Psychological Theories of Prejudice

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Psychological Theories of Prejudice

The first experiment I would like to look at is Adorno et al (1950).

In this experiment Adorno hypothesised that a child's personality

especially their level of prejudice came from the way in which they

were raised by their parents. Adorno argued that if children were

brought up in an authoritarian environment, where the children were

not allowed to express themselves they would aim there anger towards

other parties. Adorno calculated that the most likely targets or

scapegoats for this pent up aggression would be weaker minority

groups, and would use these minorities as an ego-defensive prop. He

tested his, white, middle class, non-Jewish, American, male subjects

on two scales, the F scale that measured people's authoritarian and

anti democratic personality traits and the PEC scale that measured

peoples reluctance to social change. Adorno et al found that people

who scored highly on the PEC scale usually scored highly on the F

scale. Adorno concluded that this meant people who were raised in an

authoritarian manner were more likely to be prejudiced.

If this experiment was correct an obvious way to reduce prejudice

would be to ensure children were not brought up in strict

environments, as this would allow them to vent their frustrations

towards their parents and not towards scapegoats and minority groups

in later life. However there are too many criticisms in Adorno's

experiment for this to be correct. There is no explanation why some

people brought up in authoritarian households are not prejudice, also

there is no explanation for why people brought up in non-authoritarian

households can also b...

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... between the groups before the experiment starts. Sherif only has to

destroy a few weeks of bad feeling between the groups, where as in

Star and Minards experiment the pressure form social acceptance and

years of prejudice is too great for a common goal to unite the black

and white people after the goal is achieved. So we need society as a

whole to embrace super-ordinate goals and equal status contact, and

for society to frown upon and punish prejudice to reduce its impact.

Everything and everyone must be de-segregated and it must be seen as

the norm for every race creed and culture to play, learn and work

together. A good example of this comes from Bogatz and Ball (1971) who

found that white children who watched mixed race television programmes

like 'Sesame Street' had better attitudes towards blacks and

Hispanics.

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