Prejudice stems from distinct threat and competition motives

Evidence

Nevertheless, contemporary findings do seem to suggest important possibilities for future rapprochement. For example, the dual-process cognitive motivational model of personality, ideological attitudes, and prejudice described earlier sees RWA as influencing prejudice through sensitivity to perceived threat from outgroups, while SDO influences prejudice against outgroups through competitiveness, dominance, and superiority. It is interesting that the two dominant intergroup theories of prejudice, Realistic Conflict Theory and Social Identity Theory, suggest similar processes operating at the level of intergroup dynamics; the former sees prejudiced attitudes towards outgroups as being elicited by intergroup threat, whereas the latter sees intergroup attitudes as determined primarily by intergroup competitiveness over relative status and superiority. Both intergroup and individual-difference approaches may thus operate through the same motivational mechanisms, with one approach delineating the intergroup processes that activate these motives, and the other individual differences in proneness to their activation. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2492

Categorization

• XREF: Links back to the dual-process (Duckitt) model distinguishing RWA’s threat pathway from SDO’s dominance pathway, reconciling them with Realistic Conflict and Social Identity theories. — connects to: Ethnic frictions and status rivalries shape prejudice more than ideology does — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 2016; Envied outgroups provoke prejudice precisely because competence implies control over competitive threat. — Susan T. Fiske et al., A Model of (Often Mixed) Stereotype…, 258; Status and competition jointly explain divergent forms of prejudice — Susan T. Fiske et al., A Model of (Often Mixed) Stereotype…, 307
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2492