Allport’s individualist view of prejudice still dominates the field

Evidence

Allport’s analysis of prejudice and its behavioral manifestations did not shock his contemporaries. Indeed, it was consistent with the emphasis of those who preceded him (e.g., Deutsch & Collins, 1951; Myrdal, 1944; Williams, 1947), and The Nature of Prejudice loosely synthesized extant research. His homey, lucid exposition quickly became the reigning view (e.g., Duckitt, 2003; Stephan, 1985). Numerous revisions have been proffered to accommodate changes in racial attitudes since 1954 (Krysan, 2000; Gaertner & Dovidio, ch. 5 this volume), but Allport’s emphasis on a naively founded, irrational, individual-level hostility as the essential core of the problem has continued to hold sway among prejudice scholars. Consistent with Myrdal’s (1944) earlier lament that prejudice was a painful anachronism that clashed with the democratic principles undergirding other facets of American life, scholars hoped to facilitate social progress by finding the cure for democracy’s anomalous, festering sore - intergroup animosity based on ignorant, derogatory stereotypes. A vast literature on stereotypes was spawned (e.g., Hamilton, 1981; Tajfel, 1969). Whites’ attitudes toward African Americans were the focal concern, and theories concentrated on individual-level factors such as personality, upbringing, or experiences such as education and intergroup contact that were hypothesized to break down ignorance and/or socialize individuals into enlightened, democratic norms (e. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 646

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the chapter’s framing contrast: Allport’s atomistic, irrationalism-as-core account vs. the volume’s structural/systemic critiques.