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The bigot and tolerant, the aggressive and gentle personality: The attribution error in social science illustrated with the case of prejudice

Clemens Lindner, University of Jena; Julia Elad-Strenger, Bar-Ilan University; Stefanie Hechler, Deutsches Zentrum für Integrations- und Migrationsforschung (DeZim); Thomas Kessler, University of Jena

Intergroup aggression, social discrimination, and prejudice are the dark triad in intergroup relations since they inhibit positive intergroup contact and have negative effects for their victims. Consequently, these phenomena are considered social problems sought to be explained by social psychology. One intuition in the research literature is that some people are more socially problematic, that is more aggressive, discriminating, and prejudiced than others. Thus, most social psychological research attributed the social problem to problematic personalities of others. Ample empirical evidence supports this assumption, demonstrating that generalized prejudice and hate crimes are strongly and positively correlated with right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO). However, we suggest that this finding reflects a fundamental attribution error in our scientific explanation. For prejudice, a relevant antecedent of discrimination, we can demonstrate that the prejudice prediction of RWA and SDO depends on the sel.ection of prejudice targets, which usually comprise national, ethnic, gender targets. We try to overcome this limitation by sampling a broader array of prejudice targets. Two studies (N 985) assessed Authoritarianism (RWA, NGA) and SDO together with attitudes toward a broader array of targets. Both studies show consistently that prejudice is positively and negatively related to RWA and SDO. These findings highlight the problems that personality-based explanations of prejudice face: (1) Prominent personality scales (RWA, SDO) show positive and negative relations to various prejudice targets, inconsistent with the assumption of the prejudiced personality, and (2) individuals high and low in RWA and SDO have generalized prejudices. We suggest that a scientific explanation of social problems must consider the normativity from which the perception of intergroup aggression, social discrimination, and prejudice as socially problematic derives.

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