PSYC12H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Agreeableness, Group Conflict, Social Desirability Bias
Chapter 4 – The Prejudiced Personality: Are Some People More Likely To Feel Prejudice?
Psychodynamic Perspectives
- One of the first attempts to examine the prejudiced personality was put forth was Adorno and his
colleagues. According to Adorno et al., some people have personality structures that are flawed in
such a way that they are conditioned to be especially likely to adopt prejudiced attitudes.
- Authoritarians: certain patterns of prejudice, childhood upbringing, and relationships with parents
tended to be quite common.
- Specifically, authoritarians tended to grow up in homes in which the parents or guardians were
strict disciplinarians, often using harsh discipline to keep the children from misbehaving and to
punish them when they disobeyed the parent or guardian. They were more likely to be submissive
to authority, to adhere strictly to middle-class traditions and values, and to think very rigidly.
- Adorno et al., also found that authoritarians, more than other individuals, tended to hold
prejudices against many groups.
- Adorno et al., believed that authoritarians hated deviant impulses (fear, aggression, sex) and were
also more likely to externalize these unacceptable impulses to others via projection. This
psychodynamic approach suggests that these unacceptable impulses are displaced to stereotyped
goups. The authoitaia peso doest eliee they hae these egatie ualities.
- Authoritarian personality characteristics can also be found in some minority-group members.
Character-Conditioned Prejudice
- Allport discussed the prejudice personality in psychodynamic terms like Adorno et al.
- Allpot elieed that the pejudied pesoality eeged out of a ippled ego. “peifially, this
individual feels threatened, insecure, and fearful of virtually everything. The person develops a
prejudiced view of other as a way of projecting their fears and self-doubts onto others.
- Allport suggested that people with a prejudiced personality tend to repress their fears and
insecurities so that they can avoid facing their anxieties and shortcomings.
- This repression leads to: ambivalence toward parents, moralism, a need for definiteness, and
dichotomization (categorical, black-or-white thinking)
c) Problems with the Psychodynamic Approach
i) There are 4 main reasons for the decline in the psychodynamic approach:
(1) Researchers became more critical of its approach to personality. Essentially, the F scale
(fascism scale) and the world-mindedness scale (measures ones attitudes toward and
acceptance of people from other countries) are inversely related, i.e., they measure the
same thing
(a) Martin suggests that prejudice may be a result of an intolerant personality
(b) These people would score low on sympathy and trust, and high on conservatism
(c) The important point about both the world-mindedness and the tolerant-personality
approaches is that each measures the same constellation of personality c
characteristics as the Adorno study, but they do so without assuming the
psychodynamic process that were supposed to create the authoritarian personality
(2) Methodological and other conceptual problems with the authoritarian personality
caused many researchers to conclude that the approach was not up to scientific
standards – didt ko if it easue authoitaia eliefs or acquiescence bias
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(3) The theory only explained the presence of prejudice in a small subset of the population
and did not explain why many people who did not have an authoritarian personality did
show prejudice toward at least one other group
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(a) It also could not account for why prejudice was higher in one region (e.g., south)
than the north
(4) The authoritarian-personality perspective suggests that there is little hope of changing
an authoritarian individual to be more accepting of others
d) Right-Wing Authoritarianism
i) In 1994, Altemeyer wrote a paper called the a case study in overcompensation
ii) He found that three of Adornos ine related traits seemed to show a strong relationship
with each other (the other traits- stereotypy and superstition-little correlation)
Altemeyer called this attitudinal clusters. They are explained below: (1) Authoritarian
submission – indicates a strong degree of submission to perceived
legitimate authorities in ones society
(2) Authoritarian aggression – a general aggression and hostility directed toward outgroups,
that is viewed as acceptable by recognized authorities
(3) Conventionalism – a strong adherence to social norms and traditions that are perceived
as sanctioned by recognized authorities
iii) Together, they are called the Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) – personality style in which
the individual tends to be politically conservative, more punitive toward criminals, more
likely to endorse orthodox religious views, and very prejudiced toward outgroups
(1) It is also used to denote the difference from Adornos psychodynamic authoritarianism
iv) High RWA tends to be politically conservative, while low RWA tends to be politically liberal
v) Altemeyer, using RWA, have found that people with high RWA tends to be prejudiced
toward virtually everyone. He thus calls them equal-opportunity bigots
vi) RWA individuals are both fearful and self-righteous
vii) RWA individuals do not get the experience of socializing with people with different attitudes
from their own in their teen years, which is why it is hard to change the rigid attitudes and
prejudices of high-RWA individuals later on – but can change them if faced with info that
shows that they violate their own values (prejudice contradicts equality value)
e) Religion
i) There is a positive correlation between being more religious and having less tolerance and
more stereotyped cognitions about others
ii) The reason may be that with greater adherence to strict tenets of religious scripture comes
an increase in the tendency to think in rigid, either-or terms. This will in turn increase the
likelihood that one will rely on heuristics
iii) Committed versus Consensual Religiosity
(1) Other research have found that there is little correlation between religion and prejudice
(2) People who support this view believe that the measures of religiosity used by previous
researchers were too simplistic
(3) Allen assessed religiousity on 8 diff measures, responses coded in: content, clarity,
complexity, flexibility and importance – found people as beingcommitted or consensual
(a) Committed religious orientation – one that allows an individual to hold a wide range
of belief categories through which one can evaluate the world. Committed
individuals show a greater tolerance for diversity, and they are more likely to
thoughtfully consider different ideas, opinions, and beliefs
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Document Summary
One of the first attempts to examine the prejudiced personality was put forth was adorno and his colleagues. According to adorno et al. , some people have personality structures that are flawed in such a way that they are conditioned to be especially likely to adopt prejudiced attitudes. Authoritarians: certain patterns of prejudice, childhood upbringing, and relationships with parents tended to be quite common. Specifically, authoritarians tended to grow up in homes in which the parents or guardians were strict disciplinarians, often using harsh discipline to keep the children from misbehaving and to punish them when they disobeyed the parent or guardian. They were more likely to be submissive to authority, to adhere strictly to middle-class traditions and values, and to think very rigidly. Adorno et al. , also found that authoritarians, more than other individuals, tended to hold prejudices against many groups.
