People show more positive bias toward individuals than groups

Evidence

(Berkowitz, 1998). Whatever their causes, aggression and anger are often rationalized by beliefs adopted after the fact (Alexander, Brewer, & Hermann, 1999). As Allport also held, emotional reactions can have different time courses; recall his distinction of episodic anger from more enduring feelings of hatred. We discuss the time-dependent nature of intergroup emotions in detail elsewhere (Smith & Mackie, in press). Finally, Allport was correct that researchers need to distinguish feelings about individuals from feelings about whole groups. Allport’s idea that it is easier to hate groups than individuals anticipated later research by Sears (1983) on the “person positivity bias.” — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2281

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the person positivity bias: the systematic tendency to evaluate concrete individuals more favorably than whole groups.
• XREF: Connects to contemporaneous readings on intergroup emotion theory (Smith & Mackie’s group-based emotions).
• SHARE: The person positivity bias is a crisp, counterintuitive research finding — that we rate an actual individual of an outgroup more warmly than the group category itself — worth sharing with someone in social psychology or behavioral design.