3 results
11 - Authoritarianism
- from Part II - The Politics of Intergroup Attitudes
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- By John Duckitt
- Edited by Danny Osborne, University of Auckland, Chris G. Sibley, University of Auckland
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Handbook of Political Psychology
- Published online:
- 17 February 2022
- Print publication:
- 24 February 2022, pp 177-197
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Summary
New research emphasises the need to conceptually differentiate authoritarianism on right and left from conventional conservatism and liberalism. It is therefore argued that authoritarianism is best conceptualised as an intolerant and morally absolutist motive to coercively impose particular values, way of life, and social organisation on individuals. Research on likely causes and consequences has thus far focused almost entirely on authoritarianism of the right, and indicates that two distinct dimensions, best captured by Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), have different genetic, dispositional, and situational origins. In addition, despite having broadly similar likely effects on anti-democratic attitudes, prejudice, nationalism, political intolerance, and extremism, they are differently motivated; RWA by perceived threats to safety and security, and SDO by competitive threats to the social hierarchy. Emerging research on LWA also suggests that authoritarianism of both right and left are rooted in similar personal characteristics and have similar effects on attitudes and behaviour.
9 - The Dual Process Motivational Model of Ideology and Prejudice
- from Part I - General Theoretical Perspectives
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- By John Duckitt, University of Auckland, Chris G. Sibley, University of Auckland
- Edited by Chris G. Sibley, University of Auckland, Fiona Kate Barlow, University of Queensland
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Handbook of the Psychology of Prejudice
- Published online:
- 17 November 2016
- Print publication:
- 31 October 2016, pp 188-221
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Summary
Early research on prejudice resulted in two important empirical observations. First, the kinds of social groups or categories that are targeted with prejudice vary markedly in different societies; and second, individuals within societies vary markedly in the degree to which they are generally prejudiced or generally tolerant. This suggested that we need two kinds of theories to explain prejudice. In the first case, societal or intergroup theories have focused on particular kinds of intergroup relations (e.g., intergroup competition, threat, or inequality) that would cause prejudice to be directed against specific groups and to be widely shared within a particular society. Thomas Pettigrew (1958) referred to this as the “specificity of prejudice.” In the second case, individual difference theories have focused on certain stable characteristics of individuals (e.g., personality, values, motives, or ideological beliefs) that could cause them to be generally more or less prejudiced against all or most target groups. Early theorists referred to this as the “generality of prejudice” or “generalized prejudice” (e.g., Allport, 1954).
More recently, however, theories have emerged that can encompass both individual and intergroup factors within their explanatory frameworks. The dual process model (DPM) is one such approach. It was originally formulated to explain systematic individual differences in generalized prejudice, which it did in terms of two basic motivational orientations that dispose individuals to be generally prejudiced or tolerant. It also, however, proposed that these two motivational orientations would be largely activated by socially shared situational and intergroup factors (such as intergroup competition, threat, and inequality). In this way both individual and social or intergroup factors would operate together to generate prejudices. These prejudices are both specific (widely shared and directed against targets specific to a particular society) and generalized (with individuals in these societies varying systematically in the degree to which they were generally prejudiced or tolerant).
The DPM encompasses three closely intertwined explanatory contributions to the understanding of prejudice. First, it conceptualizes the two major social attitudinal predictors of individual differences in prejudice as expressions of two distinct motivational goal or value dimensions. Second, the DPM shows how these two motivationally based ideological dimensions are shaped by and emerge from different social and psychological bases. And third, the DPM provides an explanation of why these two motivationally based dimensions cause prejudice and describes how they operate in a complementary and interactive fashion with social and intergroup causes of prejudice.
4 - Relative Deprivation and Intergroup Attitudes: South Africa before and after the Transition
- Edited by Iain Walker, Murdoch University, Western Australia, Heather J. Smith, Sonoma State University, California
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- Book:
- Relative Deprivation
- Published online:
- 29 September 2009
- Print publication:
- 03 December 2001, pp 69-90
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Summary
In May 1994, South Africa's first democratic election marked a dramatic transfer of political power from the White minority to the long subjugated Black majority. This provided a unique opportunity to investigate several critical questions about the interaction of sociopolitical change and intergroup relations. In this chapter we report on one such set of questions: how this political transition influenced Africans' perceptions of relative deprivation to Whites, their attitudes to Whites and their ethnic ingroup, and whether changes in relative deprivation causally affected group attitudes, as relative deprivation theorists have long argued.
Prior to the transition in 1994, South Africa was characterized by massive and long standing socioeconomic inequalities between White and Black. From 1917 to 1980, the distribution of personal per capita income showed relatively little change, with Whites earning ten times more than Africans and four to five times more than the Apartheid-designated Asian and Coloured Black minorities. In 1978, South Africa was found to have the most unequal distribution of income of all 57 countries surveyed by the Second Carnegie Commission into Poverty and Development in South Africa, generating a Gini coefficient of no less than .66 (Gini coefficients can vary between 0, where incomes are perfectly evenly distributed, and 1, with most Western countries having coefficients between .20 and .35) (Odén, Ohlson, Davidson, Strand, Lundahl, & Moritz, 1994).