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đŸȘ” The Threshold

Prejudice is irrational antipathy rooted in ignorance, without political calculus

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tagsja-picks, definitional_content, singleton, xref, category/definitional-content
aliases@dovidio_nature_2009, loc. 181

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Prejudice is irrational antipathy rooted in ignorance, without political calculus

Evidence

In his chapter, “Rejection of Out-Groups” (chapter 4), Allport addressed the problem of intergroup discrimination and violence. His treatment was framed by his seminal deïŹnition of prejudice as “an antipathy based on a faulty and inïŹ‚exible generalization” that “may be felt or expressed
 . toward a group 
 or toward an individual 
 member of that group” (Allport, 1954/1979, p. 9). In that view, discrimination and violence are the spontaneous expressions of prejudice, and the engine that drives prejudice is a person-based, irrational hostility. Fueled by categorical beliefs about social groups that are ignorant, parochial, and rigid, that hostility is discharged without restraint in verbal invectives, discriminatory behaviors, and physical violence. The bad news was that many individuals in privileged groups harbored a destructive hostility toward outgroups. The good news was that the hostility was innocent of political motivation, in both its genesis and expression. In a later chapter, Allport (p. 265) illustrated his thesis with a homily: “See that man over there? Yes. Well, I hate him. But you don’t know him. That’s why I hate him.” Intergroup hostility had no rational basis: it bubbled forth naively from ignorant and misguided individuals to be inïŹ‚icted unilaterally and without artiïŹce on subordinate victims. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of
, 639 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The extensive, often clever theory and research on stereotyping produced over the past 25 years would doubtless impress and please Allport. However, we suspect he would encourage us to look beyond the relatively automatic processes of categorization and stereotyping to the more controlled and motivated processes of resistance to new information, defensiveness, rationalization, and biased decisions that he believed lay at the core of prejudice (Allport, 1954/1979, pp. 505–6). For him, prejudice was not simply a conditioned prejudgment about an individual or group, it was a felt or expressed “antipathy based upon a faulty and inïŹ‚exible generalization” (1954/1979, p. 9; see also Eagly & Diekman’s ch. 2 this volume). It was not simply a misperception or an expectation; it was a dislike or hatred. The basis for this aversion was factually wrong and impervious to correction because the aversion served important psychological functions for the prejudiced individual. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of
, 2565 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Representative national surveys documented a dramatic change from endorsement of racial segregation, discrimination, and the innate inferiority of Blacks to rejection of these practices and ideas (see Sears, ch. 21 this volume). However, Whites nonetheless often endorse beliefs denying that Blacks’ social and economic problems can be ascribed to external factors such as job discrimination, and ascribe them, implicitly or explicitly, to internal factors such as lack of motivation. Although such ideas have unfavorable implications for disadvantaged groups, they do not necessarily imply a generalized antipathy. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 181 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

Categorization

  • XREF: connects to: Prejudice theory that equates bias with antipathy cannot explain benevolent sexism.; Prejudice is antipathy based on inflexible generalization, not mere misperception — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years
, 2565; Prejudice need not involve antipathy, inaccuracy, or inflexibility (+10 more)

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