Factors Affecting Prejudice Flashcards
Explain how authoritarian personality can affect prejudice
-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 extreme high standards of achievement. They offer conditional love, child only receives love if they behave correctly. In the case of people with an authoritarian personality, their feelings of hostility are displaced onto those who are socially inferior (scapegoating)
Explain how right wing authoritarianism can affect prejudice
-people high in RWA tend to hold prejudice attitudes towards various groups including women who identify as LGBT
-when children are are socialised to believe that the world is dangerous and threatening place, RWA may occur
-it develops as a reaction to fear and uncertainty, and people with RWA seek security through preserving existing social order, they are suspicious and overtly hostile towards anyone who defies the norm
Explain how social dominance orientation (personality) can affect prejudice
-SDO describes people who are motivated to seek out ingroup power, dominance and superiority. They prefer hierarchical versus equal distribution of power
-SDO see the world as a competitive jungle where people have to be ruthless and fight for their share of limited resources and power
-SDO has personality characteristics such as tough-mindedness and correlates negatively with agreeableness and empathy.
Explain how social norms (situation) can affect prejudice
Give research to support
-social norms refer to the unwritten rules about what is socially acceptable and desirable within specific social groups. A part of social identity theory is that people follow the norms created by their ingroup because violations may lead to rejection, which they want to avoid because group belonging is a strong motivator due to link with self esteem.
Research to support: A Swedish study experimentally manipulated social norms. Some participants heard a confederate express scepticism that anyone could agree with the statement ‘discrimination of women is no longer a problem in Sweden’. Mean levels of sexism were significantly lower for a group who had heard this statement compared to control group who had not.
Explain how competition and resource stress (situation) can affect prejudice
-realistic conflict theory highlighted the importance of competition is escalating prejudice, and when groups are in competition for limited resources the result is prejudice, which is a situational factor.
Explain how the norm of intolerance (culture) can affect prejudice
Baldwin states all cultures are ethnocentric to some extent I.e they believe their own culture is superior to others
-in some cultures the norm is to be more accepting of diversity and tolerant of difference though often prejudice and discrimination still exists in a more subtle and covert ways.
-in other cultures the outward expression of prejudice towards certain out groups may be accepted and even encouraged.
-for example in 1948 racial segregation was legal and led to gross discrimination of the black majority. The system was abolished in 1994 but prejudice and discrimination are still overt and widespread.
