Article Preview
The Study of Man: Is There a Bigot Personality?
- Abstract
In digging down to the roots of prejudice, social scientists have long been dissatisfied with the conception of the individual as a bundle of separate likes and dislikes. It is fairly common knowledge that if a person is anti-Jewish or anti-Negro, he is usually both. Indeed, experience indicates, such people hate “other races” in general, and are often political reactionaries to boot.
Common sense has often been wrong. But Gardner Murphy and Rensis Likert in their extensive study of the relationships between the different attitudes held by college students, Public Opinion and the Individual (Harper 1938) proved fairly decisively what had been suspected: anti-Jewish, anti-Negro, and other anti-minority prejudices generally ran together and both were found predominantly in persons who were conservative or reactionary on domestic and international issues. Tolerance, conversely, went together with liberal and radical attitudes, and with dissatisfaction with the status quo in American culture generally.
About the Author
This article is available for purchase to subscribers and for individual purchase
Subscriber Sign In
Not A Subscriber?
