PSY100H1 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Authoritarian Personality, Social Desirability Bias, Theodor W. Adorno

• School: UTSG
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY100H1
• Professor: Dwayne Pare

Document Summary

Before the realization of the nazi horror regime psychologists had explained prejudice as a psychodynamic process of unconscious defense mechanisms: prejudice was seen as defensive protection of one"s frustrations. This unacceptable impulses displaced to stereotyped groups. Allport elaborated on theory of authoritarian personality. Allport believed that prejudiced personality emerged out of a crippled ego: this individual feels threatened, insecure, & fearful of virtually everything. This repression leads to development of many of same characteristics possesses by the authoritarian individual : ambivalence toward parents, moralism, need for definiteness, 4 main reasons for decline of empirical test in the psychodynamic explanation for a prejudice personality: researchers became more & more critical of psychoanalytic approaches to personality. Smith & rosen found inverse correlation b/w authoritarian personality (higher scores on f scale) scores & measure of world-mindedness World-mindedness: indicator of one"s attitude toward & acceptance of people from other countries suggest that their scale & f-scale (low scores indicate greater intolerance)