Allport saw all prejudice-driven behavior as irrational individual hatred

Evidence

Allport made two key arguments about these behaviors. First, they were driven by animosity, and the extremity of the behavior was a direct indicator of the degree of hatred felt by the perpetrator. Second, he was emphatic that there was no rational or economic basis to these behaviors – even discrimination (which does bestow social and economic advantages on one’s own group) was motivated solely by irrationally founded, individually generated hatred for the target group. Although he acknowledged the role of “facilitating” factors in the social environment, their effect was to reinforce individual animosity and/or to release individuals from inhibitions about expressing their hatred. The most egregious examples of intergroup violence represented explosions of hatred too intense to be restrained by normal social inhibitions against aggressive behaviors. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 645

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Distills Allport’s two core claims about prejudiced behavior: hatred-driven and non-rational, which the whole chapter then critiques.
• XREF: Connects to the note that ‘small acts of decorum toward corpses matter more than practical logic’ — both push back against purely individualist, irrationalist accounts of group behavior.

Related

• Allport reduced intergroup harm to individual animosity with no rational basis (similarity 0.95)
• Allport held that even beneficial discrimination stems solely from irrational individual hatred (similarity 0.92)
• Allport rooted prejudice in irrational person-based antipathy, not political motives (similarity 0.87)
• Allport saw intergroup hostility as politically innocent and irrational (similarity 0.87)
• Allport defined prejudice as antipathy rooted in faulty inflexible generalization (similarity 0.86)
• Intergroup discrimination and violence stem from political self-interest rather than hostility (similarity 0.85)
• Allport held that prejudice, not categorization, is the fundamental driver of intergroup harm. (similarity 0.85)
• Allport’s hostility-driven model has dominated prejudice research for decades despite revisions (similarity 0.85)
• Allport’s individualist view of prejudice still dominates the field (similarity 0.85)
• Allport’s work is read as founding both cognitive and irrationalist theories of prejudice (similarity 0.84)
• Allport’s individual-hostility framing still dominates prejudice scholarship despite revisions (similarity 0.84)
• Allport’s internally contradictory views on prejudice powered his generative influence (similarity 0.84)
• Allport’s influence traces partly to theoretical pluralism rather than a single model (similarity 0.84)
• Allport held that violence escalates gradually from prejudgment and animosity (similarity 0.84)
• Individual-difference and intergroup approaches to prejudice have remained disconnected since Allport. (similarity 0.83)