Testing a Dual Process Model of Prejudice: Assessment and Experimental Manipulation of Intergroup Threat Perceptions

Emotional reactions to social groups, such as people of the Muslim world, appear to vary according to perceptions of the threats these groups pose to one's ingroup. Specifically, intergroup emotions appear to serve a sociofunctional purpose such that they arise in response to qualitatively different threats (Neuberg & Cottrell, 2002). Using American college student samples, two studies were conducted to establish the connection between perceptions of threat posed by people of the Muslim world and intergroup emotions toward Muslims. Study 1, a correlational study, situated these relationships within Duckitt's (2001) dual process model of motivation and cognition. Path analyses (N = 158) revealed that individual differences in perceptions of economic threat were predicted by a motivation for hierarchical social group relations, as manifested by social dominance orientation (SDO). Individual differences in perceptions of value threat from Muslims were predicted by a motivation for social stability, order, and security, as manifested by right-wing authoritarianism (RWA). These economic and value threat perceptions subsequently predicted the negative intergroup emotions of anger and disgust. Supporting the tenet of other-condemning emotions (Rozin, Lowery, Imada, & Haidt, 1999), perceptions of value threat were more strongly related to disgust than to anger, and perceptions of economic threat were more strongly related to anger than to disgust. Study 2, an experimental study, involved two parts that examined the impact of threat perceptions on emotions and behavioral inclinations. Study 2a utilized a manipulation of economic threat perceptions toward people of the Muslim world (N = 53). However, the manipulation was ineffective, which may have been due to real-world constraints regarding this group's perceived economic competitiveness. Study 2b contained a manipulation of value threat perceptions (N = 162). Results showed that this manipulation predicted disgust toward people of the Muslim world, which subsequently predicted behavioral inclinations to maintain traditional Western values. Additional analyses demonstrated that disgust more strongly predicted inclinations to avoid or reject Muslim norms and values than inclinations to confront this group.