I read something about Authoritarian Personality while I was studying for my exams, that I thought it was pretty informative and I'd share it with everyone. It was a section talking about Prejudice. The excerpt below is taken from Buskist, William., Carlson, Neil R. & Martin G Neil. (2007) Psychology (3rd ed) Massachusetts, USA : Peason Education Limited.
"Because prejudice is repugnant and can have such appalling effects, such as genocide, prejudice is often traced to individual differences and personality attributes. One of the most widely promulgated theories of prejudice is the authoritarian personality (Adorno et al., 1950). Children who are brought up in families where their parents use harsh disciplinarian methods to secure love and dependence develop a love-hate relationship with their parents, which is endurably stressful. The stress is resolved by idealizing their parents and all authority figures and redirecting their hatred onto weaker others. This resolution becomes a deep-seated and immutable personality syndrome, authoritarianism, which frames relations for the rest of the person’s life. It predisposes people to be prejudiced. Another personality explanation has been proposed by Rokeach(1948), who argues that some people, for whatever reason, have a general cognitive style that is prejudiced because they strive for a rigidly stratified social world, are resistant to belief change in the light of contradictory evidence, and are inclined to ground their beliefs in authority and orthodox belief systems."
Future parents to be take heed of the above when parenting. For some others, I hope this would shine a little light onto your present disposition. As for the rest, may this serve as a little piece of illumination.
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