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The issue of personality and prejudice has been largely investigated in terms of authoritarianism and social dominance orientation. However, these seem more appropriately conceptualized as ideological attitudes than as personality dimensions. The authors describe a causal model linking dual dimensions of personality, social world view, ideological attitudes, and intergroup attitudes. Structural equation modeling with data from American and White Afrikaner students supported the model, suggesting that social conformity and belief in a dangerous world influence authoritarian attitudes, whereas toughmindedness and belief in a competitive jungle world influence social dominance attitudes, and these two ideological attitude dimensions influence intergroup attitudes. The model implies that dual motivational and cognitive processes, which may be activated by different kinds of situational and intergroup dynamics, may underlie 2 distinct dimensions of prejudice.

The study of prejudice, ethnocentrism, and intergroup hostility has been an important topic of social scientific inquiry for much of the past century. During this time, two general approaches have dominated research. One has viewed prejudice and ethnocentrism as a group phenomenon to be explained in terms of intergroup dynamics and processes (Pettigrew, 1958; Sherif, 1967; Tajfel & Turner, 1979). A second, which has been relatively neglected for the past half century, has viewed prejudice as an individual phenomenon and set out to explain individual differences in people’s propensity to hold ethnocentric intergroup attitudes (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950; Altemeyer, 1981; Pratto, 1999; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999).

The importance of the individual-differences approach to prejudice has been empirically demonstrated by the generality of prejudice. Persons who are unfavorably disposed to one particular out-group...