Civil rights legislation, not just scholars, drove prejudice research agendas

Evidence

That is, although Allport’s analysis appears to have anticipated many of these themes, without the normative changes that followed in the wake of the 1954 Supreme Court Ruling on school desegregation and Civil Rights legislation of the early 1960s, these themes may not have emerged as central to the study of prejudice and its control. In other words, the issues that directly led to many of the more recent developments grew out of questions concerning the extent to which changes in personal attitudes kept pace with legal and normative changes. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2116