Factors affecting prejudice (and discrimination): Individual differences Flashcards
What is discrimination?
It is the behaviour that results from prejudiced attitudes so that a person behaves differently towards a particular group of people because of their negative attitudes.
What is scapegoating?
Selecting someone on whom to vent your anger
Why do people with authoritarian personality discriminate?
Their feelings of hostility are displaces onto those who are socially inferior
What is RWA?
Right wing authoritarianism
Which groups are RWA likely to hold prejudiced views on?
Women LGBTQIA+
How does RWA personality occur?
When children are socialised to believe that the world is a dangerous and threatening place
What is SDO?
Social Dominance Orientation
How do people with SDO perceive the world?
As a competitive jungle where people have to be ruthless and fight for their share of limited resources and power.
What type of personality are you likely to have if you have SDO?
Tough mindedness and negatively with agreeableness and empathy
What type of personality is an overly harsh parenting styly likely to create?
A personality type that is both highly obedient and also high to prone to display prejudice
What is conditional love from a parent to a child?
The child will only receive love if they behave correctly
What study supports that there is a relationship between personality and prejudice?
Cohrs found that RWA (+0.48) and SDO(+0.28) were both positively correlated with generalised prejudice (p less than 0.001). RWA was negatively correlated with opennes to experience (-0.22) while SDO was negatively correlated with agressableness (-0.40).
What is a weakness of the individual differences approach to prejudice?
It ignores the role of social norms and situational factors.
For example, the majority of people (72%) in an Australian study strongly disagreed with the statement “The white race is the best race” but agreed with the exclusions of asylum seeker.
This suggests it is important to understand the social as well as the individual factors in order to address the consequences for prejudice effectively
How can prejudice be reduced?
Prejudice may be learned through exposure to specific worldviews and prejudicial rhetoric. This suggests that greater regulation of media sources (such as social media sites that promote prejudiced views) may be beneficial. Furthermore, strategies that challenge the view of the world as dangerous, threatening and competitive (dsuch as international exchanges and school twinning projects) may help to combat RWA and SDO
