In the December Nature: Human Behavior , we -- with colleagues Julia Marshall and Yimeng Wang -- report a basic root of social prejudice: People's dislike of broken patterns. Anton GollwitzerJohn BarghOur starting premise was that society feels prejudice toward people who deviate from the norm, those who break physical or social patterns. In their religious or cultural practices, they deviate from long-established social norms, which are consensually agreed-upon patterns of social behavior. Given this insight, we reasoned that social prejudice may originate from our general dislike of deviancy -- breaks in regularities and what we are accustomed to. Our first set of studies established that a dislike of such non-social broken patterns is highly prevalent, early-emerging in life and exists across different cultures.

Source: CNN January 29, 2018 18:45 UTC