Service Learning Paper
April 24, 2006
Psychology 1010
I chose to do my service learning project on women who are beaten and abused in
some way. I was fairly biased against them because I always thought that as soon as a
woman finds out that her husband is willing to beat her, she should leave him. I assumed
that there were no exceptions and that the women who did decide to stay with the
perpetrator really should have known better. I never felt like I blamed the woman for
letting it happen, but I did feel like she should have put an end to it as before it could
happen a second time. I saw absolutely no reason to stay with an abusive person. I have
learned a lot about how these things actually work and how they affect the children in
these types of relationships.
There are many reasons why I formed prejudices against battered women. Now, I
don’t want you to think that I have always thought that they were stupid, but I did think
that they should change their lives. One of the reasons I had these stereotypical ideas is
because I inherited them from my parents. We used to watch movies about women who
were battered. My mother would always tell us that if we were in a relationship like that,
we should get out as soon as possible. She always told us that there is no reason to stay
with the perpetrator. The out-group bias taught me that these women were all the same.
Each of their lives could be better if only they would end the relationship with the
perpetrator. At least, that is what I thought. The perception that I had formed of these
women is that they were all too caught up in loving someone who didn’t really love them
to see that they could have a better life without this person. I guess that you could call
that part of my person perception of each of them. I had also stereotyped all of the
