Allport’s individual-level focus missed the group-process revolution in prejudice research

Evidence

However, his focus throughout remained on the individual’s phenomenology of being a group member and how individuals think about, react to, and behave toward members of another group. Allport did acknowledge the possibility of the unique quality of group identity relative to personal identity. For example, on page 40 he quoted Sherif and Sherif (1953), who said, “Ordinarily the factors leading individuals to form attitudes of prejudice are not piecemeal. Rather, their formation is functionally related to becoming a group member – to adopting the group and its values (norms) as the main anchorage in regulating experience and behavior” (p. 218). But Allport was critical of this perspective, commenting that “there is something unnecessarily ‘collectivistic’ about the theory” (p. 40). He acknowledged that prejudice could be, in part, a “mass phenomenon,” but he preferred to emphasize the “individual play of attitudes.” Within the next two decades, the work of Tajfel and his colleagues (e.g., Tajfel & Turner, 1979) on Social Identity Theory transformed the field with its emphasis on group-level processes as qualitatively distinct from individual-level processes. Allport did not see it coming. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 151

Categorization

• XREF: Contradicts/contextualizes the vault’s contact-theory claims, which rest on Allport’s individualist frame; Social Identity Theory (Tajfel) is the major rival paradigm.
• QUESTION: Does the individual/group-level divergence explain why contact theory works in some contexts but identity-driven conflict persists in others?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 151