The Suppression and Justification of Prejudice as A Function of Political Orientation

Moving Morality Beyond the In-Group: Liberals and Conservatives Show Differences on Group-Framed Moral Foundations and These Differences Mediate the Relationships to Perceived Bias and Threat

Moral foundations research suggests that liberals care about moral values related to individual rights such as harm and fairness, while conservatives care about those foundations in addition to caring more about group rights such as loyalty, authority, and purity. However, the question remains about how conservatives and liberals differ in relation to group-level moral principles. We used two versions of the moral foundations questionnaire with the target group being either abstract or specific ingroups or outgroups. Across three studies, we observed that liberals showed more endorsement of Individualizing foundations (Harm and Fairness foundations) with an outgroup target, while conservatives showed more endorsement of Binding foundations (Loyalty, Authority, and Purity foundations) with an ingroup target. This general pattern was found when the framed, target-group was abstract (i.e., 'ingroups' and 'outgroups' in Study 1) and when target groups were specified about a general British-ingroup and an immigrant-outgroup (Studies 2 and 3). In Studies 2 and 3, both Individualizing-Ingroup Preference and Binding-Ingroup Preference scores predicted more Attitude Bias and more Negative Attitude Bias toward immigrants (Studies 2 and 3), more Implicit Bias (Study 3), and more Perceived Threat from immigrants (Studies 2 and 3). We also demonstrated that increasing liberalism was associated with less Attitude Bias and less Negative Bias toward immigrants (Studies 2 and 3), less Implicit Bias (Study 3), and less Perceived Threat from immigrants (Studies 2 and 3). Outgroup-individualizing foundations and Ingroup-Binding foundations showed different patterns of mediation of these effects.

'Society thinks they are cold and/or incompetent, but I do not': Stereotype content ratings depend on instructions and the social group's location in the stereotype content space

Stereotype content researchers have grown accustomed to ask participants how 'society' views social groups to tap into culturally shared stereotype content and to reduce social desirability bias (J Person Soc Psychol, 82, 2002, 878). However, methodological and theoretical considerations raise questions about this common practice, and stereotype content researchers have also asked for participants' personal perspective on social groups in the past. Nonetheless, how and whether stereotype content model scores empirically differ as a function of the instructed perspective remains questionable and to date untested. Thus, we investigated whether and, if so, how stereotype content results are affected when instructing participants to evaluate social groups from society's versus their personal perspective. Across three experiments (Study 1: N = 301; Study 2: N = 126; Study 3: N = 1,221), latent mean comparisons indicated that results regarding stereotype content ratings are affected by the instructed perspective (society's vs. personal) contingent on the social group's location in the stereotype content space: Stereotype content ratings were more negative when participants were asked to provide society's perspective on social groups compared to their own perspective, but only on an already depreciated stereotype content dimension. The number of possible comparisons across experimental conditions was substantially reduced, since preconditions for these analyses were not met. Given our methodological and theoretical considerations and empirical corroborations that the instructed perspective does affect results, we encourage a discussion on how to best measure culturally shared stereotype content and propose aggregating stereotype content scores from participants' personal perspective to the cultural level.

Bridging Political Divides: Perceived Threat and Uncertainty Avoidance Help Explain the Relationship Between Political Ideology and Immigrant Attitudes Within Diverse Intergroup Contexts

The political divide between liberals and conservatives has become quite large and stable, and there appear to be many reasons for disagreements on a wide range of issues. The current research sought to explain these divides and to extend the Uncertainty-Threat Model to intergroup relations, which predicts that more dispositional, perceived-threat and uncertainty-avoidance will be related to more political conservatism. Given that conservatism is also often related to more negativity to low-status groups such as immigrants, the relationship between political ideology and negative attitudes toward immigrants may be mediated by more threat and uncertainty-avoidance. Study 1 tested this mediational hypothesis in a correlational design and showed that both uncertainty-avoidance and perceived realistic and symbolic threat significantly mediated the relationship between political ideology and attitudes toward immigrants, and that perceived threat was the more influential mediator. Study 2 extended threat management to perceived threats from unspecified outgroups, as opposed to the immigrant outgroup, and it replicated all significant mediations. Study 3 replicated the mediations observed in Studies 1 and 2 for political ideology to attitudes toward immigrants with uncertainty-avoidance and perceived threat from immigrants as mediators; it further replicated the mediations to the negative attitudes measure that had been used in Study 2 and it extended it to an objective and indirect bias measure [i.e., Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP)]. Overall, almost all of the results supported the idea that perceived threat and uncertainty-avoidance both mediate the relationship between political ideology and attitudes toward immigrants, and that threat management, as opposed to negativity bias, may be a central concern separating liberals and conservatives. Within all three studies, we also observed more evidence for the Uncertainty-Threat Model predictions than we did for the alternative Extremity Hypothesis, which predicted a quadratic relationship between political ideology and threat and uncertainty, and between political ideology and attitudes toward immigrants.

Which group to credit (and blame)? Whites make attributions about White-minority biracials’ successes and failures based on their own (anti-)egalitarianism and ethnic identification

Individuals’ perceptions of biracials can vary based on the motives of the perceiver. Here, we examine how two factors—perceivers’ group-level identification motives and their system-level beliefs about the desirability of hierarchy (i.e., social dominance orientation)—predict the degree to which they attribute a biracial target’s successes or failures to that target’s White versus minority background. Across three studies examining different contexts, more anti-egalitarian White participants and more highly identified White participants rated a half-White, half-minority target as being shaped more by his minority (vs. White) background when he was disreputable (vs. reputable)—patterns broadly consistent with prior theorizing on the motivations to maintain social stratification and protect ingroup standing, respectively. In direct contrast, however, egalitarian White participants and White participants low on ethnic identification credited a target’s outgroup minority background when he was reputable (vs. disreputable), consistent with a desire to promote social equality and forgoing the opportunity to “bask in reflected glory” on behalf of the ingroup. Our results extend extant theorizing by underlining the benefits of jointly considering both group- and system-level motives when analyzing perceptions and attributions of individuals and groups, and by shedding new light on the understudied psychology of social egalitarians.