An Analysis of Gordon W. Allport's The Nature of Prejudice

An Analysis of Gordon W. Allport's The Nature of Prejudice

Author: Alexander O’Connor

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 75

ISBN-13: 135135325X

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With his 1954 book The Nature of Prejudice, American psychologist Gordon Allport displays the crucial skill of reasoning, producing and organizing an argument that was persuasive enough to have a major impact not only in universities, but also on government policy. The question that Allport tackled was an old one: why are people so disposed to prejudice against those from other groups? Earlier psychologists had suggested a number of reasons, especially in the case of racial prejudice. Some had suggested that racism was a learned behaviour, conditioned by negative experiences of other races; others that there was an objective rationale to negative racial stereotypes. Allport, however, reasoned that prejudice is essentially a by-product of the necessary mental shortcuts the human brain uses to process the vast amount of information it takes in. Because our brains want to use as little effort as possible, they regularly fall back on simple stereotypes – which easily generate prejudice. Gathering strong evidence for this hypothesis, he reasoned, clearly and persuasively, that our natural cognitive approach is the most significant factor in accounting for prejudice. Going further still, Allport also reasoned that, once this was better understood, social scientists would be able to influence policy-makers to curb discrimination by law.


Becoming

Becoming

Author: Gordon Willard Allport

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 1955-01-01

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 9780300000023

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An assessment of basic psychological concepts based on the premise that an individual's character is developed in terms of his own uniqueness. Bibliogs


Letters from Jenny

Letters from Jenny

Author: Jenny Gove Masterson (pseud.)

Publisher: Harvest Books

Published: 1965

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13:

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This is a collection of documents long famous among psychologists: the letters of a mature woman written to two remote friends over twelve years, mostly about her estranged son.


Fifty Years of Personality Psychology

Fifty Years of Personality Psychology

Author: Kenneth H. Craik

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-06-29

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 148992311X

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Assembling original papers by the field's foremost investigators, this history demonstrates the continuity and progress made across five decades of personality psychology research. In addition to providing a historical perspective for the discipline, the work aims to inspire a more coherent agenda for future research.


Dynamic Personality Science. Integrating Between-Person Stability and Within-Person Change

Dynamic Personality Science. Integrating Between-Person Stability and Within-Person Change

Author: Nadin Beckmann

Publisher: Frontiers Media SA

Published: 2017-12-28

Total Pages: 157

ISBN-13: 2889453456

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Personality can be understood from at least two perspectives. One focuses on stable, between-person differences, or traits. The other perspective focuses on within-person differences and dynamics, i.e., fluctuations in personality in response to situations and across time. This Research Topic reflects recent developments in personality research to integrate both trait and dynamic perspectives. An integrated view on personality recognizes both stability in between-person differences and within-person change. Contributors are drawn from research teams across Europe, North America and Australasia, and from basic and applied fields, including organizational, educational, and clinical. The studies reported provide new evidence in support of an integrative approach, highlight currently active areas of research and propose new directions of research. Current streams of research include the study of contingent units of personality and within-person processes underlying traits, the comparisons of findings based on within- vs. between-person data, the conceptualisation and operationalization of perceived and objective change in situation variables, the malleability of personality and the potential for personality interventions. Integrative approaches using within-person designs provide new, bottom-up insights into general principles of personality that explain differences between people while reflecting the complexities of within-person personality dynamics at the level of the individual.