<  Page 7 of 14  >


Social Psychology II > Prejudice and Conflict > Stereotypes and Prejudice

Personality models

One way to understand stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination is to look at the personality characteristics of people who engage in prejudicial behaviors. What are they like? What aspects of their personalities facilitate prejudicial thinking?

As World War II drew to a close, Theodor Adorno and his colleagues <REF>(Adorno, Frenkel-Brunsick, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950) set out to map the personality characteristics of the prejudiced mind. The first thing they discovered was that people vary in the extent to which they believe in their own group's superiority. They called this belief ethnocentrism, and they found that people who were high in ethnocentrism tended to be broadly prejudiced. They didn't just dislike Jews, for example; they also disliked Blacks and gays.

The second thing they found was that people who were high in ethnocentrism also tended to be high in authoritarianism. People who are high in authoritarianism believe that authorities should be obeyed, rules should be clear, weakness should not be tolerated, and wrongs should be punished. Adorno and his colleagues believed that the correlation between ethnocentrism and authoritarianism helped explain the Holocaust. A rigid belief in authority and a strong dose of ethnocentrism is a potentially combustible mixture - unquestioning obedience to one's superiors and a ready willingness to punish the people who are at the bottom of the social ladder.

Although the original research on ethnocentrism and authoritarianism was criticized on several grounds, the main results have withstood the test of time. People who are prejudiced against one group do tend to be prejudiced against others <REF>(Crandall, 1994), and authoritarian tendencies do tend to rise during social upheaval and ethnic conflict <REF>(Doty, Peterson, & Winter, 1991)

At a more general level, the search for individual differences in stereotyping remains active. John McConahay <REF>(1986), for example, has developed a scale that is designed to tap modern racism. People who score high on the modern racism scale believe that: (1) discrimination is a thing of the past; (2) Blacks are pushing too hard into places where they are not wanted; (3) the tactics and demands of Blacks are unfair; and (4) recent gains by Blacks are undeserved

Similarly, David Sears and Donald Kinder <REF>(1985) have developed a scale that measures symbolic racism. The premise behind the symbolic racism scale is that expressions of overt racism have become taboo in U.S. culture. As a result, symbolic racists will not endorse statements that are clearly racist. But symbolic racists will endorse anti-Black statements if they are cloaked in the language of traditional values and status quo. Symbolic racists will, for example, endorse the notion that Black culture violates traditional values of individualism and self-reliance.

What all of the personality approaches have in common is the firm conviction that racism persists and that people vary in terms of how susceptible they are to it. What the newer models add is the notion that racism is rarely overt and that many people who would not describe themselves as racist nevertheless harbor prejudicial feelings and beliefs. But is there any evidence that these feelings and beliefs matter? Absolutely. For example, people who score high on racism scales are more likely to convict Blacks than they are to convict Whites, especially when the evidence supporting conviction is weak <REF>(Wittenbrink et al., 1997). Similarly, people who score high are more likely to discriminate in job evaluations of Black candidates <REF>(McConahay, 1983).

<  Page 7 of 14  >