Social categories carry emotion and resist contradictory evidence in the mind

Evidence

Categories provide affective tags. “The category saturates all that it contains with the same ideational and emotional flavor” (Allport, 1954/1979, p. 21), linking it to emotional prejudices. • Categorization processes reflect significant irrationality. Irrational categories, Allport argued, are formed more easily, carry intense emotional baggage, and resist evidence, admitting but ignoring exceptions. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 287

Categorization

• XREF: Directly grounds the vault’s claim that stereotypes resist disconfirming evidence, a classic antidote to naive contact-theory expectations that exposure alone corrects prejudice.
• DEFINE: Places prejudiced cognition within ordinary categorization, the mechanism contact theory must overcome.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years…, 287