AUTHORITARIANISM 1.strict disciplinarians. 2.submissive to authority.

1. Chapter 4 Psychodynamic Perspective: Adorno et al. (1950)- AUTHORITARIANISM 1.strict disciplinarians. 2.submissive to authority. 3.middle-class traditional values . 4.rigid thinking. 5.hold prejudice against many groups. 6.hate deviant impulses.

2. 7. project unacceptable thoughts to stereotyped groups through projection • 8. authoritarian personality can also be found in some minority groups ( Harding et al. 1969) • Allport (1954) reports that a person may feel threatened, insecure, fearful and so repress those fears & develop an authoritarian personality. Such persons are ambivalent towards parents, have need for definitiveness & have rigid thinking

3. Problem with Psychodynamic Approach • Smith & Rosen’s ( 1958) research on “worldmindedness” and Martin & Westie’s (1959) research on intolerant personality, both measure same constellation of personality traits without assuming a psychodynamic explanation. • F, A-S, E worded in such a way that it is unclear if high scores indicate agreement with authoritarian beliefs or an acquiescence bias • Did not explain why many people who did not have an authoritarian personality did show prejudice towards one group • Why prejuduce was stronger in some regions and not in others, was not explained by this approach

4. Right Wing Authoritarianism • RWA-(Altermeyer,1981)-found Adorno’s wordings of authoritarianism vague. • Came up with –authoritarian submission (submitting to legitimate authorities), authoritarian aggression (hostility towards outgroups), conventionalism (adherence to norms as acceptable by recognized authorities) • Persons high on RWA tend to be politically conservative, maintain that Bill of Rights be abolished

5. RWA – cont. • punish criminals, have orthodox religious values. • Prejudiced towards outgroups, scores on RWA correlate highly with Ethnocentrism measures & hostility towards homosexuals. • High RWA persons show more prejudiced attitudes when not asked to disclose their identity. • They are fearful, righteous, have rigid ideology, lack insight, and are high on explicit & implicit prejudice .

6. RELIGION • Religion: • Studies show there is a positive correlation between being more religious , having less tolerance, more stereotyped thoughts about others. Some persons interpret religion literally and this makes their thinking rigid, they are less likely to process information about others and tend to stereotype.

7. Committed & Consensual Religiosity: Allen & Spilka (1967) reported that persons can either have complex views about themselves & the world & be open minded (committed) or be unreceptive to ideas, tend to think in categorical categorizations, make broad generalizations (consensual). • Extrinsic& Intrinsic Religious Orientation: Allport & Ross (1967)

8. Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic . cont • Extrinsic visit church infrequently, tend to be high on prejudice. • Intrinsic visit church frequently, internalize religious beliefs, more egalitarian. • This approach has been criticized by: • Strickland & Weddell (1972)-Unitarians scored higher on Extrinsic R O, but were found to be less prejudiced.

9. Batson et al.(1978) reported that association between Intrinsic R O & prejudice was influenced by social desirability. Fifty-one White subjects were also given six measures of Religious Orientation, measure of racial prejudice, Social Desirability. Then they were told that they would discuss their religious attitudes with either a White or African American interviewer, and were asked as to how much they would like each interviewer. • IRO was related positively with SD & negatively with racial prejudice. When effects of SD were statistically controlled the negative correlation between IRO & racial prejudice disappeared

10. Morris et al (1989) maintained that religious orientations need to be specified i.e., I , E, Indiscriminately Antireligious, Indiscriminately Proreligious. Indiscriminately Antireligious & I persons were found to be lower in prejudice as compared to E & Indiscriminately Proreligious. • Herek (1978) reported that Intrinsics were intolerant of homosexual individuals.

11. Religion as a Quest Batson et al. ( 1978) reported that religion can be thought of as a process of questioning, doubting, reexamining one’s beliefs. White participants completed RO questionnaire, then were contacted 3-4 weeks later to participate ostensibly in another experiment. They were led into a movie theatre with a partition and under overt condition were told that one movie projector had broken and the could see only the same movie. Under covert condition subjects were told that different movies were being shown. Intrinsics sat with African American confederate in overt condition but with White confederate in covert condition. Those who scored high on Quest Orientation tended to sit with African American confederate in both overt & covert conditions.

12. Need for Cognition • Tend to think ponder , seek information about the world. • HNC tend to remember more stereotype-consistent information about a target but were unaffected by target-relevant stereotypes when forming impression of a given target. • LNC more likely to base their social judgments on automatic associations between traits and categorizations.

13. Need for Structure • Seek definite, clear answers and feel that the process of further thinking might challenge their current state of thinking as it might contain challenging information. • Research indicates that HNS individuals are more likely to use stereotypes to help them arrive at a social evaluation in ambiguous situations • When situation is unambiguous HNS & LNS individuals tend to form similar impressions of others

14. Need for Cognitive Closure. • Individuals high on this have a strong need for an answer on a given topic. • This influences tendency towards urgency and tendency towards permanence. • Need for cognitive closure leads people to make erroneous judgments • motivates the persons to avoid seeking further information relevant to the accuracy of that assessment. • Individuals high in this need tend to rely on stereotypes.

15. Research suggests that enhanced tendency of individuals high on this construct may be due to an increased tendency to favor one’s ingroup and derogate outgroups • Both need for structure & need for cognitive closure share-items that tap preference for order & preference for predictability. But these scales show only r=.24 • Correlation between need for cognition & need for cognitive closure is r=-.28

16. Social Dominance orientation (SDO) (Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth & Malle, 1994) • An attitude toward intergroup relations in which 1)the individual believes that groups are different • 2) that they are organized hierarchically in society, • 3) some groups naturally are higher in status than others. • 4)These individuals strongly prefer and seek to maintain the inequality among groups. • 5)High SDO promote group inequity that helps maintain dominance of one group over another.

17. SDO strongly correlated with anti Black racism, sexism, conservative political views. Hierarchy enhancers promote dominance of one group over another, are high on SDO Hierarchy-attenuators promote interests of weak over strong

18. Police tend to be high on SDO • public defenders low on SDO • Students preparing for hierarchy-enhancing positions have been found to have higher SDO • Men prefer hierarchy enhancing positions • women hierarchy-attenuating positions.

19. SDO theory predicts that individuals are socialized to believe in the legitimacy of status differences between groups. Sidanius etal. ( (1996) maintain that racism can be conceptualized as a special case of SDO. Under group threat high SDOs responded with forms of ingroup favoritism and outgroup derogation.