Group and Inter-Group Relations

The Nature of Prejudice

(Allport)

Fruzsina Géth, Kata Dsupin, Réka Mázik

Reference:
Allport, G. W. (1954/1979) The Nature of Prejudice. (Chapter 1-4)
 What does prejudice mean today?
- e.g.: an antropologist among a tribe of American Indians

Definitions of prejudice:

- 3 steps of formation:
- 1. praejudicium [latin]: a judgment based on
previous decisions and experiences
- 2. a premature and hasty judgment
- 3. emotional flavor of favorableness or
unfavorableness

- It can be positive and negative as well

- the most negative: ethnic prejudice
 ” Thinking ill of others without sufficient warrant. ”

- “ill of others” - scorn, dislike, fear, aversion,

discrimination, violence
- unwarranted judgment: it lacks basis of facts
- have any first-hand experience?
- categorical generalization

In summary:

“ An avertive or a hostile attitude toward a person who belongs to a group, simply because
he belongs to that group, and is therefore presumed to have the objectionable qualities
ascribed to the group. ”
 Overcategorization
“commonest trick of the human mind”

- natural basis: too many events → need to categorize by classes

- not every categorization is a prejudice → misconceptions
- difference between prejudgment and prejudice:
- prejudices are not reversible
- prejudices are resistant to all evidence which could unseat them
 Is Prejudice a Value Concept?

e.g.: caste system in India, Ghettos, slaves..

- Is it a moral dilemma?
- “ Modus vivendi ” - the mode of living

„ Prejudice is the moral evaluation placed by a culture on some of its own

practices. It is a designation of attitudes which are disapproved. ”
Functional Significance
- the additional ingredient of prejudice: it fulfills a specific irrational funtion for its
bearer
- private, self-gratifying purpose
 Attitudes and Beliefs
2 essential ingredients:

- attitude: favor or disfavor

- related to an overgeneralized belief

e.g.: I wouldn’t live in an apartment house with Jews.

There are a few exceptions, but in general all Jews are pretty much alike.
 Acting out Prejudice
5 stages:

1. Antilocution: talk about it

2. Avoidance: avoid the members
of disliked groups
3. Discrimination: segregation
4. Physical attack: violence or
semiviolence
5. Extermination: e.g. Holocaust
 The Normality of Prejudgment

1. Separation of Human Groups

- we live in homogenious clusters → it may

leads to conflicts, stereotypes
- oversimplification of complex problems

e.g. Mexican worker with an Anglo employer

 The Normality of Prejudgment

2. Process of Categorization

- Categories are basis for normal prejudgments

- 5 important characteristics:
1. It forms large classes and clusters for guiding our daily adjustments
2. Categorization assimilates as much as it can to the cluster
3. The category enables us quickly to identify a related object
4. It saturates all that it contains with the same ideational and emotional flavor
5. It can be more or less rational
 When categories conflict with evidence
- Categories are stubborn and resistant to
change
- “I told you so.”
- re-fencing: contradiction → grow resistance
- Two conditions when people don’t strive to
re-fence :
1. habitual open-mindness
2. self-interesting
 Personal Values

As Categories:
- most important → evidences and reasons are forced to conform to it
- direct-thinking: objective procession

Personal Values and Prejudice:

- love/hate - prejudice
- parents’ love
- prizing or underprizing - e.g. wars
 The formation of in-groups
“familiar breads contempt” less than half truth

● the familiar = stable basis of existance

● a membership is a reward for a child loyality
○ it may help the process
○ not only happiness leads to loyality!!
● human learning is important
○ social life is good
● personal contacts vs. symbols or hearsay
 What is an in-group

It is difficult to define….

● in groups can be as “we organizations”

○ family members, schoolmates, clubs etc.
● transitory or permanent
● is given automatically or have to be fought for
● in-group memberships are not permanentally fixed
Sex differences

● children under 7 have not stong awareness

● woman = “wholly different species”

○ Chtesterfield & Schopenhauer
○ space for individual differencies
● male vs. female in-group vs. out-group
● it is today old-fashioned
 Reference groups
“those groups to which the individual relates himself as a part, or a group in which
the individual wishes to be included” (Sherif&Sherif)

● in-group = reference group

○ NOT always!!
● virutal identity between the in and the reference group
● 2 levels of belongingness
○ former and latter
The group-norm theory
Groups:

characteristics, beliefs,enemies,traditions

● group member
○ accept the preferences and the values
● easier to change group attitudes then the individual
● individual approach collective approach
● main pont: INDIVIDUAL HABITS AND NEEDS
 Can be an In-group without an Out-group?
● in-goups usually implies some corresponding out-groups
● social cohesiveness require a common enemy (William James)
● the in groups are primary
● hostility sometimes helps
 Can humanity constitute an In-goup?
FAMILY = smallest and firmest in-group

● foreign people different language, culture, ideology

○ = the feeling of strangerness
○ importatnt to find symbols
 Summary
● in-group memberships are important to individual survival
● group-memberships = a web of habits
● we always prefer the familiar
● hostility often helps
● the happy condition is not often achived
Rejection of out-groups
 Rejective attitude, as a need
Ingroup loyalty ≠ hostility ( negative attitude)
towards contrasting out-groups.

YET many people define their loyality in

terms of the other side of the fence

For them it’s an important need to:

● compare and contrast

● reject others from an out-group
● have an ethnocentric orientation
 Ways of expressing rejection
Allport’s scale of Simplified gradation
prejudice Intensity
1. verbal rejection
2. discrimination
3. physical attack
 Verbal rejection
Antilocution (the lowest degree of prejudice) = “to speak against”

→ seemingly innocent, harmelss

→ jokes, gossiping, stereotyping, bad-mouthing

mild animosity → gentle joke, friendly humor
more intense hostility → name-calling (exc.: children)
highest degree of antilocution → sudden, irrelevant interruption of
negative prejudice

↑ the more irrelevant, spontenaus the antilocution,

↑ the stronger hostility lies behind
 Discrimination
Allport’s def.: discrimination is when we DENY to individuals or groups of people
EQUALITY OF TREATMENT which they wish for.

● there are numerous forms of discrimination → e.g.: inequality before the law,
occupational discrimination

Segregation =discrimination with spatial boundaries

antilocuction
discrimination

LaPierre on low discrimination but high verbal rejection.

 Physical attack
“most barking (antilocution) does not lead to biting”
→ YET! there is never a bite without previous barking.
e.g.: after the anouncement of the Nürnberg Law

• under certain circumstances verbal agression

progresses into violence.
(Allport’s 9 steps
ofRiots
progression) Lynching
→ usually occur in case of rapid → occurs mainly when discrimination
change in a dominant social situation. and segregation are firmaly, strongly
fixed
+ when they’re usually enforced by
several intimidation
 Rumor
Rumor has an important role in developping violence:
1. it aids to the gradual build-up of hostility.
2. new rumors serve as a call to rioting / lynching parties.
ex.: “something is going to happen tonight by the river”
3. it is common that an inflammatory story, a rumor triggers violence.
4. they aid in sustainment and keep up excitment.