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Ethnocentrism and Prejudice: History of the Concepts

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 Ethnocentrism and Prejudice: History of the Concepts
Boris Bizumic, ANU College of Medicine, Biology and Environment, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT,
Australia
Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Abstract

Ethnocentrism and prejudice are two distinct, though closely related, concepts. Since the early twentieth century, social
scientists have tended to see them as fundamental social scientific concepts. This article presents a brief history of how social
scientists conceptualized ethnocentrism and prejudice, and discusses their study with a focus on four prominent explanations
that guided empirical research: (1) evolutionary, (2) threat and conflict, (3) self-aggrandizement, and (4) socialization and
normative.

As phenomena, both ethnocentrism and prejudice have been
observed and discussed since Ancient times. They became,
however, fundamental social scientific concepts in the early
twentieth century. Social scientists have widely studied both
concepts, but they often meant different things to different
researchers. This article will, therefore, first focus on the brief
history of the two concepts and their varied, and often
confusing, usages across disciplines. This will be followed with
a history of explanations of ethnocentrism and prejudice, with
a focus on four broad categories of explanations, which have
been applied to both phenomena and which have guided
empirical research. These theoretical approaches are (1)
evolutionary, (2) threat and conflict, (3) self-aggrandizement,
and (4) socialization and normative.
A Brief Conceptual History
It is very difficult to define ethnocentrism and prejudice.
Conceptual analysis has rarely been applied to the two
concepts. Neither concept has become clearer over time, and
there is no universal agreement among social scientists on
what ethnocentrism and prejudice mean. As a result, any
discussion of these phenomena and their explanations is
hindered due to vague, problematic, and inconsistent
conceptualizations.
Ethnocentrism
The term ‘ethnocentrism’ combines the original Greek word
‘ethnos’ with the word ‘center,’ and its literal translation is that
a particular ‘ethnos’ (ethnic group, nation, or people) is in the
center. The concept has existed since at least the 1870s, and it
was probably Ludwig Gumplowicz (born 9 March 1838; died
19/20 August 1909) who coined the concept (Gumplowicz,
1879, 1881), and used it in his books and papers written in
German and Polish. William G. Sumner (born 30 October
1840; died 12 April 1910) later adopted and popularized the
concept (Sumner, 1906). Given that Sumner did not reference
Gumplowicz’s work on ethnocentrism, later researchers (e.g.,
Adorno et al., 1950; LeVine and Campbell, 1972) have incor-
rectly credited Sumner with inventing the concept in 1906 (for
the early conceptual history, see Bizumic, 2014).
Gumplowicz saw ethnocentrism as a similar concept to
geocentrism and anthropocentrism, but with a focus on one’s
own ethnic group or people. He viewed it as a belief that one’s
own ethnic group is more important, superior, and better than
any other group. Sumner similarly saw ethnocentrism as
a “view of things in which one’s own group is the center of
everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to
it” (Sumner, 1906: p. 13). He also included feelings of ingroup
devotion and cohesion as well as rejection of outgroups, group
superiority, and exploitative intergroup relations in his explicit
conceptualizations of ethnocentrism (Sumner, 1906, 1911).
Sumner, however, also assumed that ethnocentrism would
almost always translate into outgroup negativity, and that
ingroup positivity and outgroup negativity are highly
intercorrelated.
Later social scientists based their conceptualizations of
ethnocentrism on Sumner’s writings, and given the complexity
and breadth of his discussions of ethnocentrism, they tended to
see it in various ways. Certain researchers have focused on
intragroup factors, others on intergroup factors, and still others
on outgroup factors. Occasionally, and influenced by the work
of Theodor W. Adorno and colleagues (Adorno et al., 1950),
ethnocentrism has been seen primarily as hostility or prejudice
against a variety of outgroups. The influential book on theories
of ethnocentrism by Robert LeVine and David Campbell
focused on Sumner’s conceptualizations and identified 23
facets in ethnocentrism, which they conceived as potentially
a single dimension consisting of ingroup positivity and out-
group negativity (LeVine and Campbell, 1972). Empirical
research, however, suggested that ingroup positivity (i.e.,
ingroup love) and outgroup negativity (i.e., outgroup hate) are
often unrelated phenomena and not necessarily mutually
interdependent (Brewer, 1999). Indeed, more recent cross-
cultural measurement of ethnocentrism has suggested that
there are two kinds of ethnocentrism: (1) intragroup
ethnocentrism, which includes a sense of strong group
cohesion and devotion to one’s own ethnic group, and (2)
intergroup ethnocentrism, which includes preference for
ethnic ingroups over outgroups, a belief in ethnic superiority,
a desire to maintain ethnic purity, and approval of
exploitation of ethnic outgroups if it is in the interest of one’s
own ethnic group (Bizumic and Duckitt, 2012). These two
kinds of ethnocentrism express a strong belief in the

168 International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Volume 8 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.03153-6

importance of one’s own ethnic group and cover
most historical definitions of ethnocentrism. These two
kinds of ethnocentrism were shown to be empirically and
conceptually distinct from mere ingroup positivity and
outgroup negativity or prejudice.
Prejudice
The concept of prejudice itself is a much older concept than
that of ethnocentrism. It comes from the Latin word ‘praeju-
dicium,’ originally meaning ‘prior judgment,’ but over time
acquiring the notion of generally unfavorable predetermined
judgments. Prejudice has been a legal term for centuries, but
isolated writings by social scientists on prejudice appeared in
the nineteenth century. The concept, however, became popular
in the social sciences only in the twentieth century when prej-
udice became a significant social and, by extension, social
scientific problem. In fact, until the 1920s, social scientists did
not consider prejudice as an important concept for research,
and generally justified its existence, at least when the targets of
prejudice were non-Western ethnic groups (Duckitt, 2010).
This changed due to numerous societal reasons, and social
scientists started to produce considerable work on prejudice,
which they began seeing as a generally unjustified negative
attitude toward a group of people, including every individual
member.
Social scientists have broadly conceptualized prejudice as
a negative attitudinal construct (Allport, 1954; Banton, 1998),
although they have often focused on different kinds of negative
attitudes, which at times overlapped with ethnocentrism (e.g.,
Adorno et al., 1950). Prejudice has often been seen as a nega-
tive attitude, based on an inaccurate and rigid generalization,
toward a particular group or its group members (e.g., Allport,
1954). Many social scientists have argued that all kinds of
prejudice are inaccurate, rigid, and unjustifiable. Others,
however, have focused on a broader conceptualization. Indeed,
the most important aspect of prejudice, on which most social
scientists appear to agree, is that it includes a negative affect
toward an outgroup, and this is reflected in both conceptual
and empirical work. For example, Walter Stephan and Cookie
Stephan (2000) saw and measured prejudice primarily as
negative affect toward outgroups, involving both emotional
reactions (e.g., hatred, disdain) and evaluations (e.g., disliking,
disapproval) as well as the absence of positive emotions and
evaluations. Social scientists have historically also distin-
guished between specific prejudice (negative attitude toward
a specific group) and generalized prejudice (negative attitude
that is generalized across many outgroups), which they often
saw to be an aspect of ethnocentrism (Adorno et al., 1950). As
mentioned above, however, research has shown that ethno-
centric attitudes are conceptually and empirically distinct from
prejudice (Bizumic and Duckitt, 2012; Brewer, 1999).
Ethnocentrism, Prejudice, and Social Groups
Since the beginning of the social scientific research into
ethnocentrism and prejudice, most work has focused on eth-
nocultural and racial groups – even though both were at times
related to any kind of social group. For example, despite the
existence of ‘ethno’ in ethnocentrism, the concept was at
Ethnocentrism and Prejudice: History of the Concepts 169
times used to refer to diverse kinds of groups, including
gender groups. Nevertheless, most social scientists see
ethnocentrism as a characteristic of large-scale ethnocultural
groups – though at times they also apply it to multiethnic
nation states (e.g., US ethnocentrism) or even whole
continents (e.g., European ethnocentrism). By definition, the
concept of prejudice can be applied to any kind of social
group, and social scientists at times have used it to refer to
negative attitudes toward other species. Social scientists have,
however, mainly used the concept to refer to prejudice
against ethnocultural and racial groups, even though at times
it was applied to women, religious groups, homosexuals, and
other vulnerable or minority groups. Historically, both
concepts have been predominantly studied among ethnic
majority group members, whereas ethnic minorities and
other vulnerable groups were often seen as recipients and
targets of prejudiced attitudes, and their levels of
ethnocentrism and prejudice have been largely unexplored.
A History of Explanations of Ethnocentrism
and Prejudice
Social scientists have attempted to explain ethnocentrism and
prejudice since the beginning of the social sciences, but the
popularity and usefulness of various explanations have waxed
and waned over time as well as across disciplines and across
cultures. The influence of different theoretical explanations
during particular periods has not been caused by the produc-
tion of better theories or more convincing data in favor of
certain explanations over others, but by a variety of external
societal and political factors, which oriented social scientists
toward different questions (Duckitt, 2010). In general, histor-
ical explanations have focused on the role of: (1) evolution, (2)
threat and conflict, (3) self-aggrandizement, and (4)
socialization and norms in the development of
ethnocentrism and prejudice. These broad kinds of
explanations have guided most of the social scientific
research into ethnocentrism and prejudice.
Evolutionary Explanations
Evolutionary explanations of ethnocentrism and outgroup
hostility are as old as the social sciences. In fact, the social
sciences developed in part due to the Darwinian revolution in
the nineteenth century when social phenomena, as extensions
of natural phenomena, became legitimate scientific topics. It is
not surprising, therefore, that many early theorists have
attempted to explain ethnocentrism using an evolutionary
framework. There is a wide range of evolutionary explanations,
from Darwin’s early theory and social Darwinist explanations
to the more recent sociobiological and evolutionary psycho-
logical explanations. Ethnocentrism was explicitly related by
Gumplowicz (1881) to anthropocentrism (giving humans the
central place in the world), which evolutionary theory heavily
criticized.
A common theme of evolutionary explanations is that
humans are biologically hardwired to engage in both ethno-
centrism and prejudice, and that ethnocentrism is evolution-
arily useful because it enhances both individual and group
170 Ethnocentrism and Prejudice: History of the Concepts
survival. Ethnocentrism and prejudice are, therefore, conceived
as natural- and biology-based phenomena. Charles Darwin
(born 12 February 1809; died 19 April 1882) wrote that in
animals, “sympathy is directed solely toward the members of
the same community, and therefore toward known, and more
or less beloved members, but not to all the individuals of the
same species” (Darwin, 1875: p. 106). Accordingly, humans,
like other animals, also tend to engage in preferences toward
members of their own community over others. Darwin also
thought that intergroup competition makes people more
cooperative with other members of their own group and that
cooperative groups are more likely to thrive than noncooper-
ative groups. Herbert Spencer (born 27 April 1820; died 8
December 1903), a social Darwinist, proposed two moral
codes that exist universally in intragroup and intergroup rela-
tions (Spencer, 1892). He argued that one moral code
approved of hostility toward those outside the group, whereas
another code postulated that one should be highly cooperative
with those inside one’s own group. Spencer assumed that these
exist among both industrial and nonindustrial societies.
Sumner (1906), also a social Darwinist, elaborated upon the
survival value of ethnocentrism, and assumed that outgroup
hostility is a natural and normal correlate of ethnocentrism.
Arthur Keith (1948), furthermore, argued that group survival is
possible only if ingroup cooperation and intergroup competi-
tion are balanced, and that neither too much cooperation nor
too much competition is good for groups. Although diverse,
early explanations saw ethnocentrism and outgroup hostility as
biology based and having survival value. Evolutionary theo-
rists, however, frequently went beyond available data to claim
that certain social groups are biologically superior and others
are biologically inferior, and that it is right for the superior
groups to rule over the inferior groups.
Although popular at the beginning of the twentieth century,
evolutionary explanations became less influential from the
1930s until the 1970s. Anthropologists, sociologists, and
psychologists began to produce strong evidence that brought
into question many of the central assumptions of crude social
Darwinism, such as the belief that there are inherent biological
differences between different ethnic and racial groups.
Anthropologists, in particular those who followed Franz Boas’s
(born 9 July 1858; died 22 December 1942) approach, have
also advanced ideas of cultural relativism, which argued that
cultures can only be understood from within and that cross-
cultural comparisons (especially those advocating cultural
superiority) are not useful and valid approaches for
understanding and explaining human social behavior. Boas
(1940) successfully questioned many crude biological and
evolutionary applications to human groups and any inherent
biological differences between members of different ethnic
and racial groups. He also showed that many differences
between ethnic and racial groups are better explained with
environmental rather than biological factors. Finally,
unrestrained ethnocentrism and prejudice, based on a naive
evolutionary theorizing of social Darwinists, showed its
extremely dark side during the 1930s and 1940s among the
Nazis and fascists. Following the Second World War,
evolutionary explanations of social phenomena, such as
ethnocentrism and prejudice, have almost completely
retreated.
Nevertheless, evolutionary explanations regained certain
popularity again in the 1970s, and since then have been
increasing in influence within academic circles. For example,
social scientists used sociobiological theory to explain ethno-
centrism. This theory proposes the concept of ‘inclusive fitness,’
which assumes that ingroup preferences are useful because
genes could be passed to next generations not only from
parents to their offspring but also through kin. Pierre van den
Berghe (1978), for example, argued that both human and
nonhuman animals prefer their kin over nonkin due to
evolutionary reasons, and that altruism and self-sacrifice aimed
at nonkin are not useful biologically. He assumed that humans
tend to extend their kinship to the whole ethnic group, which is
a unique kind of large-scale social group due to the existence
(or, at least, a belief in the existence) of biological
relatedness. This extension, therefore, tends to promote
people’s ethnocentric sacrifice and preference on behalf of
their own group.
The past several decades have seen more evolutionary work
on ethnocentrism and prejudice, including a focus on the role
of explicit biological influences (e.g., genes and hormones),
investigating ingroup preferences in other primates, and using
simulation methodologies to test evolutionary underpinnings
of ethnocentrism. The deterministic and crude evolutionary
explanations characteristic of early social Darwinism have been
supplemented with more sophisticated explanations. These
explanations, however, often exaggerate the inevitability of
ethnocentrism (though not necessarily outgroup prejudice)
and minimize the role of social, cultural, and political factors.
Threat and Conflict Explanations
Many explanations of ethnocentrism and prejudice have
focused on different kinds of threats and conflicts. These have
ranged from realistic (e.g., economic) threats between groups
to symbolic threats (e.g., threats stemming from perceiving
different value or belief systems) and intrapsychic threats (e.g.,
psychodynamic threats and conflicts). A common theme in
these theories is that ethnocentrism and prejudice are defensive
reactions of individuals or groups against threats and conflicts.
Realistic conflict theory assumes that ethnocentric intra-
group and intergroup attitudes as well as outgroup hostility are
caused by realistic threats to the group and its welfare. Early
sociologists were already concerned with the role of these
threats in intergroup relations. For example, building on early
realistic conflict theories of Gumplowicz and others, Sumner
(1906) argued that ethnocentrism and outgroup hostility are
functional in defending the ingroup against outgroup threats
and advancing ingroup interests while in conflict with other
groups. The work on realistic conflict theory and realistic
threats became prominent in sociology and social psychology
in the 1950s and 1960s. The theory was then elaborated upon
and summarized by LeVine and Campbell (1972). This theory
focuses on realistic threats to a group as opposed to unrealistic
(i.e., psychodynamic, intrapsychic) threats and postulates that
ethnocentrism and outgroup hostility are useful in helping
groups defend against threat. It proposes that groups in conflict
and under threat are more likely to defend themselves
if they are ethnocentric and prejudiced. If, however, a group
in conflict is accepting and considerate of outgroups

(i.e., nonethnocentric and nonprejudiced), it may risk being
exploited or even destroyed.
Psychodynamic theorists, influenced by Sigmund Freud
(born 6 May 1856; died 23 September 1939), however,
assumed that ethnocentrism and prejudice are caused by
intrapsychic threats and conflicts. Accordingly, these theorists
have invoked a variety of defense mechanisms, which are
thought to help individuals protect against these threats. This
approach became particularly popular during the 1930s and
1940s because at that time, prejudice was being increasingly
seen as irrational and unjustifiable (Duckitt, 2010). The most
widely used defense mechanism to explain both ethnocentrism
and prejudice was displacement. Freud (1930/1961), for
example, argued that group life and ingroup cohesion are
possible because people are able to displace their natural
aggression and hostility onto outgroups.
The most influential psychodynamic theory of ethnocen-
trism and prejudice is authoritarian personality theory (Adorno
et al., 1950). This theory posits that overly punitive and strict
parenting causes an authoritarian personality, which is prone
to ethnocentrism and generalized prejudice. Due to parental
punitiveness and dependence on them, authoritarian people
experience conflicting feelings, such as fear, love, and hostility.
To cope with these ambivalent feelings, they employ
defense mechanisms, such as repression, externalization, and
displacement, which result in idealization of one’s own group
and prejudice against ethnic and other minority groups. For
example, these authors wrote “the prejudiced subject’s ambiv-
alence toward his parents, with a repression and externalization
of the negative side of this ambivalence, may be a factor in
determining his strongly polarized attitudes, such as his
uncritical acceptance of the ingroup and violent rejection of the
outgroup” (Adorno et al., 1950: p. 482). Many later studies
have supported the claim that authoritarianism is related to
ethnocentrism and prejudice, but failed to support the
psychodynamic explanation.
In contrast to other psychodynamic explanations, terror
management theory has become influential in the 1990s and
the 2000s. This theory builds on the work by Ernest Becker, and
argues that the intrapsychic threat of mortality drives ethno-
centric and prejudiced attitudes (Solomon et al., 1991).
According to the theory, people are threatened by the aware-
ness of eventual death and their cultural value systems serve as
buffers against this existential anxiety. Any threat to one’s own
cultural system, therefore, makes people affirm their own
cultural system and reject the systems of other groups. Indeed,
research appears to indicate that ethnocentrism and prejudice
may increase when people are reminded of their own mortality.
Psychologists and sociologists have proposed a wide range
of other threats and conflicts to account for ethnocentrism and
prejudice. For example, Milton Rokeach (1960) developed
a belief congruence theory in the 1950s and 1960s. The theory
argues that perceiving different beliefs and values in outgroup
members, which conflict with one’s own beliefs and values,
might be sufficient to create group preferences and discrimi-
nation. According to the theory, people prefer those who have
similar beliefs and values to themselves, and it is not ethnicity
that causes ethnic preferences, but the perceived differences on
important specific issues between those categorized as ethnic
ingroup and outgroup members. Ethnic categorization is,
Ethnocentrism and Prejudice: History of the Concepts 171
therefore, important only as a symbol for “complexes of beliefs
which to one degree or another are seen to be similar to and
different from our own” (Rokeach, 1960: p. 391).
A later attempt was made to integrate different kinds of
threats into broader theoretical frameworks. For example,
integrated threat theory (Stephan and Stephan, 2000)
proposed that in addition to realistic threats (i.e., threats to the
general group welfare) and symbolic threats (i.e., threats to the
values and beliefs of group members), there are two other
threats as causes of prejudice: intergroup anxiety (i.e., irritation
and fear caused by interpersonal interactions with members
from another group) and negative stereotype threats (i.e.,
a negative perception of another group). A large body of
research has indeed shown that both prejudice and ingroup,
ethnocentric preferences increase as a result of these different
threats (Riek et al., 2006).
Threat and conflict have been shown to have potent influ-
ences on ethnocentrism and prejudice. A variety of methodol-
ogies and approaches have shown that both ethnocentrism and
prejudice tend to increase as a result of various threats.
Nevertheless, social scientists have discovered that a certain
amount of ethnocentrism may exist even in the absence of
realistic conflicts and threats (Tajfel and Turner, 1979).
Accordingly, it is still not clear whether threat and conflict
could fully explain, or just exacerbate, already existing levels of
ethnocentrism and prejudice. There are also endless examples
from history of strong and threatening ethnic groups fully
assimilating weaker ethnic groups. Threat may, therefore, at
times create less, and not more, ethnocentrism and prejudice.
Self-Aggrandizement Explanations
A number of social scientists have explained ethnocentrism and
prejudice as phenomena that make people feel good about
themselves because they can increase people’s sense of self-
importance and esteem. Another group of explanations has
assumed that these phenomena could be used to justify
inequalities between different kinds of groups. These
explanations refer to various self-aggrandizing functions of
ethnocentrism and prejudice.
The potential to use ethnocentrism and prejudice to
increase a person’s self-esteem can be seen in Gumplowicz’s
description of ethnocentrism as a self-congratulatory delusion
that ethnic groups employ, as well as in the psychodynamic
links of narcissism with intergroup relations and prejudice
(Freud, 1930/1961). Accordingly, ethnocentrism and
prejudice might be easily seen as constructs that can make
group members think and feel good about themselves. This
explanation became particularly popular in the 1970s with
the development of social identity theory by Henri Tajfel and
John Turner (1979), which proposed that the need for
positive self-esteem underlies ethnocentrism. Social identity
research showed that ingroup bias in the lab (which Tajfel
and Turner saw as an analog concept to ethnocentrism in the
outside world) may exist even in artificially arranged minimal
group situations. These situations are characterized by the
absence of interaction between group members, the lack of
knowledge about who ingroup or outgroup members are, as
well as the absence of individual self-interest to discriminate.
The only thing that people know in such situations is that
172 Ethnocentrism and Prejudice: History of the Concepts
they are members of one group and not another. Still,
numerous studies have shown that in these situations, people
discriminate in favor of their ingroup over outgroups.
Social identity theory argued that when people categorize
themselves into ingroups and other people into outgroups,
they experience their self at a different level. As a result of
a need for positive self-esteem (also called positive group
distinctiveness), they want to feel good about their groups
and they want their groups to be superior to other groups on
relevant dimensions, and this need for positive self-esteem
drives ethnocentric preferences. The theory has had
a profound influence on various approaches that use
categorization processes into ingroups and outgroups to
explain intergroup relations and prejudice. Nevertheless,
much subsequent work within this theoretical tradition has
resulted in a variety of approaches that have tended to focus
less on the motivational role of self-esteem and more on
universal categorization processes, which in interaction with
normative and socialization processes may reduce or increase
ethnocentrism and prejudice.
A related group of self-aggrandizing approaches to
ethnocentrism and prejudice has origins in Marxist and elite
theories. Ethnocentrism and prejudice not only are useful in
making people feel good about themselves but also may be
useful in helping one group (usually the dominant group
within a single society) exploit and rule over other groups.
This approach, accordingly, claims that ethnocentrism and
prejudice can be used by groups in order to exploit and
dominate other groups for the sake of their own individual
or group self-aggrandizement.
This approach came into widespread acceptance during
1960s and 1970s when numerous social movements of the
1960s led to an increase in the popularity of explanations
based on Marxist theory (Banton, 1998). These explanations
have focused on large-scale exploitative tendencies of
dominant groups, which tend to use ethnocentrism and
prejudice in order to promote their own selfish interests
without consideration for the well-being of other groups. For
example, Oliver C. Cox (1948) argued that prejudice is
helpful in the dominance and exploitation of outgroups
because it makes these outgroups appear inferior and
deserving of exploitation. Cox, therefore, saw prejudice as an
instrument of capitalism that helps the dominant group
exploit subordinate groups, and he argued that relations
between people of different racial groups represent relations
between different social classes. Another example of this
approach could be seen in the work of Teun A. van Dijk
(1993), who used elite theory to argue that elites, including
political, corporate, and academic elites, construct
ethnocentric and prejudiced attitudes in various ways, and
impose them on the rest of the population – including both
ethnic minority and majority group members. His research
using discourse analysis indeed suggested that ethnocentric
and prejudiced attitudes are to a large extent constantly
enforced by the elites (van Dijk, 1993).
A related theoretical framework, social dominance theory
(Sidanius and Pratto, 1999), has focused on causes and
consequences of social dominance orientation, which refers to
individual differences in acceptance of hierarchical intergroup
relations. This individual orientation appears to predispose
people to support a wide variety of ideologies and attitudes,
including ethnocentrism and prejudice, which give a differen-
tial value to social groups. Research indeed suggests that
people’s individual differences in their motivation for domi-
nance and self-enhancement, together with individual
differences in the motivation for security, appear to be the
two main driving forces behind individual differences in
ethnocentrism and prejudice (Duckitt, 2001).
Socialization and Normative Explanations
Social scientists have very frequently used socialization and
norms to explain both ethnocentrism and prejudice. These
explanations postulate that ethnocentrism and prejudice
develop and persist in humans due to socialization in or
conformity with ethnocentric and prejudiced social norms. The
process of socialization usually involves internalization of
social norms and other social influences.
Socialization and normative explanations gained promi-
nence in the second half of the twentieth century. They were
partly a reaction to individual difference explanations, such as
authoritarian personality theory (Adorno et al., 1950). In an
influential critique of personality explanations of prejudice,
Thomas Pettigrew (1958) argued that normative influences are
more important for the development of prejudice than internal
psychological factors, such as authoritarian personality. For
example, he showed that although Whites in the United States
and South Africa tended to have similar scores on authoritari-
anism, South African Whites were more likely to show negative
attitudes toward Blacks. Similarly, people in the South and
North of the United States tended to have similar scores on
authoritarianism, but the Southerners were more prejudiced
against Blacks. Pettigrew, therefore, argued that prejudiced
norms guide people’s expressions of prejudice, and that they
are much more important than individual differences. Simi-
larly, Ralph Minard’s (1952) research in the United States
showed that Black and White miners conformed to dominant
nonethnocentric norms of interaction and cooperation while at
work, and to dominant ethnocentric norms of separation while
they were in their communities. Studies such as these showed
that socialization and social norms appear to have powerful
influences on ethnocentrism and prejudice, and many subse-
quent approaches to reducing these phenomena focused on
changing social norms.
Socialization and normative approaches have also been
employed to interact with basic cognitive processes, such as
social categorization, to explain ethnocentrism and prejudice.
Social categorization approaches have, in general, postulated
that categorization into groups is a basic precondition for
ethnocentrism and prejudice (Allport, 1954). Although influ-
enced by Allport’s (1954) work, these theories have become
particularly influential explanations of ethnocentrism and
prejudice following the development of social identity theory
in the late 1970s (Tajfel and Turner, 1979). They tended to
show that how people categorize their social world has
important implications for the development of ethnocentrism
and prejudice. People tend to learn about social categories to
which they belong and do not belong, the values associated
with these social categories, and preferences for the social
categories to which they belong over others. In fact,

ethnocentrism and prejudice are unlikely to exist if people
failed to identify with certain social categories and disidentify
with others. Given the general and universal processes of
categorization, social categorization researchers have attemp-
ted to investigate what social conditions would foster or reduce
prejudice and ethnocentrism. For example, social categoriza-
tion researchers have argued that providing people with cross-
cutting group categories might enable them to engage in less
prejudice and ethnocentrism (Brewer, 1999).
Another group of explanations that focuses on socialization
and norms of two different kinds of prejudice became popular
in the 1980s and continues to capture the interest of social
scientists until the current day (Crandall and Eshleman, 2005).
These explanations propose two different kinds of prejudice.
They suggest that as a result of different norms and social
learning, people in Western societies have been developing
different kinds of prejudiced attitudes. For example, due to
egalitarian, nonethnocentric, and antiprejudiced norms, which
are characteristic of many Western societies, new kinds of
prejudice have been developing, which are replacing the
traditional, blatant forms of prejudice. Although social scien-
tists have used various terms for these kinds of prejudice (e.g.,
aversive, modern, symbolic, implicit, and subtle kinds of
prejudice), what they have in common is that they are more
subtle and sophisticated, but still predispose people to inter-
group discrimination. This research has also suggested that
people often may not even be aware that they are ethnocentric
or prejudiced, but still have ethnocentric and prejudiced atti-
tudes and act on them.
Despite a wide variety of socialization and normative
theories, they do appear to share the same underlying emphasis
on the role of external factors in shaping ethnocentrism and
prejudice, and are therefore top–down theories, even though
they may often interact with the more fundamental social
cognitive processes. These theories assume that both
ethnocentrism and prejudice could be transcended when
socialization and social norms propagate humanitarian,
nonprejudiced, and tolerant attitudes. Whether this is fully
possible is an important question because socialization into
any cultural world view appears to involve ethnocentrism,
given that all cultures, at least at an implicit level, assume
that one’s own cultural norms, rules, and ethical systems are
right and correct, and by extension, somewhat better than
others.
Summary and Concluding Remarks
Social scientists from various disciplines have studied ethno-
centrism and prejudice, and defined them in diverse ways, with
ethnocentrism being primarily seen as a strong sense of intra-
group and intergroup importance of one’s own group, and
prejudice as a negative, often unjustifiably negative, attitude
toward an outgroup. Although sometimes used interchange-
ably, ethnocentrism and prejudice have been historically
perceived as distinct, and research does support their concep-
tual and empirical distinction. Both have at times been used to
refer to many kinds of groups, but most historical usages refer
to large-scale ethnocultural groups in ethnocentrism and large-
scale ethnocultural and racial groups in prejudice – although in
Ethnocentrism and Prejudice: History of the Concepts 173
the last several decades, there has been an increasing amount of
research into prejudice against women, homosexuals, and
other vulnerable groups.
Social scientists have approached ethnocentrism and prej-
udice from many angles, and these explanations could be
categorized as those invoking: (1) evolutionary factors, (2)
threat and conflict, (3) self-aggrandizement, and (4)
socialization and norms. There is a wide variety of
explanations within each of the categories, and some
transcend even these broad categorizations. Nevertheless, it
appears that social scientists have consistently drawn on these
four broad kinds of explanations while trying to account for
both ethnocentrism and prejudice.
Ethnocentrism and prejudice have appeared useful to
researchers from different backgrounds and interests, and these
concepts have been shown to be very fruitful and engaging.
Unfortunately, conceptual clarity has not been of primary
interest to the social scientists who have studied ethnocentrism
and prejudice, and they have often failed to agree on right
conceptualizations. Consequently, any summary of these wide
areas of research needs to grapple with many conceptual issues
and vague operationalizations. Both concepts have also been
shown to be very difficult to change and eliminate, and their
persistence still puzzles social scientists, especially those who
reject evolutionary explanations. Any fruitful integrated
approach to ethnocentrism and prejudice must, therefore, be
able to address the four different kinds of explanations, which
all have substantial bodies of supporting research, and shows
how they independently, or in interaction with each other,
produce ethnocentrism and prejudice.
See also: Attitude: History of Concept; Psychology, History of
(Twentieth Century); Sociology, History of.
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Relevant Websites
http://www.tolerance.org – The Authors of the Website Describe It as, “A Place for
Educators to Find Thought-provoking News, Conversation and Support for Those
Who Care about Diversity, Equal Opportunity and Respect for Differences in
Schools.”
https://www.archive.org – Includes Many Early Historical Books into Ethnocentrism and
Prejudice, Such as the Work by Herbert Spencer, Ludwig Gumplowicz, William G.
Sumner, and Arthur Keith.
http://ethics.sandiego.edu/Applied/race/ – Numerous Internet Resources Related to
Race, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism.
https://implicit.harvard.edu – On-line Tests that Investigate Ethnic, Racial, and Other
Group Preferences and Prejudice at the Unconscious Level.
http://www.understandingprejudice.org – Various Resources on Prejudice, Intolerance,
Ethnocentrism.