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Abstract. How do people respond when their group’s power is threatened? Four studies suggest that threats to group power lead people to adhere to and invest in their group. When a personally important group’s power was threatened, people psychologically adhered to the group (Studies 1a and 1b). This adherence occurred among people who were high (but not low) in group identification (Study 2). Adherence to the group was associated with behaviors aimed at promoting benefits to the group (Study 3). Findings suggest that people invest themselves in personally important groups when the group’s power is threatened. This occurs largely among people strongly identified with a group, suggesting that clinging to the group occurs especially when costs to leaving are high.

Religious people tend to believe atheists are immoral. Although some work suggests that atheists themselves agree, such findings could also reflect symmetric ingroup bias in the moral domain, where atheists likewise view religious targets as untrustworthy and immoral. We examined how American religious and atheist participants rated the morality of atheist and religious targets and assessed a potential intervention: learning that targets adhere to a moral code. Across three studies, both religious and nonreligious participants demonstrated clear ingroup favoritism, rating ingroup targets more moral than outgroup targets. However, this ingroup bias was reduced when participants learned the target adheres to a warm and coherent moral system rooted in philosophy and concern for others. These findings extended beyond evaluations to downstream social consequences such as distancing. Such findings challenge arguments that atheists view themselves as immoral and point the way forward toward reducing religious ingroup bias.

Previous theory and research has suggested that right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) is a unitary construct related to attitudes regarding obedience to authority. Recently, scholars have suggested that RWA is multidimensional. To adjudicate these competing notions, we test whether the associations between RWA components and moral attitudes regarding obedience differ depending on the ideology of the authority. Across three studies and an integrative data analysis, we found that the RWA component capturing obedience to and respect for authorities (i.e., submission) related to judgments that it is moral to obey all authorities, and perhaps also nonauthorities, regardless of the targets’ political ideologies. In contrast, the RWA component capturing socially conservative beliefs (i.e., traditionalism) related to judgments that it is moral to obey conservative authorities and immoral to obey liberal authorities. These results suggest that RWA is not a unitary construct and that its components differentially relate to moral judgments regarding obedience to authorities.

Recently, major societal events have shaped perceptions of race relations in the US. The current work argues that people’s motivations to be nonprejudiced toward Black people have changed in concert with these broader societal forces. Analyses of two independent archival datasets reveal that nonprejudiced motivations changed predictably in accordance with shifts in the social milieu over the last 15 years. In one dataset ( N = 13,395), we track movement in internal and external motivations to respond without prejudice from 2004 to 2017. Internal motivation initially decreased before ticking upward following multiple events suggesting worsening race relations (e.g., noteworthy killings of unarmed Black men, resurgent racialized politics). Conversely, external motivation initially increased but reversed course across the same time span. A second dataset ( N = 2,503) corroborates these trends in two conceptually related nonprejudiced motivations. Results suggest that changes in nonprejudiced motivations may reflect broader shifts in the sociopolitical climate.

Two studies examine psychological and demographic factors that predict attitudes toward mask-wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic. These studies differentiate pro-mask from anti-mask attitudes. Political conservatism, younger age, and gender predicted anti-mask attitudes but were unrelated to pro-mask attitudes. Psychological reactance was associated with anti-mask attitudes, over and above demographic variables. Empathy, trust in healthcare professionals, and perceived normativity of mask wearing were associated with pro-mask attitudes, over and above demographic variables. These studies suggest that demographic variables such as political orientation and age are associated with anti-mask but not pro-mask attitudes, but also that psychological factors differentially predict anti- and pro-mask attitudes over and above demographic factors.

Two recent experiments found evidence for what we term the social category label (SCL) effect-that the relationship between right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and prejudice against gay men and lesbians can be reduced or even eliminated when the target group is labeled "gay men and lesbians" rather than "homosexuals" (Rios, 2013). Although this appears a promising approach to reduce self-reported sexual prejudice, with both theoretical implications for the meaning of RWA itself and practical implications for question wording for assessing these attitudes, there are several reasons to further examine these findings, including (a) inconsistencies with extant evidence, (b) small sample sizes in the original 2 experiments, and (c) concerns with the RWA measures used in the 2 experiments. We tested the SCL hypothesis with a nationally representative sample (Study 1) and close and conceptual replications of Rios' (2013) 2 studies (Studies 2-5) using multiple measures of RWA and prejudice. Across 23 tests of the SCL hypothesis, we obtained 1 statistically significant and 1 marginally significant effect consistent with the hypothesis, 2 significant effects opposite the hypothesis, and 19 nonsignificant effects. A meta-analysis of evidence reported here and in Rios (2013) indicates that RWA strongly predicts antigay prejudice, with no significant variation by label. This confirms the typically robust association between RWA and antigay prejudice and confirms that the SCL effect is not robust. We discuss potential limitations of these studies, theoretical, methodological, and practical implications for our failures to replicate the original SCL studies, and future directions for examining social category label effects. (PsycINFO Database Record

Past research shows that people like others who are similar to themselves, and that political partisans tend to dislike those with opposing viewpoints. Two studies examined how initial person impressions changed after discovering that the target held similar or dissimilar political beliefs. Using potential mates as targets, we found that participants liked targets less, were less romantically interested in targets, and rated targets as less attractive after discovering political dissimilarity with them. Further, they became more uncomfortable with targets after discovering ideological dissimilarity. Theoretical implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

We introduce the balanced ideological antipathy (BIA) model, which challenges assumptions that right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO) predict inter-group antipathy per se. Rather, the effects of RWA and SDO on antipathy should depend on the target’s political orientation and political objectives, the specific components of RWA, and the type of antipathy expressed. Consistent with the model, two studies ( N = 585) showed that the Traditionalism component of RWA positively and negatively predicted both political intolerance and prejudice toward tradition-threatening and -reaffirming groups, respectively, whereas SDO positively and negatively predicted prejudice (and to some extent political intolerance) toward hierarchy-attenuating and -enhancing groups, respectively. Critically, the Conservatism component of RWA positively predicted political intolerance (but not prejudice) toward each type of target group, suggesting it captures the anti-democratic impulse at the heart of authoritarianism. Recommendations for future research on the relationship between ideological attitudes and inter-group antipathy are discussed.