Cultural Causation of Prejudice

The fundamental question arising from Allport’s discussion of social structure and cultural pattern is: in which conditions do prejudiced personalities prevail? Allport identified a number of different factors that contribute to the “cultural causation” of prejudice. We may infer from this that a society without these conditions may be more likely to produce fewer prejudiced personalities. However, if we consider the polar opposite of some of these factors, we find that the conditions that Allport delineated may in fact be relatively better than their opposite.

The first condition Allport highlights is a heterogeneous social structure. In such a society, one person is unable to embrace all interests hence their outlook is particularistic. The differentiation between interests produces conflict between cultures. If we accept that such a society is likely to result in prejudice and related conflicts, then it is useful to consider whether it is better to have a society that is more homogenous. Yet, empirical evidence suggests this notion is untrue. For example, historically many explorers went to various parts of the world and encountered people of vastly different cultures in the places they colonized. Given their upbringing in largely homogeneous societies, it was clear that they were less willing and able to accept the culture of those people who lived in the places they “discovered” and were more inclined to impose their own culture on the others. In addition, more recently, a number of European countries find it difficult to absorb new immigrants from all over the world into their culture as homogeneity was previously the norm. A homogenous social structure in today’s world means isolationism – and this breeds issues of stereo...

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...son to the alternatives. Nonetheless, the most important to take this knowledge into consideration in trying to answer a much more important question: how can we manage these conditions so they are less likely to produce overt expression of prejudice? Given Allport’s framework and subsequent research on the matter, we may conclude that it is more optimal to alter some conditions including ignorance and barriers to communication, the rate of change of the minority group population, direct competition and exploitation. Other conditions – particularly those mentioned above – should be managed so, for example, social change occurs but maybe not as rapidly as to raise anxiety and some preference for cultural pluralism. Such changes in the environment will then – hopefully – reduce the prevalence of prejudiced personalities and overt expressions of prejudice in a society.