Do liberals and conservatives think about things in different ways?

Morgan, Mullen, & Skitka, 2010• What is the ideo-attribution effect? • When would you expect to get it? • What are personal vs. situational attributions and how do they

relate to automatic/controlled processing?• How do we assess controlled processing?• Does it matter how you operationalize political orientation?• What about social identity and motivation (instead of values)?

Study 1• Knowledge networks• Operational definition of political orientation?• What were the correlates of political orientation (Table 1).• Method and results?

• Differences?• Methods and results?

Study 2

Study 3• Police officers accused of wrongly killing a wild cougar• Environmental vs. security values• Method and results? (stats)

• What are other examples of when lib-con attributional differences may reverse?

• Are they really getting at “values”?

Overall

Nail, Harton, & Decker, 2003• What is the integrated model? • What evidence is there from other research?• What does this model suggest about race and politics? • About values?• What other groups would it apply to? • What other values might be involved?

Previous Research • Links between modern racism and conservatism• Aversive racism studies in liberal environment• Gaertner, 1973—responses to telephone caller• Skitka et al., 2002—attributions about social

welfare• Sniderman et al., 1991—responses to laid off

worker• Reyna et al., 2006—beliefs about affirmative

action• Crandall et al., 1994—conservativism as our

“default”

Liberals and conservatives respond with opposite biases.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Liberal Moderate Conservative

Political orientation

Dou

ble

jeop

ardy

ratin

gs

AA Officer

EA Officer

Study 2—Replication and extension

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Liberal Moderate Conservative

Political orientation

Dou

ble

jeop

ardy

ratin

gs

AA Officer

EA Officer

The main difference is in the EA officer/AA victim condition.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

AA Victim EA Victim AA Victim EA Victim AA Victim EA Victim

Liberal Moderate Conservative

Dou

ble

jeop

ardy

ratin

gs

AA Officer

EA Officer

SC increases for liberals only.

34000

35000

36000

37000

38000

39000

40000

41000

Liberal Moderate Conservative

Political orientation

Tou

ch S

C

AA Experimenter

EA Experimenter

HR increases for liberals only.

25

27

29

31

33

35

37

39

41

43

Liberal Moderate Conservative

Political orientation

HR AA Experimenter

EA Experimenter

Study 5: Will liberals discriminate when there is an “excuse”? • 203 EA community participants• 3 (officer/victim race) X 3 (puncher) X 3 (political orientation)

When the punch is unspecified, we replicate our finding for liberals.

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Liberal Moderate Conservative

Dou

ble

Jeop

ardy

Rat

ings

AA/EA

EA/AA

EA/EA

When the officer throws the first punch (“excuse”), the liberals show less bias.

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Liberal Moderate Conservative

Dou

ble

Jeop

ardy

Rat

ings

AA/EA

EA/AA

EA/EA

When the motorist throws the first punch, conservatives tend to show a bias against the AA.

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Liberal Moderate Conservative

Dou

ble

Jeo

par

dy

Rat

ings

AA/EA

EA/AA

EA/EA

Study 6: Do these differences relate to value differences b/t L and C? • 96 EA community members• 2 (background/values) X 2 (race) X 3 (political

orientation)• Car, home, drug, girlfriend, school, parent details

varied

• What sentence is most appropriate?

Liberals and conservatives respond differently to people from traditional vs. nontraditional backgrounds.

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

Liberal Moderate Conservative

Sen

ten

ce

EA Trad

EA Non

AA Trad

AA Non

Study 7: Do liberals and conservatives differ in implicit vs. explicit racism?

• 125 EA students• Modern racism scale (McConahay, 1986)• Implicit Association Test (Greenwald et al., 1998) • Internal/External Motivation to Respond without Prejudice scales

(Plant & Devine, 1998)

Liberals show more difference between their implicit and explicit levels of racism.

-0.8

-0.6

-0.4

-0.2

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

Liberal Moderate Conservative

Political Orientation

Stan

dard

ized

Pre

judi

ce S

core

Explicit

Implicit

Political orientation predicts explicit, but not implicit, racism. Independent

VariablesImplicit Racism

(IAT)

Explicit Racism(MRS)

Gender .17 -.11

IMS .12 -.41**

EMS -.09 .03

POS .12 .32**

R2 .06 .40**

What about the moderates? • They’re pretty moderate.• Who are they? Why do they show less bias?

Study 8: What about other stigmatized groups? • 77 heterosexual college students pre-tested to be liberal or

conservative• Interacted via the computer with a “homosexual” or

“heterosexual” confederate who either agreed with them on most issues or disagreed on most.

• Reports of desire to help

Liberals were more willing to help unless there was an “excuse.”

0.00

5.00

10.00

15.00

20.00

25.00

30.00

35.00

Hom

osex

ual

Agr

ee

Hom

osex

ual

Dis

agre

e

Het

eros

exua

lA

gree

Het

eros

exua

lD

isag

ree

Inte

nt

Mea

ns

Liberals

Conservatives

Other ideas?

• What are other ways to test these ideas? • How can they be integrated with other research

we’ve read about this semester? • What are moderates? What are they like? • What difference would target gender or

appearance make? • Is being colorblind a good thing?

Debate• Make notes on the debate as it relates to issues that we’ve

discussed in class:• Values held by liberals/conservatives• How each present their arguments• Whether and how they dodge questions• Others?

• http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2012.00910.x/pdf