Xenophobia

Jens Rydgren

The word xenophobia comes from the Greek words xénos (“stranger” or “guest”) and phóbos (“fear”), which, when combined, mean “fear of strangers.” The word was first used in a novel by Anatole France in 1901 and first appeared in a French dictionary in 1906. Several years later, it began appearing in English-language dictionaries. The word xenophobia is widely used by the mass media and by political actors and has entered everyday language. It is not a word commonly used by psychologists, who prefer more theoretically defined concepts, such as stereotypes, prejudice , and ethnocentrism. In social psychology, xenophobia is normally interpreted as a logical extension of ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism was originally coined by William Graham Sumner us ...

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