ABSTRACT
Many writers see antipathetic attitudes as bases for group prejudice. For example: “It is this very group consciousness, or ethnocentrism, which lays the foundation of group prejudice.” The group prejudice incorporates the three major dimensions of all attitude systems: the cognitive (beliefs), the affective (feelings), and the conative (predispositions to act in particular ways, or policy orientations). It is evident that there is in race prejudice as distinguished from class and caste prejudice, an instinctive factor based on the fear of the unfamiliar and uncomprehended. Concern about racism is clearly at the center of most current discussions of prejudice in American society. Rather than conceiving of group prejudice as an inborn tendency or a characteristic rent in one’s basic personality, most sociologists view it as a social habit. Prejudice has been attributed to basic economic interests, to authoritarian personality structure, to reactions to frustration, to social conformity, and to poor education.
