Our research presented below has been supported by the Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences, the Swedish Research Council, and the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. 

Personality (and Social Psychology) and Prejudice

Most research on prejudice today emphasizes a social psychological approach to the study of prejudice whereas the personality side is almost neglected. The present research program is, therefore, intended to examine the relationship between personality and prejudice. Specifically, we have examined the relation between Big-Five personality factors and facets and right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation on the one hand and different types of prejudice, and generalized prejudice, on the other hand. The major findings up to now provide a very clear picture, that is, prejudice(s) show a strong relation to core personality as it is expressed in the five-factor model (Big Five). Especially, the Big-Five factors Agreeableness and Openness to Experience and the Big-Five facets Tender-mindedness and Values display very high negative correlations with generalized prejudice and its components (ethnic prejudice, sexism, homophobia, and negative attitudes toward people with mental disabilities). We have also found that prejudice is related to surface personality as it is expressed in right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation. Based on experimental studies, the present program also includes the study of social psychological and personality variables in combination. Specifically, we have conducted experiments introducing social norm, social threat, social identity and social group membership. The outcome of these studies has provided evidence that personality is more important than social psychological variables in explaining prejudice.

Keywords: Big-Five personality, generalized prejudice, right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), social dominance orientation (SDO), social norm, social threat, social identity, social group membership

References
Akrami, N., & Ekehammar, B. (2006). Prejudice: Personality or social psychology? Manuscript submitted for publication.

Ekehammar, B., & Akrami, N. (in press). Personality and prejudice: From Big-Five personality factors to facets. Journal of Personality.[PDF]

Akrami, N., & Ekehammar, B. (2006). Right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation: Their roots in big five personality factors and facets. Journal of Individual Differences, 27, 117-126.[PDF]

Akrami, N., & Ekehammar, B. (2004). Prejudice: A question of personality or social psychology, or both? International Journal of Psychology, 39, 380.

Ekehammar, B., Akrami, N., Gylje, M., & Zakrisson, I. (2004). What matters most to prejudice: Big Five personality, social dominance orientation or right-wing authoritarianism? European Journal of Personality, 18, 463-482.[PDF]

Ekehammar, B., & Akrami, N. (2003). The relation between personality and prejudice: A variable- and a person-centred approach. European Journal of Personality, 17, 449-464.[PDF]

The Relation between Implicit and Explicit Prejudice

The main aim of the present research was to assess the relationship between implicit and explicit measures of prejudice. Explicit prejudice is defined as slow and intentional and operates in a conscious mode. It can be measured by traditional self-report questionnaires. Implicit prejudice, in contrast, is fast and automatic and operates without intention, often in an unconscious mode. It is assessed by indirect measures, like response-latency-based tasks or different subliminal priming techniques. Specifically, we have examined the relation between implicit and explicit ethnic prejudice. For the measurement of explicit prejudice, we have employed a self-report instrument - the Modern Ethnic Prejudice Scale that was developed by our research group. For measuring implicit prejudice, we have employed a response-latency-based adjective evaluation task and subliminal activation of ethnic stereotypes by priming photos, words or a combination of these. The findings from three papers (6 experiments) suggest that measures of implicit and explicit prejudice are dissociated. However, if motivation to control prejudice is taken into account a low correlation between the two measures is revealed.

Keywords: Implicit and explicit prejudice, ethnic prejudice, stereotype and category activation, subliminal priming, the adjective evaluation task

References
Akrami, N., Ekehammar, B., & Araya, T. (2006). Category and stereotype activation revisited. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 47, 513-522.[PDF]

Akrami, N., & Ekehammar, B. (2005). The association between implicit and explicit prejudice: The moderating role of motivation to control prejudiced reactions. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 46, 361-366.[PDF]

Ekehammar, B., Akrami, N., & Araya, T. (2003). Gender differences in implicit prejudice. Personality and Individual Differences, 34, 1509-1523.[PDF]

Schematicness and Traitedness in Personality Measurement

The aim of the present project is to examine whether the predictive power of personality traits could be improved by including measures of schematicness and traitedness. Schematicness, as an indicator of a person's self-schema, can be operationalized as the response latency when answering items of a specific personality trait or factor. The response latency as a self-schema indicator has been supported by the so-called inverted-U effect where response latency has been shown to have a curvilinear relation to personality trait scores. Also, response latency has been shown to be negatively related to the trait's heritability, that is, the higher the heritability the shorter the response latency. Traitedness, or the tendency to respond to a specific personality trait in a consistent way, can be operationalized as the intraindividual standard deviation of item scores for that personality trait. Our research has found that schematicness improves the prediction (of prejudice in our case) based on personality traits whereas traitedness does not seem to provide any improvement. We have also found support for the inverted-U effect and the negative relation between response latency and trait heritability for Big-Five personality factors and facets.

Keywords: Personality, response latency, inverted-U effect, Big Five, heritability, schematicness, and traitedness

References
Akrami, N., Hedlund, L.-E., & Ekehammar, B. (in press). Personality scale response latencies as self-schema indicators: The inverted-U effect revisited. Personality and Individual Differences.[PDF]

Hedlund, L.-E., Akrami, N., & Ekehammar, B. (2006). Personality and prejudice: Considering the role of self-schema. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Ekehammar, B., Akrami, N., & Hedlund, L.-E. (2006). Big-Five response latencies and the heritability of personality. Manuscript in preparation.

Hedlund, L.-E., Akrami, N., & Ekehammar, B. (2006). Does Big-Five traitedness improve prediction of prejudice? Manuscript in preparation.

Ethnic- and Gender-Related Prejudice and Social Dominance Orientation

This line of research concerns different aspects of ethnic and gender related prejudice and social dominance orientation (SDO). One topic deals with ethnic hierarchies. By creating a statistical index for the individual inclination to rank ethnic groups we relate this index to ethnic prejudice and SDO. The results disclosed that irrespective of gender and ethnic origin of participants, they ranked and formed similar hierarchies of various ethnic groups in Sweden. The inclination to ethnic ranking showed significant correlations with ethnic prejudice and SDO. To examine the relationship between SDO and sex-role endorsement (using the Bem Sex Role Inventory and a bi-polar measure of gender identification), we found that both biological sex and gender identification had a significant influence on SDO. However, gender identification mediated (partially in one study and totally in another) the relation between biological sex and SDO. There were no indications of a moderating effect in terms of an interaction of sex and gender identification. Altogether, the results did not contradict the so-called gender invariance hypothesis of SDO. In an another line of research within this program, we used Weiner’s model of social conduct to examine the effect of SDO on social punishment and help. In one study, the results showed that irrespective of target ethnicity, a high SDO was linked to less social help. In another study, we found that a higher SDO was linked to more punishment when the target person was from a low-status compared to a high-status ethnic group.

Keywords. Ethnic prejudice, gender-related prejudice, social dominance orientation, Weiner’s attribution model, gender identification, ethnic hierarchies, social transgression.

References
Snellman, A., Ekehammar, B., & Akrami, N. (2006). Testing the gender invariance hypothesis in social dominance orientation: The role of gender identification. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Snellman, A., & Ekehammar, B. (2006). The influence of social dominance orientation on punishment and help. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Snellman, A., & Ekehammar, B. (2005). Ethnic hierarchies, racial prejudice, and social dominance orientation. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 15, 1-12.[PDF]

Snellman, A., & Ekehammar, B. (2004, September). Effects of actor’s social group membership and observer’s social dominance orientation on attributions of actor’s responsibility. Paper presented at the 6th European Social Cognition Network Meeting, Lisbon, Portugal.

Power, Legitimacy and Social Perceptions

This project investigates the relationship between power, legitimacy and social perception. In one line of research, we examined the effects of legitimacy, gender and social dominance orientation (SDO) on perceptions of power and the attribution of positive traits to members of powerful groups. The results showed that illegitimacy rather than legitimacy was associated with perceptions of power. Gender differences were found in relation to power perceptions but were inconclusive in relation to the attribution of traits. SDO showed no effects in perceptions of power and no positive associations with trait attribution. The results are discussed in relation to issues of power, ideology, gender stereotypes and legitimacy. Another line of research has explored how different ideological contexts influence people’s attitudes toward affirmative action targeting ethnic minorities. The results revealed that people perceived the legitimacy of affirmative action differently depending on the social context; that ethnic minorities perceived it to be more legitimate than ethnic Swedes and that ethnic prejudice predicted attitudes toward affirmative action in a baseline condition but not in ideological contexts.

Keywords. Affirmative action, legitimacy, social dominance orientation, power, social perceptions.

References
Batalha, L., & Ekehammar, B. (2006). Effects of power and legitimacy on social perceptions. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Batalha, L., & Ekehammar, B. (2006). Ideological context as determinant of perceived legitimacy of affirmative action policies. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Finished

Stereotypes: Suppression, Forgetting, and False Memory

This research program investigated whether a) automatically activated stereotypes could be suppressed, b) motivated forgetting (by instruction) could increase or decrease the impact of the activated stereotypes, and c) instruction to forget could increase or decrease the false recall and recognition of stereotypical and nonpresented stereotypical information. The results showed that participants initially primed with the social category, immigrant and subsequently primed with words that were evocative of control or self-control made less negative impression of a target displaying ambiguous behaviors than participants not exposed to such words. Further, we found that participants primed with the social category immigrant and then studied a list of stereotypically related and unrelated words falsely recognized more nonpresented stereotypical words when they were furnished with a forget than a remember instruction. Moreover, we found that participants primed with the social category immigrant (as compared with a control condition) falsely recalled more nonpresented stereotypical words when their cognitive capacity was depleted through a concurrent memory load task.

Keywords: Stereotype suppression, stereotype control, prejudice, priming, directed forgetting, false memory.

References
Araya, T., Ekehammar, B., & Akrami, N. (2006). Forgetting-induced false recall of stereotypes. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Araya, T. (2003). Stereotypes: Suppression, forgetting, and false memory. Doctoral thesis, Department of Psychology, Uppsala University, Sweden.[PDF]

Araya, T., Akrami, N., & Ekehammar, B. (2003). Forgetting congruent and incongruent stereotypical information. Journal of Social Psychology, 143, 433-449.[PDF]

Araya, R. (2003). The recall of stereotypes: The effects of incidentally activated directed forgetting instructions. Experimental Psychology, 50, 247-256.

Araya, T., Ekehammar, B., & Akrami, N. (2003). Remembering things that never occurred: The effects of to-be-forgotten stereotypical information. Experimental Psychology, 50, 27-32.[PDF]

Araya, T., Akrami, N., Ekehammar, B., & Hedlund, L.-E. (2002). Reducing prejudice through priming of control-related words. Experimental Psychology, 49, 222-227.[PDF]

Classical and Modern Prejudice

The study of prejudice toward social groups, for example, negative attitudes toward women (sexism) or certain racial or ethnic groups (ethnic prejudice) has mostly relied on self-report questionnaire data. However, because people are reluctant to reveal negative attitudes toward the groups studied earlier types self-report instruments may be biased. Based on McConahay's (1986) distinction between modern and classical prejudice, we have developed new Swedish prejudice instruments adapted to a Scandinavian context. Thus, in this research program we have developed and validated Classical – overt or direct – and Modern – covert or subtle – prejudice scales, concerning ethnic prejudice, sexism, and negative attitudes toward people with mental disabilities. We examined the reliability and construct validity of all scales and tested whether these two forms of prejudice are distinguishable. For all three types of prejudice, confirmatory factor analyses showed that classical and modern prejudice are highly correlated but consist of two separate factors. This outcome was also supported by various construct validations.

Keywords: Modern and classical prejudice, ethnic prejudice, sexism, mentally disabled, scale construction

References
Akrami, N., Ekehammar, B., Claesson, M., & Sonnander K. (2006). Classical and modern prejudice: Attitudes toward people with intellectual disabilities. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 27, 605-617.[PDF]

Akrami, N., Ekehammar, B., & Araya, T. (2000). Classical and modern racial prejudice: A study of attitudes toward immigrants in Sweden. European Journal of Social Psychology, 30, 521-532.[PDF]

Ekehammar, B., Akrami, N., & Araya, T. (2000). Development and validation of Swedish classical and modern sexism scales. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 41, 307-314.[PDF]

Studies of a Projective (Implicit Perception) Technique: The Defense Mechanism Test

The Defense Mechanism Test (DMT) is a projective test. Assumedly anxiety-provoking TAT like pictures are presented tachistoscopically using gradually increasing exposure duration ranging from 5 to 2000 ms. The method was developed by Kragh (1955), and it has since then been employed in various military and non-military selection settings, and in clinical, diagnostic settings as well. The DMT pictures are supposed to depict threat that may activate various defense mechanisms employed by the perceiver. These mechanisms make adequate perception of the threat difficult. The project questions the psychodynamic interpretations of the DMT perceptual distortions, as such distortions are very common after brief stimulus exposures in general. In a series of experimental manipulations of the stimulus picture, reliability checks, and construct validations using alternative tests of defense structure, the results taken together indicate that perceptual distortions in the DMT are not mainly due to psychodynamic defense mechanisms. Individual differences in attention and perceptual speed appear to explain the results. This might be an 'advantage' when it comes to selecting people who in their professions must be able to quickly perceive complex, visual stimuli but a disadvantage when it comes to drawing conclusions about people's personalities.

Keywords. The Defense Mechanism Test (DMT), projective techniques, defense mechanisms, subliminal perception

References
Ekehammar, B., Zuber, I., & Konstenius, M. (2005). An empirical look at the Defence Mechanism Test (DMT): Reliability and construct validity. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 46, 285-296.[PDF]

Ekehammar, B., Zuber, I., & Simonsson-Sarnecki, M. (2002). The Defence Mechanism Test (DMT) revisited: Experimental validation using threatening and non-threatening pictures. European Journal of Personality, 16, 283-294.[PDF]

Ekehammar, B., & Zuber, I. (1999). In defence of the criticism of the Defence Mechanism Test (DMT): A reply to Kragh (1998). Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 40, 85-87.[PDF]

Zuber, I., & Ekehammar, B. (1997). An empirical look at the Defence Mechanism Test (DMT): Stimulus effects. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 38, 85-94.[PDF]