Antecedents and consequences of ideological conflict along social and economic dimensions

Decades of research has consistently demonstrated that, compared to liberals, conservatives are more prejudiced towards a variety of target groups. Recent research, however, has challenged this finding by demonstrating that liberals and conservatives both express prejudice towards ideologically dissimilar others. This effect also appears to be dimension-specific, with social and economic ideologies differentially predicting prejudice against targets who vary on the social and economic dimensions of ideology, respectively. The current thesis sought to advance this work by developing and testing two novel hypotheses related to the multi-dimensional nature of ideological conflict. First, in three studies (N = 573), I tested the differential antecedent hypothesis, which predicts that the dimension-specific contributions of social and economic ideologies on prejudice should be differentially affected by distinct “pre-political” beliefs about the social world, namely dangerous and competitive worldviews, respectively. The results generally supported this hypothesis, but also suggested that dangerous world beliefs underlie people’s economic ideology and prejudice towards economic target groups. Second, in three additional studies (N = 1030), I tested the differential mediation hypothesis, which predicts that the dimension-specific contributions of social and economic ideologies on prejudice should be differentially mediated by symbolic and realistic threat, respectively. The findings for this hypothesis were mixed, and suggested that symbolic threat is the key driver of ideological conflict across both dimensions. Together, these findings provide new insights into the possible antecedents and consequences of ideological conflict along social and economic dimensions. Importantly, this research further challenges the assumptions that prejudice is an affliction of the political right and that a one-dimensional model of ideology can provide a complete account of prejudice