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Desecration of national symbols is a recurring societal phenomenon that can lead to highly defensive reactions from some citizens, especially on the part of those expressing a strong attachment to the nation. In this paper, we investigated the effects of blind and constructive patriotism when faced with an ingroup (vs. outgroup) national flag burning on ingroup bias, taking into consideration the mediating role of perceived threat. In two studies (N = 252), the level of blind patriotism predicted stronger ingroup bias-due to more negative evaluation of visible minorities and/or more positive evaluation of the ingroup-when another ingroup member burnt an ingroup (vs. outgroup) flag. This effect was partly mediated by a greater threat to the group's image perceived by blindly patriotic people when the ingroup (vs. outgroup) flag was burnt (Study 2). Study 2 also highlighted a main effect of the symbol: ingroup bias was stronger when the ingroup (vs. outgroup) flag was burnt. We discuss the implications of our findings with respect to the role played by modes of national attachment and the consequences of desecrating symbols., Author(s): Gaëlle Marinthe [sup.2] [sup.1] , Benoit Testé [sup.2] , Rodolphe Kamiejski [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.433893.6, 0000 0001 2184 0541, Department of Psychology, SWPS University of Social Sciences and [...]

Defenders of duties of justice to compatriots sometimes criticize the aspirations of cosmopolitans to develop accounts of justice that are global in scope. The criticisms are many and varied, including [...]

In the week before the 2003 American attack on Iraq, the effects of authoritarianism and the social dominance orientation on support for the attack were examined. Based on prior research on the nature of these constructs, a structural model was developed and tested. As predicted, authoritarianism strengthened support for the attack by intensifying the perception that Iraq threatened America. Social dominance increased support by reducing concern for the likely human costs of the war. Both also increased blind patriotism, which in turn reduced concern for the war's human costs and was reciprocally related to the belief that Iraq threatened America. Keywords: authoritarianism; social dominance; patriotism; war; threat

One view in the study of intergroup conflict is that pride implies prejudice. However, an increasing number of scholars have come to view in-group pride more benignly, suggesting that such pride can be accompanied by a full range of feelings toward the out-group. In this article, we focus on a substantively interesting case of in-group/out-group attitudes--national pride and hostility toward immigrants. We explore the relationship in two fundamental ways: first by examining the prejudice associated with various dimensions of pride, and second by embedding these relationships in a comprehensive model of prejudice. We find that national pride is most validly measured with two dimensions--patriotism and nationalism--two dimensions that have very different relationships with prejudice. While nationalists have a strong predilection for hostility toward immigrants, patriots show no more prejudice than does the average citizen.

During the Persian Gulf War, 151 American college students (including 47 minority students and 104 nonminority students) completed a survey about their attitudes toward such subjects as war-related patriotism and nationalism. Compared with nonminority college students, American minority college students displayed much less patriotism and nationalism and were less supportive of President Bush and more supportive of a peaceful solution to the Gulf crisis. These findings support the group formation model (Worchel, Coutant-Sassic, & Grossman, 1992)., ALTHOUGH THERE HAS BEEN much psychological research on war and peace (Deutsch, 1983; Holt & Silverstein, 1989; Kelman, 1965; Kelman & Cohen, 1986; Rieber, 1991; M. White & Feshbach, 1987; [...]

The rediscovery of the distinction between civic and ethnic nationalisms has partly been driven by the new prominence of nationalism in politics. It promises to isolate the type of affect on which liberal democracies can safely depend a a source of citizen motivation. It is argued that this strategy of redirection claims to render affect safe for liberal democracies by redirecting our attachment from one subject of objects to another subset of objects. Habermas's conception of constitutional patriotism is a political affect that has become prominent in recent debates about civic and ethnic nationalisms.