Handbook of Prejudice By Anton Pelinka, Karin Bischof, and Karin ...

words, the same prejudice, the devaluation of and animosity against an ethnic group and its tradition, survived for many centuries because it was constantly adapted to the prevailing paradigms of the current historical situation. One of the reasons for its durability can therefore be found in its flexibility.

But these historical references only describe the how of the duration, not the why. In order to venture an explanation as to the much more difficult question of the why, we will have recourse once more to the question of memory. We have already mentioned that some of the categorical distinctions created by stereotypes are learned early on in life and absorbed long before the maturing of the rational mind. My hypothesis is that the foundations for our prejudices are laid together with our earliest and most basic categories for understanding the world, if not before. Babies and children, it has been observed, do not suffer from prejudices before the age of five, when they start to build up conscious group loyalties and become partisans of concepts that remain for them largely opaque. We may perhaps assume that, although the concrete prejudice is developed much later, a very general category for the separation between in-group and out-group, with a concomitant support of value accents, already has a hold in the mind. In this case, we would have to distinguish between the mental and emotional disposition for prejudice, which is anchored deeply in our neurological system, and the concrete shape that it acquires in a historically specific discourse. This primeval root of the prejudice in our mental makeup gives it the quality not only of a stereotype but of an archetype: the shape is interchangeable, the disposition is permanent and culturally invariant. It is due to the permanence of the disposition that, even after long periods of intermission, a prejudice can be reactivated so speedily and the emotional impact automatically recharged.

The readiness with which the prejudice is recharged can be explained in terms of a theory of resonance. Resonance is in no way mysterious; it is a deep emotional response that can be registered and even measured. Mysterious, however, remains the reason why some things strike a deep chord in us, flooding us with an overwhelming appeal, while others leave us more or less cold. It is, of course, the lifelong individual