Theories of prejudice
Brief information on the theories of prejudice.
- Created by: Bethany Cunningham
- Created on: 14-05-13 17:37
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- Theories of prejudice
- Authoritarian personality theory
- Adorno (1950) said authoritarian personality resulted in prejudice, discrimination and negative attitudes towards a group.
- People with an authoritarian personality obey higher order figures such as when they obeyed their parents.
- Their personality is conventional and conservative-sticks to the male norms.
- Their parents were overly harsh and disciplined, this resulted in the child having a weak ego.
- This relates to Freud because Adorno said this develops in childhood.
- This type of personality expresses authority, stereotypes readily,submissive to superiors and aggressive to inferiors.
- Adorno investigated the extent to which a person with an authoritarian personality is likely to be anti Semitic or ethnocentric.
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- Realistic conflict theory
- This occurs when there is a competition over limited resources.
- As long as the competition occurs, there is an increased negativity between the groups. At the extreme, it will result in one group thinking they are superior.
- Key study: Sherif
- Concern has been issued over the ethics of this study.
- A field experiment
- To investigate whether conflict occurs between groups because of scarce resources.
- 22 eleven year old middle class boys were sent to a summer camp in America and the boys were divided into Rattlers and Eagles.
- This was done by random allocation.
- In the first week, each group didn't know each other's existence and in the second week they were set up in competitions and offered prizes.
- Strong in-group and out group feelings developed leading to hostility, stereotypes and fights.
- Conflict can occur over scarce resources (only one team received prizes).
- High ecological validity
- Conflict is not the only reason why prejudice occurs.
- This involves two or more social groups.
- This occurs when there is a competition over limited resources.
- Social identity theory
- This believes that naturally we divide the world into 'us' and 'them'.
- This is known as the in-group and the out-group.
- This occurs through a process known as social categorisation.
- An in-group will be prejudice to the out-group and this as a result will discriminate them.
- The advantages of this is that the in-group will have a boost in self-esteem.
- There will be an over-evaluation of the in-group and devaluation of the out-group.
- Stereotypes are used to enhance the in-group and devalue the out-group.
- This is known as the in-group and the out-group.
- This natural prejudice explanation could be misinterpreted as a justification for prejudice.
- Key study: Tajel (1970)
- To investigate whether random assignment in a group would be enough to result in prejudice between the in-group and the out-group.
- School children aged between 11 and 14 year old were assigned to a group that they were told is because of their similarities in interests in music artists.
- No interaction took place.
- Each person was asked to create a model and they were then asked to reward the best models.
- Generally it was found that children were more likely to allocate rewards to the in-group rather than the out-group.
- People show prejudice to out-groups and favour the in-group when membership is anonymous.
- Known as a minimal group paradigm - this is where the group doesn't know each other and don't engage with each other.
- The prejudice is suggested in order to boost self-esteem.
- This may not comply with all culture norms especially with more cooperative societies.
- This believes that naturally we divide the world into 'us' and 'them'.
- Prejudice is an attitude/belief that is wrong or unjustified attitude based solely on their membership in a group
- Authoritarian personality theory
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