Political conservatism and threat salience have been consistently associated with intergroup bias. However, prior research has not examined potential effects of conservatism and/or threat on the attribution of relative in-group/out-group intelligence. In a cross-cultural study conducted in Spain and the United Kingdom, priming violent conflict with ISIS led participants to view an in-group ally as relatively more intelligent than an out-group adversary, in an effect mediated by feelings of anger (but not fear or general arousal). Conservatism similarly predicted biased perception of the ally’s relative intellect, a tendency that was driven by militaristic (not social/fiscal) political attitudes but was not explained by associated increases in state anger following conflict cues. This overall pattern indicates that conflict cues and militaristic political orientation heighten assessments of relative intergroup intellect during warfare via distinct affective and attitudinal pathways.
AltemeyerB. (1998). The other “authoritarian personality.” In BerkowitzL. (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 30, pp. 47–92). Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
2.
ArcherJ. (2009). The nature of human aggression. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 32, 202–208.
3.
BruneauE. G.DufourNSaxeR. (2012). Social cognition in members of conflict groups: Behavioural and neural responses in Arabs, Israelis and South Americans to each other’s misfortunes. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 367, 717–730.
4.
CararroL.CastelliL.MacchiellaC. (2011). The automatic conservative: Ideology-based attentional asymmetries in the processing of valenced information. PLoS One, 6, e26456.
5.
CuddyA. J. C.FiskeS. T.GlickP. (2008). Warmth and competence as universal dimensions of social perception: The stereotype content model and the BIAS map. In ZannaM. P. (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 40, pp. 61–149). New York, NY: Academic Press.
6.
DarwinC. (1873). The descent of man. New York, NY: Appleton.
7.
De DreuC. K. W.GreerL. L.Van KleefG. A.ShalviS.HandgraafM. J. J. (2011). Oxytocin promotes human ethnocentrism. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 108, 1262–1266.
8.
DoddM. D.BalzerA.JacobsC. M.GruszczynskiM. W.SmithK. B.HibbingJ. R. (2012). The political left rolls with the good and the political right confronts the bad: Connecting physiology and cognition to preferences. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 367, 640–649.
9.
DovidioJ. F.GaertnerS. L. (2010). Intergroup bias. In FiskeS. T.GilbertD.LindzeyG. (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (Vol. 2, 5th ed., pp. 1084–1121). New York, NY: Wiley.
10.
EffersonC.LaliveR.FehrE. (2008). The coevolution of cultural groups and ingroup favoritism. Science, 321, 1844–1849.
11.
FesslerD. M. T.PisorA. C.HolbrookC. (2017). Political orientation predicts credulity regarding putative hazards. Psychological Science, 28, 651–660.
12.
FiskeS. T. (2002). What we know now about bias and intergroup conflict, the problem of the century. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11, 123–128.
13.
GrahamJ.HaidtJ.NosekB. A. (2009). Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96, 1029–1046.
14.
HackelL. M.LooserC. E.Van BavelJ. J. (2014). Group membership alters the threshold for mind perception: The role of social identity, collective identification, and intergroup threat. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 52, 15–23.
15.
HammondR. A.AxelrodR. (2006). The evolution of ethnocentrism. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 50, 926–936.
16.
HaslamN. (2006). Dehumanization: An integrative review. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10, 252–264.
17.
HerrmannR. K.TetlockP. E.VisserP. S. (1999). Mass public decisions to go to war: A cognitive-interactionist framework. American Political Science Review, 93, 553–573.
18.
HibbingJ. R.SmithK. B.AlfordJ. R. (2014). Differences in negativity bias underlie variations in political ideology. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 37, 297–307.
19.
HolbrookC. (2016). Branches of a twisting tree: Domain-specific threat psychologies derive from shared mechanisms. Current Opinion in Psychology, 7, 81–86.
20.
HolbrookC.FesslerD. M. T. (2015). The same, only different: Threat management systems as homologues in the tree of life. In CarrollP. J.ArkinR. M.WichmanA. L. (Eds.), Handbook of Personal Security (pp. 95–109). New York, NY: Psychology Press.
21.
HolbrookC.IzumaK.DeblieckC.FesslerD. M. T.IacoboniM. (2016). Neuromodulation of group prejudice and religious belief. Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience, 11, 387–394.
22.
HolbrookC.López-RodríguezL.FesslerD. M. T.VázquezA.GómezA. (2017). Gulliver’s politics: Conservatives envision potential enemies as readily vanquished and physically small. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 8, 670–678.
23.
JohnsonD. D. P.McDermottR.BarrettE. S.CowdenJ.WranghamR.McIntyreM. H.RosenS. P. (2006). Overconfidence in wargames: Experimental evidence on expectations, aggression, gender, and testosterone. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 272, 2513–2520.
24.
JohnsonD. D. P.McDermottR.CowdenJ.TingleyD. (2012). Dead certain: Confidence and conservatism predict aggression in simulated international crisis decision-making. Human Nature, 23, 98–126.
25.
JonasE.McGregorI.KlacklJ.AgroskinD.FritscheI.HolbrookC.…QuirinM. (2014). Threat and defense: From anxiety to approach. In OlsonJ. M.ZannaM. P. (Eds.), Advances in experimental social psychology, (Vol. 49, pp. 219–286). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
26.
JostJ. T.AmodioD. M. (2012). Political ideology as motivated social cognition: Behavioral and neuroscientific evidence. Motivation and Emotion, 36, 55–64.
27.
LernerJ. S.GonzalezR. M.SmallD. A.FischhoffB. (2003). Effects of fear and anger on perceived risks of terrorism: A national field experiment. Psychological Science, 14, 144–150.
28.
LilienfeldS. O.LatzmanR. D. (2014). Threat bias, not negativity bias, underpins differences in political ideology. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 37, 318–319.
29.
MackieD. M.DevosT.SmithE. R. (2000). Intergroup emotions: Explaining offensive action tendencies in an intergroup context. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 602–616.
30.
MaitnerA. T.MackieD. M.SmithE. R. (2006). Evidence for the regulatory function of intergroup emotion: Emotional consequences of implemented or impeded intergroup action tendencies. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, 720–728.
31.
McLeanS. P.GarzaJ. P.WiebeS. A.DoddM. D.SmithK. B.HibbingJ. R.EspyK. A. (2014). Applying the Flanker task to political psychology: A research note. Political Psychology, 35, 831–840.
32.
NavarreteC. D.FesslerD. M. T. (2005). Normative bias and adaptive challenges: A relational approach to coalitional psychology and a critique of terror management theory. Evolutionary Psychology, 3, 297–325.
33.
NeubergS. L.KenrickD. T.SchallerM. (2010). Evolutionary social psychology. In FiskeS. T.GilbertD.LindzeyG. (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (Vol. 2, 5th ed., pp. 761–797). New York, NY: Wiley.
34.
OxleyD. R.SmithK. B.AlfordJ. R.HibbingM. V.MillerJ. L.ScaloraM.…HibbingJ. R. (2008). Political attitudes vary with physiological traits. Science, 321, 1667–1670.
35.
PreacherK. J.HayesA. F. (2008). Asymptotic and resampling strategies for assessing and comparing indirect effects in multiple mediator models. Behavior Research Methods, 40, 879–891.
36.
RiekB. M.ManiaE. W.GaertnerS. L. (2006). Intergroup threat and outgroup attitudes: A meta-analytic review. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10, 336–353.
37.
SellA. (2011). The recalibrational theory and violent anger. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 16, 381–389.
38.
StephanW. G.YbarraO.Rios MorrisonK. (2009). Intergroup threat theory. In NelsonT. D. (Ed.), Handbook of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination (pp. 43–60). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
39.
VaesJ.PaladinoM. P.CastelliL.LeyensJ. P.GiovanazziA. (2003). On the behavioral consequences of infrahumanization: The implicit role of uniquely human emotions in intergroup relations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 1016–1034.
40.
WranghamR. W. (1999). Evolution of coalitionary killing. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 110, 1–30.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
