Nature of Prejudice, the

The shocking experience of the Holocaust stimulated a multitude of research programs with the objective of identifying and overcoming the causes of intolerance and hostility. Gordon W. Allport (1897–1967), who taught psychology at the Harvard University since 1924, wrote his book The Nature of Prejudice in this historical context. Like many of his colleagues, he felt that his research should be devoted to reducing intolerance against others. The most immediate sociopolitical goal of his research was to repeal the racial segregation exercised in the Confederate States.

In his book, Allport defines ethnic prejudice as “an antipathy based upon a faulty and inflexible generalization. It may be felt or expressed. It may be directed toward a group as a whole, or toward an individual because he is a member of that group.” Prejudice is expressed (1) as false generalization and (2) as hostility. First focusing on false generalizations, he conceives of them as attitudes toward people consisting of negative attributes. (False generalizations can be construed as a type of a stereotype, a notion already delineated by Walter Lippmann.) These negative attributes are ascribed to the entire social group to which the people are perceived to belong. Allport assumes that the roots of false generalizations develop in the process of socialization. Due to their familiarity, the social norms practiced will be preferred by children and adolescents, as opposed to unknown beliefs and behavior that will be rejected. In this manner, ethnic prejudice becomes the pattern of an intolerant personality.

Allport emphasizes that the state of the art of science does not permit an explanation of how prejudice emerges on the basis of one theory only. He discusses a broad range of theories encompassing historical, sociocultural, situational (unsuccessful coping with everyday requirements), psychodynamic, phenomenological, and stimulus-oriented (the targets of expressions of prejudice) approaches. Although he does not commit himself to a psychodynamic approach, he extensively treats psychodynamic theories, prevalent at the time. According to psychodynamic theories, ethnic prejudice results from negative feelings that have been repressed. These feelings in responses to frustration—for instance, feelings of failure—cannot be accepted by the individual because they threaten his perception of self. The meaning of such hostile attitudes is outside of the individual's conscious awareness. Allport further distinguishes between attitudes that will be internalized if they correspond to the perception of self and attitudes that will be adopted because they are instrumental for conforming to the reference group to which the individual feels related.

A broad range of possible steps to change ethnic attitudes is discussed, comprising, for instance, political measures, education by mass media, and individual therapy. Allport argues that introducing bills, practicing academic education, and getting in contact with members of dissimilar groups having like agendas would be most effective because they would create societal structures that would promote tolerant individuals.