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BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

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similarities between individual prejudices and stereotypes found in popular magazines,<br />

confirmed the idea of a socio-cultural phenomenon. 91<br />

The psychodynamic approach came into vogue after 1935 with Gordon Allport’s<br />

explanation of the link between stereotypes and prejudice, notably in their rationalizing and<br />

justifying functions. 92 Researchers subsequently found close associations between stereotypy and<br />

the rigid thinking symptomatic of authoritarianism, which added an even more sinister aspect:<br />

unquestioning, prejudicial acceptance of stereotypes signified a defective personality, a weak<br />

ego, and a mind prone to fascism due to a dependence on external authority rather than<br />

internalized values. 93 The authoritarian personality revealed itself through close identification<br />

with an ingroup, the use of double standards, hierarchical thinking, conformism and moralistic<br />

self-justification through the projection of negative qualities, including the responsibility for<br />

discrimination itself, onto an outgroup. 94 Despite their prejudicial nature, however, stereotypes<br />

seeing. See David L. Hamilton, “Illusory Correlation as a Basis for Stereotyping,” in Hamilton,<br />

Cognitive Processes, 137.<br />

91 See Ashmore and Del Boca, “Conceptual Approaches to Stereotypes,” 6.<br />

92 Ibid., 7. Gordon W. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (Cambridge, MA:<br />

Addison-Wesley, 1935), chap. 12, “Stereotypes in Our Culture,” 189-204. Allport later<br />

countered psychodynamic reductionism of the early 1950s by distinguishing between a cognitive<br />

(natural) basis for stereotypes and an affective (prejudicial) use of them. See also Pettigrew,<br />

“Extending the Stereotype Concept,” 312-13.<br />

93 Adorno et al., Authoritarian Personality, 51, 386, 454, 457, 632, 664-65, 747, 759.<br />

Critics were quick to dispute the fallacy of linking authoritarianism solely to the political Right<br />

and pointed to the Soviet Union as a prime example of authoritarianism of the Left. See Richard<br />

Christie, Studies in the Scope and Method of the Authoritarian Personality (Glencoe, IL: Free<br />

Press, 1954), 27.<br />

94 Adorno et. al., Authoritarian Personality, 43-44, 173, 191-94, 204. The term, “antiintraceptiveness,<br />

was coined to describe authoritarian lack of commiseration with others and an<br />

68

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