Allport saw prejudice as arising from many routes, not learning alone

Evidence

Allport began his chapter on “The Young Child” (chapter 18) by asking: How is prejudice learned? Allport’s readers might have expected to hear about the common mechanisms of learning: paired association, reinforcement, observational imitation. Indeed, Allport emphasized what he called the direct “transfer” of parental words, emotions, and ideas to children through learning and conformity. He also described how a child-rearing environment that promotes insecurity and hatred provides fertile ground for prejudicial emotions. Because Allport wrote during a time when it was the norm for White Americans to express prejudice openly, most of his proposed routes led to prejudice toward, rather than respect for, minorities. However, he also wrote that prejudice was “not merely a matter of specific parental teaching … blind imitation, or mirroring the culture” (1954/1979, p. 318). Allport was referring to influences internal to the child, specifically emotional/cognitive stages of development and internal motivational influences such as the need for status and identity. These two processes were less well formulated but foreshadowed current research and theory. Thus, Allport described many routes to prejudice, learning being only one. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1973