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Description of the Theory
ОглавлениеAllport notes the difficulty of examining prejudice, particularly with a scientific analysis. First, prejudice is difficult to address because of the belief that prejudice is in the “eye of the beholder”; a cultural pluralistic approach often suggests that bias is based on one’s cultural viewpoint, so that what is considered bias to one is not to another. A second difficulty in studying prejudice is that it can be seen as burdened by emotional bias and as a creation of “angry liberals,” who believe they see bias everywhere, even where it does not exist. However, Allport unequivocally states that prejudice “is not ‘the invention of liberal intellectuals.’ It is simply an aspect of mental life that can be studied as objectively as any other.”2 Allport thus takes a highly systematic and scientific approach to his exploration and explanation of prejudice. The Nature of Prejudice is more than 500 pages, with eight main sections. This chapter does not follow the same outline of Allport’s book but instead synthesizes the information into five areas: (1) the definition of prejudice, (2) the nature of categorization, (3) in-groups and out-groups, (4) why prejudice exists and persists, and (5) prejudice in action.