Distinct emotions rather than a single pool of hatred drive intergroup prejudice

Evidence

Allport missed some things, however. Perhaps the most important new insight is that many emotions, not only hatred, are involved in intergroup relations. Moreover, these differentiated emotions have distinct causes and effects. Allport’s model focused on hatred and considered negative emotions to be largely interchangeable, driven by a single inner “pool” of frustration that seeks an expression, even against a displaced target. However, current thinking on emotion distinguishes anger from fear, disgust, contempt, guilt, and other possibilities, as distinct emotions with different determinants (people’s appraisals of intergroup situations) and different effects (action tendencies). The current focus on the antecedents and consequences of differentiated emotional reactions provides predictive power beyond Allport’s more narrow focus on hatred. Recent work even demonstrates that prejudice can involve subjectively positive emotions; as noted earlier, research on the Stereotype Content Model shows that women, the elderly, and the handicapped often elicit sympathetic reactions that coexist with stereotypes of these groups’ incompetence (Fiske et al., 2002). — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2282

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the key shift from Allport’s single-valence model to differentiated intergroup emotions with distinct appraisals and action tendencies.
• XREF: Connects to the Stereotype Content Model (Fiske) already familiar from social psychology reading. — connects to: Specific stereotype combinations elicit distinct prejudiced emotions toward out-groups. — Susan T. Fiske et al., A Model of (Often Mixed) Stereotype…, 15; Most out-groups elicit mixed prejudice, not pure antipathy — Susan T. Fiske et al., A Model of (Often Mixed) Stereotype…, 123; Different intergroup threats evoke different emotions, not a single unified response. — Blake M. Riek, Eric W. Mania, and Samuel L. Gaertner, Intergroup Threat and Outgroup…, 139
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years…, 2282