Abstract
Using American college student samples, two studies were conducted to establish the connection between perceptions of threat posed by people of the Muslim world and intergroup emotions toward this group. Study 1, a correlational study, situated these relationships within Duckitt’s (2001) dual process model. Path analyses revealed that perceptions of economic threat from Muslims were predicted by a motivation for hierarchical group relations, as manifested by social dominance orientation. Perceptions of value threat from Muslims were predicted by a motivation for social stability and security, as manifested by right-wing authoritarianism. These economic and value threat perceptions subsequently predicted the intergroup emotions of anger and disgust, respectively. Study 2, an experimental study, involved a manipulation of value threat from Muslims. Results showed that perceiving Muslims to pose a greater threat to Westerners’ values heightened feelings of disgust, which subsequently predicted behavioral inclinations to maintain traditional Western values.
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Notes
In another experiment, American participants were randomly assigned to read an article describing relations between the Muslim and Western worlds as involving either high or low economic threat. However, a manipulation check indicated that the two groups did not significantly differ in their perceptions of economic threat (t[51] = −.17, p = .86). This suggests that the manipulation of economic threat was ineffective, perhaps for the same reason there may have been a restriction of range on perceptions of economic threat in Study 1: threats from Muslims toward Westerners in the global economy may be low in ecological validity.
In order to further investigate the internal consistency of the anger measure, a crosstabulation of participant responses to the two items assessing anger was conducted. This analysis showed that two participants provided contradictory responses to these two items, namely a 1 for one item and either a 5 or 6 for the other (no participant reported a 7). Removal of these two participants increased the Cronbach’s alpha of the scale to .66. However, when these two participants were not included in the remainder of analyses for Study 2, results showed little variation from the original analyses in which these participants were included. Specifically, the direction of all relationships remained the same and the strength of the effects showed minimal variation. Thus, all analyses reported within Study 2 include these two participants.
We also conducted analyses in which we controlled for the possibility that intergroup emotions may provoke particular behavioral inclinations because they are more extreme than other behaviors. To do so, perceptions of the extremity of each of the three behaviors were assessed and aggregated (α = .89). The composite of the value behavioral inclinations was then regressed on the extremity ratings and a residualized value behavioral inclination variable was computed. This residualized variable served as the dependent variable in the new model. The model was a good fit of the data (χ 2 = 1.06, df = 1, p = .30, CFI = 1.00, NFI = 1.00, RMSEA = .02). The indirect pathway from the value threat condition to residualized value behavioral inclinations was significant through disgust (95% CI = .06 to .36, p = .006), but not through anger (95% CI = −.04 to .23, p = .17). Further, disgust significantly predicted residualized value behavioral inclinations (β = .37, p < .001), and anger marginally significantly predicted these residualized inclinations (β = .19, p = .06). This suggests that part of the association between anger and non-residualized value behavioral inclinations was due to the association between anger and more extreme acts.
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This research was supported by an AAUW American Dissertation Fellowship to Miriam Matthews.
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Matthews, M., Levin, S. Testing a dual process model of prejudice: Assessment of group threat perceptions and emotions. Motiv Emot 36, 564–574 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-012-9280-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-012-9280-y