Personality Traits May Express Themselves as Prejudice, Too

A group of experts from the University of the Basque Country (UBC) says that certain forms of prejudice may in fact be personality traits that are common to a certain group of individuals.

The experts mostly focused their efforts on understanding why certain people have generalized beliefs about other social groups, without any scientific foundation, or based solely on hearsay evidence.

At the same time, the new study was also able to find the common grounds where sexism and racism – two prevalent types of discriminatory behavior – meet in the minds of those who apply them in life.

One of the coauthors of the new paper, UBC psychologist Dr. Maite Garaigordobil, says that people who are sexists tend to display racist tendencies as well. What is really interesting is that they do this regardless of whether they discriminate against women in a positive or negative manner.

There are men who believe that women are inferior, this being the negative form of sexism. However, there are also those who believe that women are weaker, and as such need to be protected and care for.

The latter is a benevolent form of the behavior, but it still counts as discrimination, researchers say. Men engaged in both types of sexism display tendencies towards racism, the UBC scientists learned.

“The results even suggest that such prejudiced attitudes could be a personality trait. Sexism is linked to authoritarianism and a leaning towards social dominance,” Garaigordobil goes on to explain.

“In other words, sexist people accept hierarchies and social inequality, they believe that different social groups have a status that they deserve and they feel that the social class to which they belong is the best,” she adds. This is why both these forms of discrimination are so closely related.

Garaigordobil says that men who tend to apply the more aggressive, hostile form of sexism are more likely to describe themselves with terms such as admirable, sure of themselves, strong, and brave, all of which denote masculinity in its rawest form.

“Women who display hostile sexism described themselves using characteristics that go against femininity such as not very cooperative, not very tolerant, not very compassionate and not very sensitive or sentimental,” the researcher concludes, quoted by PsychCentral.