510 Prejudice, Racism, and Discrimination
respond without prejudice toward Black people (Plant &
Devine, 1998). RWA consistently correlates more highly,
between .5 and .6, with homophobia and negative attitudes
toward homosexuals. Indeed, Altemeyer (1996) contended
that RWA is the single individual difference variable most
relevant for predicting attitudes toward homosexuals, espe-
cially negative ones.
Studies by other investigators have likewise documented
a consistently negative relationship between RWA and
attitudes toward homosexuals and homosexuality (e.g.,
Haddock, Zanna, & Esses, 1993; Lippa & Arad, 1999;
Whitley, 1999), strongly reinforcing Altemeyer’s conclusion
in this regard. The negative attitudes toward homosexuals
by those scoring high in RWA are due to perceived impedi-
ments of homosexuals and homosexuality to one’s values
(Haddock et al., 1993) or to religiousness. Finally, a recent
lexical approach to mapping the structure of social attitudes
by Saucier (2000) showed that authoritarianism and RWA
(along with conservatism and religiousness) defined the first
and largest of three factors in the domain of social attitudes
and beliefs. Clearly, the authoritarianism construct, espe-
cially RWA, remains important in psychological research on
prejudice and in linking prejudice to individuals’ personality
and attitudes.
Just World Theory
An individual’s belief in a just world (BJW) is another psy-
chological dimension relevant for understanding individuals’
reactions to ethnic and racial minorities and victims of ill for-
tune. According to Lerner’s (1980) just world theory, we all
believe, to a varying extent, in a just world where people get
what they deserve and also deserve what they get. The BJW
presumably enables us to view our world as a safe, pre-
dictable place where we can expect to obtain desired rewards
and to avoid unpleasant outcomes. Becoming aware of an
innocent victim who does not deserve to suffer, however,
threatens one’s BJW. Individuals go to considerable lengths
to maintain and protect their BJW in the face of contrary
information. For example, classic experiments by Lerner and
his colleagues have demonstrated that when unable to pre-
vent or compensate for an innocent victim’s suffering, ob-
servers preserved their BJW by derogating the victim and
seeing the suffering as deserved (see Lerner, 1980).
Questionnaire measures of the BJW consistently correlate
with the tendency to blame visible victims (e.g., ethnic and
racial minorities, the unemployed, and immigrants and asy-
lum seekers) with samples of university and community
respondents in the United States, Canada, and Europe (see
Montada & Lerner, 1998). However, the BJW construct is
conceptually and empirically distinguishable from authori-
tarianism. Using factor analyses of questionnaire measures
from a sample of Canadian university students in Ontario,
Lerner (1978) showed that authoritarianism (as measured by
Rokeach’s 1960 Fscale) and BJW loaded on separate, inde-
pendent factors. Authoritarianism loaded on a xenophobia
factor characterized by high loading for authoritarianism, ad-
herence to the Protestant ethic (a belief in the virtues of hard
work and effort), attitudes toward social changes, and nega-
tive attitudes toward both minority groups and out-groups
(e.g., Americans). By contrast, the BJW loaded on a win-lose
view of the world, in which winners (e.g., Americans) were
viewed positively, while losers (e.g., Native Indians and
Métis) were negatively appraised. The BJW also correlates
positively, but only modestly (i.e., between .1 and .3) with
RWA (Lambert, Burroughs, & Chasteen, 1998).
It is interesting that blaming victims for their ill fate
strengthens the observer’s BJW (see Lerner & Montada, 1998).
In turn, believing oneself to have been victimized as a target of
prejudice or discrimination also appears to affect the BJW
adversely. Birt and Dion (1987) found that in Toronto, the
greater the perceived discrimination against homosexuals as a
group, the weaker was the BJW among gay and lesbian re-
spondents. Thus, just world theory and the BJW have relevance
for the psychology of being a victim of prejudice and discrimi-
nation as well as the psychology of bigotry.Belief Congruence TheoryRokeach (1960) criticized the OTAP for focusing on right-
wing authoritarianism, contending that authoritarianism need
not be tied inextricably to either right- or left-wing political
views. As an alternative, he proposed the construct of closed-
mindednessor dogmatism and developed several Dogmatism
Scales in an attempt to measure authoritarianism and to
assess general authoritarianism of the political left as well
as the political right. Unfortunately, his Dogmatism Scales
possess serious psychometric limitations and are relatively
little used today. Moreover, if it exists, left-wing authoritari-
anism would involve resisting and opposing conventional
and established authorities (see Altemeyer, 1996, for an inter-
esting discussion of dogmatism and left-wing authoritarian-
ism and some new prospective scales for measuring these
dimensions).
In the same book on the open and closed mind, however,
Rokeach, Smith, and Evans (1960) also proposed an im-
portant perspective on prejudice: belief congruence theory
(BCT). According to BCT, individuals cognitively organize
their psychological world along the lines of belief congru-
ence, liking those with similar beliefs and disliking those