Are some people born bigots? If not, what makes people prejudiced? Can the ideology people follow play a role? We have all seen the destructive toll of prejudice on individuals and communities throughout history, as it led to discrimination, hate crime or even mass murders. Identifying the factors that make us more likely to adopt prejudicial attitudes could help us understand how to address prejudice on a wider scale.
- First, we'll look at how individual differences affect our behaviour.
- Next, we'll explore the connection between ideological attitudes and prejudice.
- Then, we'll use Cohrs et al. 2012 summary to demonstrate how research supports the association between ideological attitudes and prejudice.
- We'll outline the Cohrs et al. 2012 focus and method to understand how the study was conducted.
- Moving on, we'll describe Cohrs et al. 2012 findings.
- Finally, we'll take a critical look at the Cohrs et al. 2012 evaluation.
Fig 1 - Prejudice remains a destructive force in societies around the world.
Ideological Attitudes and Prejudice
Not everyone responds the same way in the same situation. Let's look at some personality correlates associated with prejudice.
Authoritarian Personality
The authoritarian personality dimension, proposed by Adorno (1950), is characterised by strong loyalty toward one's group and obedience to authority. It is also associated with hostility towards other groups. Adorno theorised that individuals develop authoritarian personality traits due to experiences of harsh and punitive parenting.
Individuals who score high on this dimension tend to fear appearing weak and direct their anger and frustration toward social groups with less power than them. The authoritarian personality can be measured with the F-scale (Fascist scale). The scale assesses traits like rigid thinking, a desire to uphold traditional norms and punish individuals who fall outside of them, submission towards authorities, superstition, and a rejection of self-insight or looking inwards.
The Big Five Model of Personality
The Big Five model of personality consists of five personality dimensions: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (OCEAN).
- A person leaning towards high neuroticism can be characterised by being self-critical, disliking themselves, and frequently experiencing mood swings, depression, or feelings of panic.
- The extraversion dimension reflects how energetic and sociable an individual is.
- Openness to experience is characterised by an interest in different ideas, curiosity, imagination, and sensitivity to art.
- Agreeableness is associated with tender-mindedness, altruism, care, tolerance, and consideration of others.
- Conscientiousness relates to self-discipline, dutifulness, efficiency, productivity, and a sense of competence and responsibility.
Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA)
Bob Altemeyer (1988) built on the work of Adorno and introduced the idea of the Right-Wing Authoritarianism personality dimension, which was theorised to be associated with greater prejudice. This personality trait is thought to develop when individuals internalise the idea that the world is dangerous.
Right-wing authoritarianism is characterised by rigid thinking, intolerance toward other world views, and perceptions of other groups as a threat.
Social Dominance Orientation (SDO)
Felicia Pratto (1994) proposed a personality dimension characterised by a pursuit of dominance and a preference for hierarchy. Social dominance orientation (SDO) is thought to develop following experiences when the individual has to compete with others over scarce resources.
Individuals high in the Social Dominance Orientation tend to seek superiority over others and believe that the world is a competitive place where only the strongest can survive.
Fig 3 - Ideological attitudes can skew people's perception of the world and others. It can make people see others as a threat or as competition.
Cohrs et al 2012 Focus
As previous studies have suggested that individual differences like the authoritarian personality can affect one's obedience to unjust authorities, Cohrs and colleagues wanted to see how they influence prejudice. They focused on the personality traits and attitudes that could correlate with prejudice. They also wanted to investigate the relationships between these factors, testing the dual-process model of prejudice.
The dual-process model of ideology and prejudice (Duckitt, 2009) argues that ideological attitudes (Right-Wing authoritarianism and social dominance theory) mediate the relationship between personality traits and prejudice.
According to the model's prediction, certain personality traits predict developing attitudes that can result in prejudice.
Cohrs et al. 2012 Summary
Cohrs et al. (2012) investigated the relationship between personality traits, ideological attitudes, and prejudice. They also wanted to see if self-reported participant responses would be similar to peer-reported responses describing the participant. Two studies were conducted:
- Study one: Personality, attitudes and prejudice were assessed based on self-report and one peer-report measure.
- Study two: Data from two peer raters was used.
They found self and peer assessments to be similar. Only RWA predicted prejudice, while SDO didn't and some personality traits correlated directly with prejudice.
Cohrs et al. 2012 Method
Across both studies, the sample consisted of 517 participants, all German, heterosexual, and able-bodied. Previous studies investigating the effects of personality on prejudice mainly relied on self-report methods with low reliability. Cohrs et al. (2012) added a peer report method to their study design to address this issue. They used self-report measures identifying the Big Five personality dimensions using ranked scales.
The researchers correlated participants' scores on the Big Five personality dimensions, SDO and RWA, with prejudice measures. Three measures of prejudice were used: prejudice toward homosexuals, people with disabilities, and foreigners.
Prejudice is a sensitive topic; it is socially perceived as negative and harmful. Therefore, when individuals are asked to rate their levels of prejudice, they might knowingly or unknowingly underestimate their prejudice to appear more favourable before others and themselves. That is why self-report measures are prone to social desirability bias.
Cohrs et al. 2012 Findings
Overall, self-reported and peer-reported data were similar, but social desirability appeared to be reduced when data from two peers were used. Only RWA mediated the relationship between personality and prejudice. This research supports findings in previous areas of research on the topic
Low openness to experience and high conscientiousness predicted ideological attitudes – RWA.
Only the RWA predicted prejudice, while SDO didn't.
Low agreeableness and low openness to experience predicted prejudice directly, not just through attitudes.
Cohrs et al. 2012 Evaluation
What strengths and limitations could be covered after evaluating the studies performed by Cohrs et al.?
| Strengths | Limitations |
| Greater reliability compared to previous experiments since researchers collected data from both the participant and their acquaintances and ensured anonymity when collecting the data. | The findings might not be generalisable to the population outside of Germany. |
| Acquaintances can also be biased in their assessment of prejudice and personality. Cohrs et al. attempted to subvert this in their second study by using two peers, but as participants decide on the peer, it does not fully remove this issue. |
| A standardised procedure was used, which allows replicability and increases reliability. | Findings are correlational; we can't conclude that personality causes attitudes or prejudice. There may be many other factors influencing prejudice, personality and attitudes. |
If Right-Wing Authoritarianism is correlated with prejudice, does it mean that left-wing people are less rigid in their thinking or less prone to biases? Not necessarily. Peter Ditto et al. (2017) have found that both right and left-wing people are likelier to make unfounded accusations of partisan bias. Partisan bias is the belief that the political party you support is a victim of media bias. He suggested that this shows that both sides of the political spectrum can be rigid thinkers.
Individual Differences in Ideological Attitudes and Prejudice - Key takeaways
- Individual differences can affect our behaviour. For example, the authoritarian Personality dimension has been associated with greater obedience.
- According to the dual-process model of prejudice, certain personality traits predict developing attitudes that can result in prejudice.
- The ideological attitudes proposed to be linked to prejudice include Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Social Dominance orientation.
- Cohrs et al. 2012 has found that certain personality traits are correlated with prejudice directly and some are correlated indirectly.
- Low openness to experience and high conscientiousness predicted ideological attitudes (RWA), which predicted prejudice.
- Low agreeableness and low openness to experience predicted prejudice directly, not just through attitudes.
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