Stephanie R. Mallinas

This chapter explores the causes and consequences of the source of people's motivation to respond without prejudice. We demonstrate how motivation that stems from internal/personal dedication to egalitarian responding differs from motivation that reflects external/social concerns about normative nonprejudiced standards and describe how this difference elucidates why, when, whether, and how people respond without prejudice across situations and assessments. We explore how social norms, egalitarian values, intergroup contact, and childhood experiences influence the development and function of these motivations. In addition, we examine the consequences of motivation for both implicit and explicit expressions of prejudice and stereotyping and the course and quality of intergroup interactions. Finally, we address how people's motivation to respond without prejudice may influence factors central to modern day prejudice such as systemic and colorblind prejudice and reactions to White privilege.

We conceptualize sexual prejudice (i.e., prejudice toward gay/lesbian people) as including two related but distinct individual difference components – moral disapproval and outgroup antipathy. Whereas moral disapproval concerns the perceived wrongness of gay/lesbian sexuality, outgroup antipathy concerns negative evaluations of gay/lesbian individuals. Confirmatory factor analysis supports this two-factor structure. In undergraduate and nationally representative samples, we demonstrate that moral disapproval relates to higher religiosity (Studies 1a-1b), whereas outgroup antipathy relates to generalized and racial prejudice (Study 2). Further, outgroup contact predicts reductions in antipathy throughout college students' first semester, whereas religious sources contribute to moral disapproval across the semester (Study 3). Finally, moral disapproval relates to negativity toward sexually active single targets regardless of sexual orientation, whereas outgroup antipathy relates to negativity toward gay/lesbian targets regardless of sexual behavior (Study 4). These findings highlight the benefits of considering moral disapproval and outgroup antipathy separately. •Sexual prejudice can be conceptualized as moral disapproval and outgroup antipathy.•Moral disapproval and outgroup antipathy differentially relate to several factors.•Different factors influence these attitudes and their reduction over time.

In many domains of social life, people risk wrongly accusing an innocent person (i.e., false alarm error) or failing to catch a guilty person (i.e., miss error). Do liberals and conservatives differ in their concern about these types of errors? Across six studies, we found that conservatives were more bothered by miss errors than liberals, whereas liberals were more bothered by false alarm errors than conservatives. These associations were driven by social as opposed to economic ideology (Studies 1b-3b). Further, conservatives were more bothered by less threatening miss errors than liberals, but liberals and conservatives were equally bothered by clearly threatening miss errors (Studies 2a & 2b), suggesting that threat is a mechanism for the association between conservatism and miss concern. In Study 3a, social conservatism related to increased concern about miss errors when they occurred in authoritative contexts, but not when they occurred in authority-void contexts. In contrast, social liberalism related to increased concern about false alarm errors regardless of authoritative context. Studies 3a and 3b also demonstrated that belief in retributive justice, moralization of respect for authority, and threat sensitivity statistically mediated the association between social conservatism and miss concern, whereas moralization of fairness and egalitarian concerns mediated the association between social liberalism and false alarm concern. Together these studies provide a nuanced examination of the role of political ideology in responses to errors in determinations of guilt.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.