Personality
Fascist Personality
- Adorno et al. (1950) developed the F (Fascism) Test to try and work out what it was in personality that made people commit atrocities in WWII
- The authoritarian personality is:
- Rigid in his/her thinking
- Obedient to authority
- Sees the world in black and white
- Sticks to the social hierarchy and rules
- Adorno thought that having this personality could lead to prejudice and discriminatory behaviour especially to low status groups
Right Wing Authoritarianism
- Rigid thinking
- Likes society to have rules so it can function
- Tends to obey rules and those in authority
- Wants to punish those who don’t obey the rules
- Prefer people to agree to submit to authority rather than using force!
- Altemeyer (1996) found a positive correlation between RWA and prejudice
- However, the link seems to be weakening (1 = perfect correlation, 0 = no relationship)
- 1950 – correlation of 0.64
- 1996 – correlation of 0.47
- 2001 – correlation of 0.30
Situation and Prejudice
- Which is more powerful – the situation you are in or your personality?
- How did Germany become so prejudiced against its minorities? What triggered the rise of anti-Semitism?
- How did US soldiers get to the point of mistreating prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison during the Iraq war after 9/11?
- Not all Germans were anti-semitic during WWII – and not all US soldiers took part in the prisoner abuses of Abu Ghraib – what does this tell you?
- How could we use ‘contact’ to change a situation where prejudice has arisen? What sort of discussions/rules/set up would we need for people to talk to each other?
Impact of Culture
- The way we are brought up – the environment and influences around us impact our thinking patterns and behaviours
- Guimond et al. (2013) looked at how societies are different in prejudice depending on whether they approach their diversity policies as: Multi-cultural or Assimilation. They found those cultures/countries with multi-cultural diversity policies were lower in prejudice than others.
- So prejudice might occur in mono-cultural/assimilation cultures more than multicultural societies
- You might also get more prejudice in collectivist than individualistic societies as the focus is on protecting your in-group rather the individual
- We might find within-cultures (emic) trends or between-cultures (etic) differences