This book offers a critical synthesis of social psychology’s contribution to the study of contemporary racism, and proposes a critical reframing of our understanding of prejudice in European society today. Chapters place a special emphasis on the diversity and intensity of prejudices against Romani people in a liberal, progressive, decent, enlarged Europe. Chapters ask how we can reconcile the European creed of law, justice and freedom for all, with social and political practices that exclude and degrade Romani people. This volume addresses the need for a deeper recognition of societal foundations of ideologies of moral exclusion, and calls for a closer and more thorough investigation of prejudices that stem from the societal transformation, diminution or denial of moral worth of human beings (and the various conditions and contexts that create and promote it). By opening new intellectual dialogues, the book reinvigorates a renewed social psychology of racism, and creates a broader foundation for the exploration of the various, active paradoxes at the heart of the social expression of prejudice in liberal democracies. The Nature of Prejudice is essential reading for academics, researchers and postgraduate students interested in both the quantitative and qualitative study of discrimination, inequality and social exclusion.

On the Nature of Prejudice commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Gordon Allport’s classic work on prejudice and discrimination by examining the current state of knowledge in the field. A distinguished collection of international scholars considers Allport’s impact on the field, reviews recent developments, and identifies promising directions for future investigation. Organized around Allport's central themes, this book provides a state-of-the-art, comprehensive view of where the field has been, where it is now, and where it is going.

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.

Non Aboriginal material; preferential thinking, group differences, sociocultural factors, dynamics of and acquiring prejudice, character structure, reducing group tensions (including legal aspects)

Analysis of the roots of cultural, national, racial and other forms of prejudice, with a plea for Christian understanding.

In this famous treatise, a Supreme Court Justice describes the conscious and unconscious processes by which a judge decides a case. He discusses the sources of information to which he appeals for guidance and analyzes the contribution that considerations of precedent, logical consistency, custom, social welfare, and standards of justice and morals have in shaping his decisions.