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Over the years, there have been many attempts to understand and explain why people tend to think and feel negatively toward other groups, in essence, are prejudice. In the textbook Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Class the Sociology of Group Conflict and Change Joseph Healey outlines some of the more widely accepted theories. Healey breaks these theories into two distinctive groups: Personality based approach to prejudice and Cultural based approach to prejudice. One thought in the …

…the cycle continues. Some of these theories of why prejudice exists compare very much with the age-old psychological debate of "Nature vs. Nurture." That is: is a person a product of their environment and behaviors such as prejudice and racism are learned; or are these behaviors and feelings inherent in who they are. There may never be a definitive verdict on this question, but I believe that a person is a product of his environment.