ABSTRACT

The study “Images of Prejudice” is an integral part of the project carried out by the Institute of Social Research between 1944 and 1945, “Anti-Semitism Among American Labor.” The results of this project conceived by Max Horkheimer and essentially carried out by Arkadij R. Gurland, Paul Massing, Friedrich Pollock, and Leo Lowenthal have—despite several attempts—never been made accessible to a broader public. This first comprehensive and systematic examination of anti-Semitism, car-ried out by the exiled Institute of Social Research, was realized with the financial and organizational support of the Jewish Labor Committee and aimed at ascertaining the extent and dissemination of anti-Semitic attitudes among U.S. workers during World War II. When finished in 1945, the project report consisted of six individual studies and covered more than 1,300 pages. Almost all of these individual studies are, in their methodological type, qualitative content analyses. They were supple-mented by extensive statistical analyses and reports given by the inter-viewers on their experiences. Especially noteworthy is the technique by which the data were collected. This technique represents an ingenious version of participant observation. The research group proceeded from the theoretical assumption that anti-Semitic remarks could be studied soundly only if they were provoked by indirect stimuli; to this end, with the help of various Jewish and labor organizations, 270 workers were persuaded to be trained as interviewers. These worker-interviewers then interviewed their own fellow workers in the workplace on the basis of a given set of questions. Between 1945 and 1953 several attempts were made to bring this extensive research project, which thus far had not been editorially organized, into a publishable form, but a number of methodological, editorial, and also political considerations kept the project from completion. Leo Lowenthal’s monograph is one part of the entire project and has been edited for this publication.