Criminalization as a justification for violence against the homeless in Hungary

ABSTRACT

Criminalization of social groups can create new norms for intergroup relations. An example for this is the 2018 amendment to the Hungarian Fundamental Law, which openly criminalizes homeless people. In our research, we investigated whether criminalization of homelessness can become a source of justifying violence against homeless people in the Hungarian context. We assumed that right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation would positively predict support for violence against the homeless, and the acceptance of a criminalizing law can serve as a justification for this. Our hypotheses were tested using a convenience (N = 196) and a representative sample of the population of Budapest (N = 674). We found that both RWA and SDO predicted support for violence, and this connection was mediated by the new law. We also found that justification was influenced by educational level, as the association between SDO and violence increased with higher levels of education.

KEYWORDS:

• Criminalization
• homelessness
• justification of violence
• right-wing authoritarianism
• social dominance orientation

Data sharing policy

The materials that support the findings of the studies are openly available on Open Science Framework (identifier: DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/KZ6BJ), and can be found here: https://osf.io/kz6bj/

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/kz6bj/.

Open scholarship

 

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/kz6bj/.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Political Capital Policy Research and Consulting Institute; János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences; Shelter Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Laura Faragó

Laura Faragó is a PhD student at the Doctoral School of Psychology at Eötvös Loránd University, and a research fellow at Pázmány Péter Catholic University. Her main research interests are political violence, social dominance orientation, right-wing authoritarianism, and fake news acceptance.

Dávid Ferenczy-Nyúl

Dávid Ferenczy-Nyúl is a freelancer social psychologist. His main research interests are intergroup violence, extremism, and belief in fake news and conspiracy theories.

Anna Kende

Dr. Anna Kende is an associate professor and the head of Social Psychology Department at Eötvös Loránd University. Her main research interests are connected to the broader topic of intergroup relations. She focuses on issues of prejudice, intergroup helping, and collective action.

Péter Krekó

Dr. Péter Krekó is an assistant professor at Eötvös Loránd University, and the executive director of Political Capital Institute. His main areas of research are Russian 'soft power' policies, political populism and extremism in Europe, and belief in conspiracy theories.

Zoltán Gurály

Zoltán Gurály is a sociologist, and works as a researcher, policy maker, and social worker at Shelter Foundation. His research interest is related to homelessness and the efficacy of homeless care.