Allport distinguished learned prejudice from a prejudice-prone personality

Evidence

Allport emphasized learning principles, as one would expect from a psychologist in the 1950s. He assumed that most parents freely express their views, and so children learn to associate a racial label with an emotion, both of which become associated with a referent person. In later years, the emotion and person descriptors are generalized to an entire social category. Further, paired associate learning might be reinforced or punished by parents. Allport recognized that some children were more predisposed to learn prejudice because their early family life emphasized relationships based on power and authority rather than individuality and trust (see Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950) . Allport thereby distinguished between those who simply learned prejudiced responses per se and those who developed a prejudice-prone personality. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1978