Prejudice Flashcards
What is prejudice?
Antipathy (Strong feeling of dislike) or a derogatory social attitude towards particular social groups or their members, combined with the feeling and expression of negative affect
- An attitude or orientation that devalues a group
What is social discrimination?
Explicit display of negative or disadvantaging behaviour towards particular social groups or their members
What are individualistic approaches to prejudice?
- Authoritarian personality theory
- social dominance orientation
What are intergroup relations approaches to prejudice?
- Realistic conflict theory
- Social identity theory
According to Allport (1954) what is a prejudiced personality?
People with negative attitudes toward one outgroup also tend to have negative attitudes toward other groups
Who conceptualised authoritarian personality theory?
Adorno et al., 1950
What is authoritarian personality theory (Adorno et al., 1950) highly influenced by and in what ways?
Psychodynamic theory
- Human behaviour - a dynamic interplay of conscious and unconscious motivations.
- Prejudice as a manifestation of a particular pathological personality
What are some characteristics of authoritarian parenting?
- Extremely strict parents
- Children concerned with obedience to parents
- Conformity to social norms
- Conflicting feelings of admiration and aggression towards parents
What are resolutions to authoritarian parenting?
Scapegoating - the tendency to blame someone else for one’s own problems - negative feelings displaced onto weaker groups (Scapegoats)
Personality syndrome - reflected in a person’s social attitudes, rigid regard for social conventions, simplistic thinking etc. - parents (authority figures) loved and respected
How is the authoritarian personality measured?
Adorno et al. (1947) California F-Scale - a personality test
What does the California F-scale measure?
People’s susceptibility to fascist ideas:
- Authoritarian submission (high degree of submissiveness to authority)
- Conventionalism (desire to adhere to group norms)
- Authoritarian aggression (intolerance of those who violate conventional values)
What are 2 limitations of Adorno et al. (1947) F-scale? When did research into this decline?
- Use of unrepresentative samples
- Interviewer bias in clinic interviews
Research declined in 60s and 70s
In the 1980’s, who reviewed the F-scale and what did they conceptualise as a result?
Altemeyer, 1981 - Right-wing authoritarianism scale - the social environment reinforces obedience, conventionalism and aggression.
What variable is still widely used to predict social attitudes and prejudice towards social groups in Altemeyer’s (1981) right-wing authoritarianism?
Personality variable
What does social dominance theory (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999) suggest?
All human societies tend to be structured as systems of group-based hierarchies
- Universal tendency (in stable societies) to be organised hierarchically (one social group holds disproportionate power over the others)
- Hierarchies often based on ethnic, religious, national, or racial aspects
What is social dominance orientation (Pratto et al., 1994)?
SDO scale measure acceptance of and desire for group based social hierarchy
- People with higher SDO tend to be more sexist, racist and prejudiced towards immigrants.
- 14 items on very negative (1) to very positive (7) likert scale.
What is social order maintained by and how is this supported by legitimising myths? (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999)?
Discrimination (including institutional discrimination)
- Those values, beliefs, or cultural ideologies that provide moral and intellectual justification for group inequality and oppression
What is explicit prejudice and how is it assessed?
Collection of attitudes that the holder is aware of having and is able to express consciously
- assessed via self-report measures eg. surveys