Authoritarian prejudice springs from ego weakness and unresolved inner conflict

Evidence

The prejudiced personality, which like Adorno et al. (1950) he also referred to as the “authoritarian personality,” was someone for whom prejudice was psychologically functional and a direct response to deep-rooted underlying needs in the personality. At the core of this prejudiced personality were a set of traits Allport summed up as “ego weakness” – insecurity, fearfulness, anxiety and an inability to cope effectively with one’s own inner tensions, conflicts, and anxieties, or with uncertainty, threat, change, and ambiguity in the external world. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2429

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Allport’s concept of ‘ego weakness’ as the core of the prejudiced personality.
• XREF: connects to: The absence of conflict in normal people masks authority’s prior suppression of instinct; Pseudo-existential self-struggle is staged inwardness that masks authoritarian conformity. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 158