Page 351 - The Social Animal

Prejudice 333

ment, anti-Semitic students became especially biased in their evalu-
ation of a woman they thought was Jewish after they received a low
score on a supposed test of intelligence. Making the students feel
better about themselves reduced their prejudicial responses.

Dispositional Prejudice There is some evidence to support
the notion of individual differences in a general tendency to hate. In
other words, some people are predisposed toward being prejudiced
not solely because of immediate external influences, but also because
of the kind of people they are. Theodor Adorno and his associates
referred to these individuals as authoritarian personalities. 68 Such
individuals tend to be rigid in their beliefs; they tend to possess con-
ventional values; they are intolerant of weakness in themselves, as
well as in others; they tend to be highly punitive; they are suspicious;
and they are respectful of authority to an unusual degree.The instru-
ment developed to determine authoritarianism (called the F scale)
measures the extent to which each person agrees or disagrees with
such items as

Sex crimes such as rape and attacks on children deserve more
than mere imprisonment; such criminals ought to be publicly
whipped, or worse.
Most people don’t realize how much our lives are controlled by
plots hatched in secret places.

Obedience and respect for authority are the most important
virtues children should learn.

A high degree of agreement with such items indicates authori-
tarianism. The major finding is that people who are high on author-
itarianism do not simply dislike Jews or blacks; rather, they show a
consistently high degree of prejudice against all minority groups.
Through an intensive clinical interview of people high and low
on the F scale, Adorno and his colleagues traced the development of
this cluster of attitudes and values to early childhood experiences in
families characterized by harsh, threatening parental discipline.They
argued that people high on the F scale tend to have parents who use
love and its withdrawal as their major way of producing obedience.
In general, authoritarian personalities, as children, tend to be both