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as a convenient screen for the projection of feelings of anxiety and
guilt on the part of the dominant group. In this way ethnic hostility
appears as “a projection of unacceptable inner strivings onto a minor
ity group.”29 Other psychological theories of prejudice point out that
persons who are basically insecure and anxiety-ridden tend to exclude
and fear groups that are unfamiliar and seem to threaten their rela
tively secure relationships and customary way of life.
Like the preceding method, the
phenomenological
approach focuses
attention upon the prejudiced person; but here the emphasis is upon
his view of the situation which confronts him. For example, a person
may develop hostility toward members of a particular group because
he believes them to be lazy, dirty, inferior, repulsive, aggressive, or
threatening. The important thing is not whether these characteristics
are typical of the group but whether the individual believes them to
be typical. Thus the stereotype which a person has of members of
another group plays a prominent role at the level of immediate causa
tion. However, if analysis at this level is not supplemented by the
previous approaches, there is danger that the underlying dynamic
factors in the personality and society which cause one to view the
world as he actually does view it may be overlooked.
Finally, there is a sixth approach which puts the emphasis upon
the
stimulus object
itself. Here attention is focused upon the actual
characteristics of the group against which prejudice and hostility are
directed. While recognizing that the actual differences between groups
are much less—and even quite other—than they are generally im
agined to be, some analysts point out that at times hostility is directed
toward a minority
in part
because of the earned reputation of that
group. Without ascribing the major blame to such a minority, these
writers warn against assuming that every minority is necessarily blame
less. But in view of the tendency that the dominant group has to
rationalize its own hostility toward the minority and to project its
guilt upon the latter, Allport’s word of caution in this regard needs to
be emphasized. “It would be impossible,” he writes, “to find any
social scientist today who would subscribe completely to the
earned
reputation
theory.”30 This approach has its greatest validity when it is
used to point up the interaction of a great many causal factors in
29Bruno Bettelheim and Morris Janowitz,
Dynamics of Prejudice: A Psy
chological and Sociological Study of Veterans
, New York, Harper & Brothers,
1950, p. 42. Cf. Allport,
op. c i t
pp. 199-200.
30Allport,
op. cit.,
p. 217.
366
Biblical Faith and Social Ethics