Stereotype activation and self-regulation by conservatives and liberals in political encounters

ABSTRACT

We examined stereotyping and its effect on self-regulation in preparation for inter-ideological interactions. Turkish conservative and liberal students anticipated interacting with a political outgroup (vs. ingroup) member and the accessibility of outgroup and ingroup stereotypes was measured. Conservatives in both outgroup and ingroup interaction conditions showed higher accessibility for outgroup stereotypes. Liberals, however, showed lower accessibility for both outgroup and ingroup stereotypes in both conditions. Liberals’ suppression of stereotypes about the anticipated partner led to worse self-regulation when the anticipated partner was conservative but better self-regulation when the partner was liberal. Conservatives’ stereotype accessibility did not affect their self-regulation. These findings show that liberals may tend to rely on self-regulatory resources to suppress their stereotypes while anticipating inter-ideological interactions, while conservatives rely on stereotypes to navigate such interactions.

KEYWORDS:

• Intergroup perception
• political ideology
• self-regulation
• stereotypes

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Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/k8pqw and osf.io/7gdxt.

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/k8pqw and osf.io/7gdxt

Notes

1. All the materials necessary to replicate this study are available at osf.io/7gdxt.

2. An independent group of 22 volunteers (half of whom identified themselves as liberal and the other half as conservative on a self-identification scale) rated a list of 90 words in an internet survey. These 90 words were determined on the basis of a pre-pilot assessment in which 14 graduate students generated possible negative stereotypical words for conservatism and liberalism (also possible control words were added to that list). In the pilot study, each word was rated on a 5-point scale ranging from “extremely descriptive of liberals” to “extremely descriptive of conservatives.” Participants reported their own ideological view on a 7-point self-placement scale (1: extremely liberal; 7: extremely conservative). Participants’ ideological views were critical here because we created separate word lists for the liberals and conservatives for the actual study based on the results of this pilot study. Specifically, 10 words that were rated as the most stereotypical for the ideological outgroup in this pilot study were used in the experiment as the outgroup stereotype words. Both conservatives’ and liberals’ ratings of typicality for the outgroup stereotypes significantly differed from the midpoint (“not descriptive of liberals or conservatives”) in the expected directions (conservative: M = 2.03, SD = .52, t(10) = −6.16, p < .001; liberal: M = 4.27, SD = .37, t(10) = 6.49, p < .001) Similarly, 10 words that were rated as the most stereotypical for one’s own ideological group were used in the experiment as the ingroup stereotype words. Again, both conservatives’ and liberals’ ratings of typicality for the ingroup stereotypes significantly differed from the midpoint in the expected directions (conservative: M = 3.85, SD = .44, t(10) = 6.49, p < .001; liberal: M = 2.57, SD = .38, t(10) = −3.76, p < .01) The words that were chosen by the least number of people as being descriptive of liberals or conservatives were selected as control words. Ratings of typicality for those words did not significantly differ from the midpoint for conservative (M = 2.98, SD = .21, t(10) = −.28, p = .78) or liberal participants (M = 2.94, SD = .11, t(10) = −1.60, p = .14). The frequency of the words was matched across liberal-stereotypical, conservative-stereotypical, and control words in light of Göz’s (2003) previous research on Turkish word frequencies. The distribution of the length of the words was also equalized across word categories.

3. All the data files necessary to reproduce the analyses of this study are available at osf.io/k8pqw.

4. This criterion for outlier analysis was adopted from Tabachnick and Fidell (2007). Including the outliers in the analyses did not change the patterns of the data or significance of the analyses.

5. That is not to say, however, that political interactions are not affected by explicit ideological attitudes or controlled behaviors as well. Future research should disintegrate the role of implicit and explicit stereotypical associations and behavioral reactions during anticipation and/or engagement in such interactions.