- predilection
- predilection, partiality, prepossession, prejudice, bias are comparable when they mean an attitude of mind which predisposes one to make a certain choice or judgment or to take a certain view without full consideration or reflection.Predilection implies a strong liking that results from one's temperament, one's principles, or one's previous experience and that predisposes one to prefer certain kinds of things (as friends, books, foods, or methods) or to accept a thing without reference to any other test{
a predilection for the strange and whimsical— Coleridge
}{one or two authors of fiction for whom I have a predilection— Benson
}Partiality implies a disposition to favor a particular person or thing because of some predilection or, more often, because of undue fondness or partisanship; it may connote unfairness{show partiality in appointments to office
}{fond partiality for their own daughters' performance, and total indifference to any other person's— Austen
}{I have a partiality for a man who isolates an issue and pleads to it, not all around the bush— Cozzens
}Prepossession implies a fixed idea or conception in the light of which a new person, new idea, or new experience is judged{no approach opens on anything except from its own point of view and in terms of its own prepossessions— Blackmur
}{the prepossessions of childhood and youth— Dugald Stewart
}Prejudice applies to a judgment made before evidence is available and typically to an unfavorable preconception marked by suspicion and antipathy{those who use their reason do not reach the same conclusions as those who obey their prejudices—Lippmann,
}{I do not think I speak only from my prejudices, although in justice I must admit that I approached Riesman's work with animus— Mailer
}Bias implies a lack of balance or distortion in one's judgment owing to the pull in a predictable or consistent direction of a predilection or a prepossession or of partiality or prejudice and a resulting inclination in favor of or against a person or thing{it is as well that you be able to allow for my personal bias— Shaw
}{the most pernicious kind of bias consists in falsely supposing yourself to have none— Moberly
}Antonyms: aversion
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
