Anti-catholicism and the psychology of prejudice: A case study in secular blind spots

Psychology's foundational literature on prejudice emerged in the aftermath of the Second World War, precisely as anti-Catholic sentiment was resurging in American public life. The article examines how key psychological works of the period-especially those of Adorno et al., Allport, and Rokeach-treated Catholicism not as a target of intolerance but as a source of authoritarianism, dogmatism, and social threat. Combining intellectual and cultural history with a critical historiography of psychology, it traces how older nativist tropes and mid-century secular critiques of Catholicism were elevated to the status of psychological insight, often in defiance of available evidence. In doing so, the article shows how a disciplinary blind spot, rooted in the secular intellectual climate of the era, helped normalize certain forms of religious intolerance and shaped the conceptual boundaries of what counted as prejudice (as opposed to legitimate critique). The case study of anti-Catholicism highlights a broader issue of relevance to psychologists and historians of prejudice: the importance of analyzing not only prevailing stereotypes and attitudes toward marginalized groups but also the intellectual and political debates through which attitudes and stereotypes come to be recognized as prejudice in the first place. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).