Factors Affecting Prejudice

Personality

Authoritarian Personality (Adorno, 1954)

Adorno proposed that invidivual differences in prejudice could be explained by authoritarian personality. He suggested that people with authoritarian personalities were more likely to be prejudiced; deep-seated personality traits predisposed some individuals to be highly sensitive to totalitarian and antidemocratic ideas and were therefore prone to be highly prejudicial. 

• Totalitarian - When you don't tolerate parties of differing opinions.
• Antidemocratic - In conflict with the principles of democracy.

Authoritarian personalities are likely to develop because of strict and punitive parenting, so they are unable to express hostility towards their parents so this aggressive is displaced onto safer targets. They are also predisposed towards ethnocentrism, which is the tendency to favour your own ethnic group.

Right Wing Authoritarianism

RWA refers to someone who has rigid and inflexible thinking and likes society to have rules and to obey those in authority, they will want to punish anyone who does not obey the rules. They believe that the world is a dangerous place and this results in a desire for stability, security and group cohesion. These people are aggressive to subordinates and submissive to authority figures.

Social Dominance…