Allport’s precedent located intergroup bias in ordinary cognition, not pathology

Evidence

Cognitive information-processing approaches freed social psychology from sovereign motivational theories (e.g., Freudian theories). The new challenge was to push cognitive mechanisms as far as possible, to discover the limits of their potential for explaining social phenomena, including intergroup biases. The resulting focus naturally was stereotypes, the cognitive aspect of intergroup biases. Categorization approaches found a ready inspiration in Allport’s precedent for blaming bias on normal human cognition. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 291

Social cognition, the processes by which people make sense of other people, swept into social psychology on the slipstream of the general cognitive revolution in psychology (Fiske & Taylor, 1984, 1991). Cognitive information-processing approaches freed social psychology from sovereign motivational theories (e.g., Freudian theories). The new challenge was to push cognitive mechanisms as far as possible, to discover the limits of their potential for explaining social phenomena, including intergroup biases. The resulting focus naturally was stereotypes, the cognitive aspect of intergroup biases. Categorization approaches found a ready inspiration in Allport’s precedent for blaming bias on normal human cognition. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 291

Categorization

• XREF: Charts the intellectual lineage from Allport to 1980s social-cognitive stereotyping research that vault prejudice-psychology claims rest on.
• DEFINE: Establishes the field’s shift from motivational to cognitive explanations of bias, framing how later contact-theory tests were designed.
• corroborated: 4 independent passages support this claim — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years…, 291; , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 291