Allport defined prejudice as motivated antipathy, not mere misperception

Evidence

The extensive, often clever theory and research on stereotyping produced over the past 25 years would doubtless impress and please Allport. However, we suspect he would encourage us to look beyond the relatively automatic processes of categorization and stereotyping to the more controlled and motivated processes of resistance to new information, defensiveness, rationalization, and biased decisions that he believed lay at the core of prejudice (Allport, 1954/1979, pp. 505–6). For him, prejudice was not simply a conditioned prejudgment about an individual or group, it was a felt or expressed “antipathy based upon a faulty and inflexible generalization” (1954/1979, p. 9; see also Eagly & Diekman’s ch. 2 this volume). It was not simply a misperception or an expectation; it was a dislike or hatred. The basis for this aversion was factually wrong and impervious to correction because the aversion served important psychological functions for the prejudiced individual. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2565

Categorization

• DEFINE: Pinpoints Allport’s core definition — antipathy based on faulty inflexible generalization — worth preserving as the anchor definition for the prejudice-psychology vault.