Is prejudice a personality trait?
Prejudice and social cognition
Hey all,
Welcome to Human Nature, the illustrated psychology newsletter.
This week we are continuing our series on prejudice and social cognition. But before we go on, I think it’s helpful to define what we mean by prejudice. In social psychology, prejudice refers to an attitude or orientation towards a social group that devalues it directly or indirectly, often in a way that serves the individual’s interests.
Over the last fifty years or so, social psychologists have explored different explanations for why prejudice occurs, from the personal to the social.
Today we will explore the personality approach to prejudice.
The prejudiced personality
a) The authoritarian personality
After WWII, social psychologists took great interest in explaining how prejudice on the scale perpetrated by nazi Germany could occur. In those days, psychologists were heavily influenced by psychodynamic theory, which posited that negative feelings and impulses are displaced from a powerful object towards a less powerful one. Building on this idea, Adorno and his colleagues (1950) suggested that a highly strict upbringing can lead to conflicting feelings of admiration and hostility towards parents. But instead of directing them towards the parents, who are perceived as powerful, the individual might instead direct displaced feelings of anger towards a weaker target. Adorno and colleagues named this particular trait the authoritarian personality, and suggested that it was characterised by low tolerance for ambiguity, rigid adherence to social conventions and high respect for authority figures.
In 1950, Adorno and colleagues devised a scale to measure the trait of authoritarian personality, called the F-scale (f for fascism). Participants were white Californians, and the results showed that high scores on the F-scale correlated positively with various forms of prejudice. To test their hypothesis that this personality trait was a result of an overly strict parenting, they conducted in-depth interviews with people who either scored very high or very low on the scale. In line with their hypothesis, they found that people who scored high on the F-scale tended to idealise their parents and had highly strict parents who severely punished disobedience.
However, in the 1960s and 1970s the validity of the F-scale and the interviews were questioned on the basis of methodological concerns, and as psychology moved away from psychodynamic theory. It was only in 1981 that the authoritarian personality was revived by Altemeyer, who proposed a more refined version of the trait: right-wing authoritarianism. He suggested that the traits described by the original term were more closely linked to right-wing authoritarian attitudes, and that it was due to socially reinforced attitudes rather than parenting and personality.
b) Social dominance orientation
Later in the 1990s, researchers offered an alternative explanation for prejudice. Based on social dominance theory, Pratto and colleagues (1994) introduced the social dominance orientation. For those who believe in social dominance, forming hierarchies based on group (like gender and race) is a natural human behaviour. Crucially, this worldview is maintained by legitimising myths, which are cultural beliefs and values that justify inequality. These can be overtly negative, such as prejudiced views that women or certain races are intellectually inferior, or more seemingly benign ideas, such as the view that we live in a meritocracy. Both help maintain the status quo. The latter is used to pin down wealth and power on individual effort while attributing poverty to individual shortcomings, ignoring the inequality of opportunity for different groups.
Based on this theory, in 1994, Pratto and colleagues developed the social dominance orientation scale. Confirming their prediction, they found that high social dominance orientation predicts higher prejudice and higher belief in legitimising myths.
Although both the authoritarian personality trait and social dominance orientation predict prejudice, the two are not related. Social ‘dominators’ have less respect for authority, tradition and religion, and are more likely to be male and Machiavellian (willing to manipulate others for their own personal gains) compared to authoritarian types. It has been suggested that social dominators can influence lead right-wing authoritarians (Son Hing, Bobocel, Zanna & McBride, 2007).
The role of social context
Although these personality traits and orientations provide partial explanation for prejudice, it is hard to conceive that an entire population can possess these attributes. There are many studies that suggest that these aren’t enduring personality characteristics, but are rather influenced by social context.
For instance, a 1957 field study by Siegel and Siegel found that female university students with high levels of authoritarian personality were heavily influenced by their environment. At the start of university, the students were either placed in sororities (which held more traditional values at the time) or liberal dorms. By the end of their degree, those who had been in sororities had similar attitudes to when they started. However, those who had been placed in liberal dorms saw a significant reduction in authoritarian personality traits.
A more recent study suggested that social dominance can be subject to the effects of environment too. In 2003, Giumond, Dambrun, Michinov and Duarte measured social dominance orientation in law students (a high prestige degree) and psychology students (a low prestige degree). As predicted, law students were higher in social dominance orientation at the start than psychology students. However, they found that at the end of their respective degrees, the social dominance of law students had actually increased, suggesting that being in an environment that confirms their belief had potentially led to its strengthening;
A dual process
It is now thought that both the authoritarian personality and social dominance orientation are influenced by environment and social context. To test the hypothesis that a high threat environment increases right-wing authoritarianism, Duckitt and Fisher, conducted a study in 2003 in which they evaluated students from New Zealand. They gave half the students a positive scenario about the future of New Zealand (low-threat condition), while giving the other half one in which crime and violence was prominent (high-threat condition). They found that those who were in the high-threat condition had increased levels or right-wing authoritarianism.
Based on these and other findings, Duckitt and colleagues proposed the dual process model (2001, 2006). According to this model, right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance form two independent dimensions of social attitudes that are characterised by different motivations. Right-wing authoritarianism is caused by a worldview that the world is a dangerous and threatening place, combined with a disposition towards social conformity. This results in support for drastic measures to maintain social stability negative attitudes towards threatening outgroups. Social dominance orientation, on the other hand, is generated by the belief that the world is a ruthless, competitive jungle and a tough-minded disposition. This leads to the desire to assert social dominance and negative attitudes towards competing or low-status outgroups.
Thus, both right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation are a result of social context and one’s actual (or perceived) environment, combined with certain personality dispositions.
Thank you for reading, see you next time.
Sources:
Right-wing authoritarianism (Altemeyer, 1981).
The Other “Authoritarian Personality”. (Altemeyer, 1998).
Social dominance theory (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999).
Reference groups, membership groups, and attitude change. (Siegel & Siegel, 1957).
The impact of social threat on worldview and ideological attitudes. ( Duckitt & Fisher, 2003).
It seems as if no matter how much progress is made on the path towards equality and tolerance, prejudice and discrimination stubbornly persist all across the world. However, in order to combat prejudice, we must first understand how it works. In this series of Human Nature, we explore the mechanisms behind prejudiced thinking and behaviour through the lens of social psychology.