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“Attitudes form directly as a result of experience. They may emerge due to direct personal experience, or they may result from observation” (Cherry, 2011). They are evaluative, meaning they are either positive or negative; and the order in which things are learnt about an individual, influences substantially on the formation of one’s attitude. The primacy and recency effect have been proven to have a huge influence on the formation of attitudes. Generally, evidence collected through the majority of studies suggests the primacy effect; the initial information gained upon first encountering an individual, has a much stronger influence on attitude formation than the recency effect; the last information …show more content…
Prejudices are mainly based on an individual’s stereotypes: thought processes; but are charged with emotion and strong feelings of hostility towards a particular attitude object that conform to certain social group membership; more commonly on a person’s race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, religion and age. Without the initial stereotype, prejudice is unable to develop because the thought process would not exist within cognition to enable an emotional charge. This unjustified attitude would lead to negative prejudice views, for example; racism: a white man holding a negative attitude towards a black man’s presence. The prejudice links to the affective component of the ABC model whilst the stereotype links to the Cognitive component. Gordon Allport (1979:182) suggests stereotypes and prejudice “emerge in part as a result of normal human thinking. In order to make sense of the world around us, it is important to sort information into mental …show more content…
Through his study on Nazi behaviour, he conducted case studies, clinical interviews and developed a psychometric test named the F scale to understand anti Semitism. His results were drawn from over 2000 white, middle class, non-Jewish students, and he concluded that an individual who has been raised by strict and cruel parents; projects and displaces unconscious hostility derived from their parent’s harshness, onto different ethnic minorities, racial groups or out groups. The F scale focused heavily on fascism, and if one was said to have a fascist personality; they would be susceptible to fascist propaganda. The authoritarian personality Adorno (1950) found, describes an individual who is hostile to those of inferior status, servile to those of higher status, contemptuous of weakness, has conventional values and ways of life; and also strongly distinguishes themselves clearly from the out-group, who are seen as bad (Gross. 2010:365). Prejudice from an authoritarian personality, is suggested to be a defence mechanism resulting from reaction formation, which has 2 cognitive styles; rigidity and intolerance of