Researchers explaining prejudice essentialize bigots just as bigots essentialize their targets

Evidence

However, Allport has certainly not been alone in assuming a single “prejudiced personality.” Those who have studied individual differences in negative outgroup attitudes seem to have found it difficult to resist the attractively simple attribution to a disturbed or inadequate personality, broadly similar to that captured in the lay stereotype of the “bigot.” It is ironic that similar negative essentialistic attributions seem to underlie the way in which prejudiced individuals think about the targets of their prejudice. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2489

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The irony that prejudice researchers deploy the same essentializing logic as the prejudiced people they study is a genuinely recursive observation about the sociology of knowledge worth sitting with.
• XREF: Connects to essentialism research in social psychology (e.g., Haslam, Rothbart) and broader critiques of trait-based psychological explanation.