sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation an ...

, allophilia is having a positive attitude towards outgroup members. The outgroup members can be anyone who possesses characteristics that are different from one's own, such as people of different races,

religion Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatur ...

culture Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups ...

s, etc. It is a framework for understanding effective intergroup leadership and is conceptualized as a measurable state of mind with tangible consequences.

Terminology

The term ''allophilia'' was coined by

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

professor Todd L. Pittinsky in 2006, after he was unable to find an antonym for prejudice in any dictionary. The term derived from

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

words meaning "liking or love of the other".

Statistical factors

# affection, # comfort, # engagement, # enthusiasm, # kinship. The allophilia scale measures each of these factors. It has been adapted and validated to other languages such as Italian and Spanish, also to various settings, such as to measure positive attitude toward people with dementia, younger and older adults.

Prejudice and positive intergroup relations

The typical remedy for

prejudice Prejudice can be an affective feeling towards a person based on their perceived group membership. The word is often used to refer to a preconceived (usually unfavourable) evaluation or classification of another person based on that person's per ...

is to bring conflicting groups into a state of tolerance. However, tolerance is not the logical antithesis of prejudice, but rather is the midpoint between negative feelings and positive feelings toward others. Allophilia enhancement should serve as complement to prejudice reduction. Allophilia predicts positive relationships with outgroup members. For instance, a study in Spain shows that students having higher allophilia had lower social distance toward people with obesity. Besides, positive experience with outgroup members may increase allophilia, as it is shown in a longitudinal study of a cook's tour in Vietnam. In that study, the participants, who were Americans, reported positive feelings toward Vietnamese mirroring Allophilia facets in nearly 10 years after the event. In one study, symhedonia (experiencing empathic joy) has been shown to be more closely associated with allophilia, while sympathy (experiencing empathic sorrow) has been shown to be more strongly associated with prejudice.

References

External links

Speech by Minnesota Department of Human Rights Commissioner on AllophiliaThose People
Article about Allophilia by the ''

Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Gl ...

'' {{Discrimination Admiration of foreign cultures 2000s neologisms 2006 neologisms

Terminology

Statistical factors

Prejudice and positive intergroup relations

See also

References

External links