factors affecting prejudice: individual differences: personality

Question 1

what is personality?

Answer 1

• how you experience the world and behave as an individual
• people’s individual characteristics include their attitudes, needs, and responses to situations

Question 2

what is the authoritarian personality theory and how did Adorno et al. measure it?

Answer 2

• authoritarian personality theory, developed by Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford (1950), explains why some individuals are prejudiced
• identified specific traits in the authoritarian personality, such as hostility toward people of different races, social groups, age, sexuality, or other minorities
• they interviewed two American college students (Mack and Larry) about their political beliefs, upbringing, and attitudes toward minorities
• they developed scales to measure authoritarianism, including:
• anti-semitism
• ethnocentrism
• conservatism
• F-Scale (fascism scale) to assess anti-democratic beliefs and tendencies

Question 3

what are some personality differences, and how are they explained from nature and nurture viewpoints?

Answer 3

• personality differences: include traits such as being outgoing or reserved, friendly or cruel
• nature viewpoint: personality is innate, determined by genes inherited from parents
• nurture viewpoint: personality, including gender, is learned through upbringing and role models

Question 4

how did Adorno et al. develop their theory of prejudice?

Answer 4

• data collection: 80 interviews (40 male and 40 female interviewees) covering: background, beliefs, feelings toward others, religious and political ideology
• additional methods: this info, questionnaire data, clinical interviews with Mack and Larry, Thematic Apperception Tests
• this combined information helped to develop their theory of prejudice

Question 5

what are the key characteristics of the authoritarian personality according to Adorno et al.?

Answer 5

• hostility: hostile toward those they see as inferior, particularly minorities or “out-groups”
• rigid thinking: intolerant to change and rigid in their beliefs
• conventionality: very conventional in their attitudes and conform to social group norms
• submissive to authority: obedient to those in positions of power
• upbringing Influence: often have experienced strict, unaffectionate parenting, leading them to project anger and aggression onto others
• they were taught to be respectful to parents, but also learned to be cruel to those seen as weak

Question 6

how did Adorno et al. believe the authoritarian personality was developed? (developmental psych)

Answer 6

• authoritarian personality develops in childhood, influenced by harsh parenting aimed at ensuring obedience
• children develop a love-hate relationship with their parents due to strict, unaffectionate parenting
• hatred and resentment toward parents are repressed and displaced onto weaker members of society, eg minorities
• despite this, children maintain respect for authority figures
• this theory explains both the development of obedience and prejudice

Question 7

weakness: explaining wide-scale prejudice

Answer 7

• while the authoritarian personality theory can explain individual differences, such as biases in school or extreme political views (e.g., National Front), it doesn’t offer a valid explanation for large-scale prejudice, like the widespread hatred and discrimination experienced by Jews during the Holocaust

Question 8

weakness: biological basis

Answer 8

• authoritarian personality theory suggests that prejudice is driven by innate (genetic) personality traits
• CA: biological basis would imply that prejudice is fixed and unchangeable
• history shows that attitudes toward minorities can change, such as in the case of the Rwandan genocide, which evolved from a previously harmonious relationship between the Tutsis and Hutus
• such social changes cannot be explained by genetics alone