ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that interethnic relations, especially, may arouse feelings based on appraisals which are difficult to verbalize. Understanding the determinants of these feelings may be crucial to understanding the elusiveness and perseverance of negative ethnic attitudes. An ethnic attitude may be called a ‘feeling disposition’, a disposition to experience particular emotions when confronted with the object of the attitude. An attitude may also be conceptualized as a hierarchical cognitive structure which contains the aggregated perceived antecedents of emotional reactions. The chapter discusses two empirical approaches to studying the formal aspects of interethnic situations responsible for the triggering of negative emotions. It identifies important situational factors with the aid of an analogy which at first sight may seem somewhat odd, but whose relevance was also hinted at by Allport: The nature of a human infant’s reactions to the approach of a stranger.
