas Code in addition provides some examples of what would not usually be considered improper behaviour. These include factually stating the alternatives if agreement cannot be reached, including reference to the possibility of disciplinary action if relevant, or setting out in a neutral manner the reasons that have led to the proposed settlement agreement.

As the concept of improper behaviour is so broad, employers should ensure that they follow the guidance in the Acas Code and do not put pressure on an employee during a PTN — whether through deliberate tactics or simply by trying to conclude matters as swiftly as possible.

The employer will need to decide whether to offer this option or whether it would be better to keep discussions more informal. The risk of not allowing an employee to be accompanied is that this is seen as putting undue pressure on them, so amounting to improper behaviour — particularly if they ask to be accompanied and this is refused. Again, this is not a legal requirement and what is reasonable will depend on the circumstances. Nonetheless, giving an employee a significantly shorter period may be regarded as undue pressure and so improper behaviour, especially if the employee asks for more time and this is refused.

Although not a legal requirement, it is recommended that a letter is sent to the employee following the PTN. This should record what was discussed and provide a clear record of the terms that the employer is willing to offer.

Acas has published guidance containing templates that employers can use. When drafting the letter, remember that the ET could see it in any claims other than unfair dismissal, or where the ET is satisfied that there has been improper behaviour.

The employer may choose to state that the offer is made in accordance with section A of the Employment Rights Act and explain the consequences, but this may not be appropriate in all cases and is not required for the PTN rules to apply. It will normally be helpful to provide a draft settlement agreement with the letter so the employee can take legal advice.

Some employees may, however, interpret the production of a settlement agreement at this point in the process as suggesting that the employer is determined to proceed with dismissal. As an alternative the letter could set out the headline terms that the employer is willing to offer, stating that a draft settlement agreement will be provided if the employee expresses an interest in going down this route.

It can be important to identify the date that employment ends for the purposes of an unfair dismissal claim, known as the effective date of termination EDT. For example, there may be a dispute about whether the employee has sufficient service to bring a claim for unfair dismissal. If there is a dispute about the EDT after a PTN had occurred, the content of the discussions may be admissible as evidence to help determine the EDT in subsequent unfair dismissal proceedings. To reduce the risk of a dispute arising in relation to the EDT, employers should ensure clear and unambiguous wording is used in any correspondence relating to termination of employment.

An employee may raise a grievance as a negotiating tactic, with a view to prompting settlement discussions or gaining additional leverage in existing discussions. Refusing to hear the grievance in this situation raises various risks. In the context of a PTN, the employee could allege improper behaviour if the employer refuses to deal with a grievance while negotiations are taking place.

As the PTN only protects communications in relation to unfair dismissal claims, the employee could make other claims connected with their grievance in any event for example, discrimination. There would also be the possibility of an uplift in any compensation awarded by the ET, based on unreasonable failure to follow the Acas Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures. If only part of the grievance relates to the PTN discussions, it may be possible to agree with the employee that the grievance will be dealt with in two parts.

That would mean the part relating to the PTN could be kept confidential in any future unfair dismissal proceedings, if required. Skip to main content.

Introduction Such conversations will only be protected from disclosure in future legal proceedings in certain specific circumstances. The content includes: Basic concepts When might employers want conversations to be protected? Pre-termination negotiations The rules on pre-termination negotiations PTNs apply to settlement offers and discussions that relate to the termination of employment.

When might employers or employees want conversations to be protected? Existing dispute There must have been a dispute in existence at the time when the statements were made for without prejudice to apply. Genuine attempt to settle The without prejudice rule only applies to statements made during discussions which take place in a genuine attempt to settle an existing dispute.

Is this possible? Can each department practice nondiscrimination, while the organization as a whole hires more men than women? This problem is a variant of Simpson's Paradox a well-known paradox in statistics , and the answer to it is yes -- nondiscriminatory conditions at the departmental level can result in hiring differences at the organizational level.

To see how this might happen, imagine a simplified organization with two equally important departments, Department A and Department B, each of which receive the same number of job applications. At the level of the organization, however, more positions would be going to men than to women, because of the higher number of jobs offered by Department A than Department B.

Unless there is a good reason for this difference in hiring, the pattern may represent a form of institutionalized sex discrimination.

Table 1.