Prejudice should be studied as collective societal thinking rather than only individual psychology

Evidence

There is a need to relocate prejudice from people’s mindsets into the midst of active societal/collective thinking. Social psychologists should be able to describe this activity of collective thinking without unique recourse to individual psychology (Tileag a6 , 2014 ). — Cristian Tileagă, The Nature of Prejudice, 55

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes Durkheim’s collective representations and connects to the reader’s prior work on communication as culture — society as a shared meaning-making process rather than an aggregate of minds. — connects to: Prejudice theory flattened racism into individual attitudes, erasing structural dimensions — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1318; the MOC “The Wound of the Label: When Knowing Someone Becomes a Way of Erasing Them”; the MOC “The Enemy-Making Machine: Ours, True, and the Identity That Defends Both”

Related

• Prejudice arises from group identities rather than individual psychology (similarity 0.88)
• Understanding prejudice requires locating attitudes in collective symbolic contexts (similarity 0.87)
• Individual-difference theories cannot explain how prejudice reproduces as collective ideology (similarity 0.85)
• Prejudice is explained by societal characteristics, not only individual traits (similarity 0.83)
• All prejudice involves intergroup relations with a built-in ingroup preference (similarity 0.82)
• Prejudice is an interpretive concept lacking fixed definition (similarity 0.81)
• Understanding prejudice requires cultural, not merely psychological, analysis (similarity 0.81)
• Prejudice theory flattened racism into individual attitudes, erasing structural dimensions (similarity 0.81)
• Prejudice stems from identity needs, not personality or resource competition (similarity 0.80)
• Prejudice research cannot be reduced to individual psychology (similarity 0.80)
• Prejudice is deliberately mobilized by elites for strategic gain, not merely implicit cognition (similarity 0.79)
• The prejudice versus group conflict debate spans multiple social disciplines. (similarity 0.79)
• Discriminatory acts rest on shared mental representations even when unintentional (similarity 0.79)
• Intergroup relations begin when people adopt collective rather than personal identity (similarity 0.79)
• Prejudice is public harm to esteem, not merely private attitude (similarity 0.79)