Individual differences

• Personality factors affecting prejudice - authoritarian personality

  • Adorno's (1950)
  • an overly harsh parenting style is claimed to create a personality type that is both highly obedient and also highly prone to display prejudice
  • harsh parents expect absolute loyalty and high standards of achievement.
  • they offer conditional love - the child only receives love if they behave correctly
  • children identify with their parents but the children with authoritarian parents also feel hostile towards their parents' conditional love - the child cannot express such feelings sure to fear of punishment, thus displace their anger onto someone else (scapegoating)
  • in the case of people with an authoritarian personality, their feelings of hostility are displaced onto those who are socially inferior (outgroup)
• Personality factors affecing prejudice - Allport's authoritarian personality

  • Allport (1954) also discussed the authoritarian personality and compared this to more 'generalised tolerant types' who have a sense of inner security and confidence stemming from unconditional parental acceptance
  • this parenting style leads to an emphatic and accepting orientation towards others, a more liberal ideological outlook and the ability to think in 'shades of grey'.
  • by contrast, authoritarians think in rigid 'black and white' categories and require 'cognitive closure' meaning they prefer to find solutions, as opposed to generating further questions
  • unlike adorno, allport believed people with authoritarian personalities are not necessarily prejudiced, however they may be particularly receptive to political arguments which target their inner fears and insecurities
• Personality factors affecting prejudice - Right wing authoritarianism

  • Altemeyer (1988) focused on 3 of Adorno's authoritarian traits: authoritarian submission, aggression & conventionalism.
  • people high in RWA hold prejudiced attitudes towards various groups, like women and LGBT
  • Altemeyer's ideas differ from Aldorno - he says RWA is not a product of early parental experiences but develops as a consequence of social learning
  • says that when children are socialised to believe that the world is = dangerous and threatening place, RWA may result. This theory thus is not about feelings of personal inadequacy - for Altemeyer, RWA stems from learned set of beliefs about the world
  • RWA develops as a reaction to fear and uncertainty - people high in RWA seek security through preserving existing social order, they are suspicious & overtly hostile towards anyone who defies the norm
  • they also= highly conscientious but closed to new experiences
• personality factors affecting prejudice - social dominance orientation

  • Pratto (1994) developed the concept of SDO to describe people who are motivated to seek out ingroup power, dominance and superiority.
  • they prefer hierarchical versus equal distribution of power
  • the SDO worldview = different from the RWA one - people with SDO see the world as a 'competitive jungle' where people have to be ruthless and fight for their share of limited resources of power.
  • like RWA this worldview is transmitted via role models, as part of the socialisation process
  • SDO = positively correlated with key personality characteristics such as tough-mindedness and correlates negatively with agreeableness and empathy.
  • it is more common in men and is through to develop through exposure to social situations involving high levels of inequality and competition.
• Evaluation of personality factors affecting prejudice - strengths

  • strength = the relationship between personality and prejudice is supported by much research evidence
  • Cohrs (2012) found that RWA and SDO were both positively correlated with generalised prejudice.
  • RWA was negatively correlated with openness to experience, while SDO was negatively correlated with agreeableness
  • this suggests that levels o prejudice can be accurately predicted from people's personality traits.
• Evaluation of personality affecting prejudice - weakness

  • it may be wrong to think that RWA and SDO are consistent over time - both dimensions interact with social factors, making prejudice much harder to predict in the real world
  • Levin (1996) primed jewish participants to think about their social identity within israel, she found that Ashkenazi jews showed higher SDO scores in comparison with other types of jew
  • differences in SDO disappeared when the jewish groups were primed to think about the relationship between israel and palestine
  • this shows the malleability of SDO and that SDO scores can be an effect of prejudice as well as a cause.
• Evaluation of personalty affecting prejudice - weakness

  • weakness = ignores the role of social norms and situational factors
  • Louis (2003) noted that RWA and SDO scales do not include items which are heavily affected by social attitudes or norms, meaning the role of these factors is ignored in the research
  • Eg, 72% of people in their australian study strongly disgreed with the statement, 'the white race is the best race' but agreed with the exclusion of asylum seekers
  • this suggests it is important to understand the social as well as the individual factors in order to address the consequences for prejudice effectively
• Application of personality affecting prejudice

  • Allport and Altemeyer highlight that prejudice may be learned through exposure to specific worldviews and prejudicial rhetoric
  • this suggests that greater regulation of media sources may be beneficial
  • strategies that challenge the view of the world as dengerous, threatening and competitive ( such as international exchanges and school twinning projects) may help to combat RWA and SDO
  • these suggestions demonstrate the importance of thinking about the root causes of prejudice as a way to combat it.