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Political psychology and intergroup relations

Where political attitudes come from, and how groups come to see each other as less than fully human.

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The largest of the five strands, this work runs from the developmental and genetic origins of political attitudes, through the mechanics of dehumanization and prejudice, to the conditions under which hostile groups can still imagine peace.

Where political attitudes come from

Twin studies show that correlations between social dominance orientation and political attitudes reflect common genetic underpinnings, and that the genetic basis of authoritarianism and dominance explains political attitudes beyond Big Five personality. Longitudinal work adds the developmental half: self-esteem trajectories across three decades predict opposition to social equality in midlife, and mental-health trajectories from adolescence shape later political attitudes and voting. Political attitudes, on this evidence, are not late-forming opinions.

Dominance and inequality, across societies

Preferences for group dominance track and mediate the effects of macro-level social inequality and violence across societies — connecting individual psychology to structural conditions rather than treating it as free-floating.

Dehumanization and the mechanics of prejudice

Blatant dehumanization turns out to be measurable even in the mind's eye of people who explicitly reject it, and it extends to groups no one thinks of as targets — including, strikingly, short people. Related work maps Islamophobia as a tripartite structure across five countries, identifies anti-Roma prejudice as Europe's most acceptable, and shows how disgust-eliciting media coverage translates into support for deportation.

Loyalty, appearance, and who counts as one of us

A sustained line of work shows that bias toward dually-identified minority-group members is driven by perceptions of disloyalty, and that phenotype does real work: adopting mainstream culture makes immigrants literally 'look' whiter to observers, while facial prototypicality shapes what intergroup attitudes people are assumed to hold. Knowing that someone has interracial friendships systematically changes how their race is mentally represented.

Conditions for peace

Not all of it is about conflict. Acknowledging shared Abrahamic religious roots can reduce intergroup conflict, learning about interethnic genetic similarity affects peace and conflict attitudes, and research in intractable conflicts unravels the paradox of hope — why hope for peace and hope for victory pull in different directions.

  • 40Papers in this strand
  • 27Journals & publishers
  • 2013–Active since

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