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Gordon William Allport (November 11, 1897 – October 9, 1967) was an American psychologist. Allport was one of the first psychologists to focus on the study of the personality, and is often referred to as one of the founding figures of personality psychology . [ 1 ]
In political science, Allport's work is often juxtaposed with V.O. Key's examination of Southern politics, which found that racism grew in areas where the local concentrations of black Americans were higher. [55] In that context, absent the specific conditions of Allport, contact comes to produce more negative effects, namely increasing prejudice.
A further influence of the book was the later formulation of the common ingroup identity theory. [1] Pettigrew and Hammann also credit Allport's ideas with influencing government policies, in the United States and elsewhere, which have successfully reduced levels of prejudice. [1]
As Allport put it, “a differentiated category is the opposite of a stereotype.” [3] Thus, the more a person learns about a minority category of people, the more differentiated that category is and the more resistant it is to being reduced to a negative stereotype. The Contact Hypothesis has been supported by decades of research.
Allport's Scale of Prejudice and Discrimination is a measure of the manifestation of prejudice in a society. It was devised by psychologist Gordon Allport in 1954. [ 1 ] [ 2 ]
The word "prejudice" can also refer to unfounded or pigeonholed beliefs [3] [4] and it may apply to "any unreasonable attitude that is unusually resistant to rational influence". [5] Gordon Allport defined prejudice as a "feeling, favorable or unfavorable, toward a person or thing, prior to, or not based on, actual experience". [6]
The American social psychologist Gordon Allport is considered to be one of the pioneers of the psychological study of intergroup relations. Especially influential is Allport's 1954 book The Nature of Prejudice, which proposed the contact hypothesis and has provided a foundation for research on prejudice and discrimination since the mid-1950s.
Contact approaches to prejudice reduction are based on prominent social psychologist, Gordon Allport's, contact hypothesis. [3] According to this hypothesis, prejudice is best reduced under optimal conditions of contact between those who hold prejudiced beliefs and those who are the targets of prejudiced beliefs.