Prejudice research cannot be reduced to individual psychology

Evidence

The idea of prejudice as explicit or implicit bias only partly describes and explains the direction and intensity of prejudices and the uniqueness of targets of prejudice. As I argued in the Introduction to this book, history, as well as research, shows that not all prejudices are the same: they are culturally and ideologically situated, their expression depends on a complex interplay of socio-cultural, political and ideological factors. Portraying anti-Roma prejudices as fundamentally a psychological problem restricts the critical reach of questions that can be asked. Social psychologists should be able to describe, and offer explanations for, both subtle and blatant/extreme prejudices without unique recourse to individual psychology. — Cristian Tileagă, The Nature of Prejudice, 737

Categorization

• SEED: Angle for a piece on why framing prejudice as individual psychology (bias) structurally limits what questions can be asked about its targets and intensity.
• XREF: connects to: Editors had stripped the study’s socio-political analysis down to psychology alone — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 676; Prejudice scales cannot measure readiness to participate in genocide. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 460; Adorno’s F-scale methodology reduced a complex theory of prejudice to individual psychopathology. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1332

Related

• Anti-Roma prejudice resists explanation as individual psychological bias (similarity 0.90)
• Prejudice is an interpretive concept lacking fixed definition (similarity 0.87)
• Prejudice is explained by societal characteristics, not only individual traits (similarity 0.83)
• Understanding prejudice requires cultural, not merely psychological, analysis (similarity 0.83)
• Individual-difference theories cannot explain how prejudice reproduces as collective ideology (similarity 0.83)
• Prejudice is formed and reproduced socially, not through internal psychological processes. (similarity 0.83)
• Prejudice scales cannot measure readiness to participate in genocide. (similarity 0.82)
• Prejudice arises from group identities rather than individual psychology (similarity 0.82)
• Prejudice is public harm to esteem, not merely private attitude (similarity 0.82)
• Anti-Roma prejudice is far more complex than direct hostility (similarity 0.82)
• Prejudice is deliberately mobilized by elites for strategic gain, not merely implicit cognition (similarity 0.82)
• Prejudices are actively accomplished and sustained rather than passively held. (similarity 0.81)
• Adorno’s F-scale methodology reduced a complex theory of prejudice to individual psychopathology. (similarity 0.81)
• Editors had stripped the study’s socio-political analysis down to psychology alone (similarity 0.81)
• Prejudice measures index ideologies, not psychopathology (similarity 0.80)