ABSTRACT
Social psychologists have identified a number of individual difference predictors of prejudice, including political conservatism, lower cognitive ability, psychological rigidity, and lower openness to experience and agreeableness. This research has examined prejudice expressed primarily against disadvantaged and low-status groups. In this chapter, I discuss emerging evidence that challenges these conclusions about the individual difference antecedents of prejudice. Specifically, from an ideological conflict model perspective, the link between some (but perhaps not all) individual differences and prejudice has emerged, not because these individual differences predict prejudice per se, but because of value conflicts between adherents to these individual differences and the types of targets groups social psychologists have chosen to study. The association between these individual difference variables and prejudice toward alternative (e.g., high-status, conventional) targets often either reverses direction or is statistically zero. Worldview conflict lies at the heart of prejudice across the political spectrum. Social psychologists who study prejudice often have the well-meaning and admirable goal of reducing prejudice toward historically marginalized groups. However, to understand the psychological processes underlying prejudice, researchers must explore prejudices toward a wider array of targets than they have traditionally.
