Running head: POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND GROUP INTOLERANCE 1 Political ideology and intolerance towards perceived politically (in)congruent groups. Roel Cools Mark J. Brandt (supervisor) Tilburg University Author Note Roel Cools, Social & Behavioural Sciences, Tilburg University The author did not receive any financial support. We report all data exclusions, manipulations, and measures, and how we determined our sample sizes. Data from the EVS can be found online via www.europeanvaluesstudy.eu. All data was collected between the 10 th and 26 th of April 2014.
POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND GROUP INTOLERANCE 2 Abstract The current research investigates the effect of political ideology on intolerance towards groups. Previous studies have shown a relationship between political ideology and intolerance. Dubbed the ideological-conflict hypothesis it suggests that the degree of intolerance to groups of people is influenced by the relationship between the political ideology of people and the perceived political ideology of those groups. Although previous research conducted in the U.S. provides support for the ideological-conflict hypothesis similar studies have not been replicated in the Netherlands. To test whether the political ideology of people influences the intolerance to politically left and right perceived target groups several regression analyses and a Repeated measures ANOVA were conducted using two different samples. One large-scale longitudinal sample provided by the European Values Study(EVS) and a second sample collected through an online survey. The following variables were measured; participants political ideology, their degree of intolerance towards twenty target groups, and the perceived political ideology of those target groups. The results showed that the political ideology of participants only significantly influenced the intolerance to target groups when they were perceived as left. The intolerance to target groups perceived as right was not significantly influenced by the political ideology of participants. Although the results do not fully support the hypothesis they do not contradict it either. The implications of these findings are discussed. Keywords: Political ideology, Perceived political ideology, group intolerance, The Netherlands
POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND GROUP INTOLERANCE 3 Political ideology and intolerance towards perceived politically (in)congruent groups People differ in how intolerant they are towards others. People may like or dislike others based on their appearances, talents, views, beliefs, attitudes etc. The political orientation of people also seems to play a role in their intolerance to others. Research from Wetherell, Brandt and Reyna (2013) supported the assumption that peoples political ideology can attenuate or exacerbate the support of discrimination against perceived politically (in)congruent groups. In this paper the focus is on the way in which people are intolerant towards other groups based on their own political ideology and the perceived political ideology of those groups, be it either left or right. Brandt, Reyna, Chambers, Crawford, and Wetherell (2014) proposed the ideological-conflict hypothesis to describe this phenomenon, which predicts that people with a left or right political ideology will be similarly intolerant towards groups that do no uphold congruent values and beliefs. There are several definitions of political ideology. Erikson and Tedin (2003) offered a relatively simple one: a set of beliefs about the proper order of society and how it can be achieved. Others also highlight the role of social groups in their definitions like Denzau and North (1994) who state that: ideologies are the shared framework of mental models that groups of individuals possess that provide both an interpretation of the environment and a prescription as to how that environment should be structured. Simply put the ideology of a person influences how he/she interprets the world and how they believe it should be. We can assume that ideologies are indeed at least partially socially shared since most countries have more than one major political party and those parties often have contrasting views on how their society should be governed. These contrasting views are most commonly categorised as the political left and right. Most people are capable of giving a general indication of their political view, left or right even when they are provided with options such as don t know and haven t thought much about it (Jost, 2006).
POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND GROUP INTOLERANCE 4 In modern western societies people on both the political left and right have to live together and negotiate on which direction the society as a whole should take. These opposing interests inextricably create friction and dispute. Ample research can be found suggesting why opposite views could lead to intolerance and prejudice. Research conducted by Morgen, Mullen and Skitka (2010) and Skitka, Mullen, Griffin, Hutchinson and Chamberlin (2002) showed that both people on the left and right of the political divide make negative attributions to groups with inconsistent values to their own. Reyna, Henry, Korfmacher and Tucker (2005) suggested that people with negative regard towards a group rely heavily on negative stereotypes even when there is sufficient, non-stereotypical information available about that group. Mcclosky and Chong (1985) showed that people on the extremes of the political left and right both express intolerance towards political opponents. Another recent study using American samples demonstrated that liberals (left) and conservatives (right) are likely to discriminate equally against groups of people who do not uphold the same values as their ideology (Wetherell et al., 2013). The results from Wetherell showed that both groups on the political divide are likely to discriminate equally against people who have dissimilar values because they are perceived as violating their respective core values. Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski and Sulloway (2003) noted that people on the left and right primarily define their political ideology based on acceptance of, versus resistance to change and equality versus hierarchy. The first study from Wetherell et al. (2013) showed that in a student sample the value of traditionalism strengthened support for discrimination and the value of egalitarianism attenuated support for discrimination, a right and left core value respectively. Thus, although people on the political left and right both have the propensity to be intolerant to ideological dissimilar groups, this does not necessarily imply that they discriminate equally across an array of different target groups. Target groups could be perceived as upholding a left or right political ideology based on certain psychological characteristics, observations, learned
POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND GROUP INTOLERANCE 5 behaviours or stereotypes. People may use this perceived political orientation as a proxy to determine whether that specific target group violates their political values. We therefore suggest that people express explicit and/or implicit intolerance to people or groups of people whom they perceive as having incongruent political ideologies. Other research suggests that people like groups who share their views and beliefs. Burger, Messian, Patel, del Prado and Anderson (2004) showed that people like others who are similar to them, in a wide variety of manners. Lambert and Chasteen (1997) suggested that people like social groups who hold ideological beliefs similar to their own. It therefore also seems logical to suggest that people prefer groups that are perceived to be holding congruent political ideologies. A lot of research has been conducted on similarities and differences in intolerance and cognition styles between liberals and conservatives in the United States. Brandt et al. (2014) conducted studies showing that liberals and conservatives express similar levels of intolerance towards ideological incongruent groups. Research from Chambers, Schlenker and Collisson (2013) showed that both liberals and conservatives liked similar others more than dissimilar others and both groups were equally prejudiced. Crawford (2012) posits that regardless of their ideological position people will be biased in their political judgement and decisionmaking by their ideological attitudes. Farwell and Weiner (2000) showed that conservatives were less generous towards the undeserving needy but that people also overestimated the extent to which conservatives exhibit such withholding. Liberals however were perceived as more helpful but less judicious and especially conservatives had an exaggerated view that liberals were generous towards the responsible needy. A review by Jost, Nosek and Gosling (2008) indicated that conservatives consistently scored higher than liberals on measures of system justification, meaning they more strongly justify the current state of affairs than liberals. Skitka et al. (2002) showed that liberals and conservatives see the world in relative similar ways and are equally likely to firstly asses peoples actions or problems based on
POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND GROUP INTOLERANCE 6 personal attributions. However differences arise when the first judgement is in conflict with their ideological values or goals. Verhults, Eaves and Hatemi (2012) posit a relationship between the big five s openness to experience and liberalism and between conscientiousness and conservatism. However a large body of research does not directly imply that similarities and differences found in U.S. samples are universal and can be generalized to other countries. Some research looked at similarities between European and U.S. samples (Jost, Federico & Napier, 2009). They noted that both left- and right winged respondents from America, Germany and the Netherlands associated the right with terms as order, individualism, nationalism and the left with terms such as equality, system change, protest. A review from McClosky et al. (1985) revealed that Americans on the far left and far right have sharp contrasting views on a wide variety of issues but do however show similarities on questions of political and psychological style, the treatment of political opponents, and the tactics they are willing to employ. They suggested that if similar studies would be conducted in Europe they could possible reveal greater similarities between the far left and right. They base their assumption on the idea that radical movements in Europe have been more extreme and zealous and thus intensified the authoritarian propensities of each. A contrasting argument why differences between liberals and conservatives in America should not be generalized to other countries is provided by the Comparative Manifest Project(CMP). Researchers from the CMP evaluated each political party in Europe and America on a leftright continuum. They showed there is a strict distinction in America between the political left and right, the Democrats and Republicans respectively (n.d., retrieved from https://manifestoproject.wzb.eu/elections/722). In other western societies like the Netherlands there is a less clear-cut distinction between the left and right as is evidenced by the amount of different political parties and the percentage of people that vote for each party (n.d., retrieved from
POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND GROUP INTOLERANCE 7 https://manifesto-project.wzb.eu/elections/145). It could be that in the Dutch society people are less polarized and more nuanced in their ideology and that this will reflect in their tolerance towards others. There are also differences in deservingness perceptions between Europe and America. Van Oorschot (2006) found that racial stereotyping is a central element in the difference between American and European public images of social-policy target groups. With American being more negative towards the poor and Europeans being more negative towards the unemployed. These differences in attention towards certain characteristics of target groups could yield different results when studying intolerance. Overall there are reasons to suggest that a study on political ideology and intolerance towards perceived politically (in)congruent target groups would yield different results using a Dutch sample compared to an U.S. sample. Currently not much research has been conducted on political ideology and intolerance to different groups in the Netherlands. One study that provides some insightful information is the European Values Study (EVS, 2010). The EVS is a large-scale longitudinal survey research program on basic human values. It provides insight into the ideas, beliefs, preferences, attitudes, values and opinions of citizens all over Europe. This study provides us with the political orientation of a large representative Dutch sample along with a measurement of their liking/disliking of certain target groups. So will the relationship between the political ideology of people and the perceived political ideology of target groups influence the degree of intolerance towards different target groups in a Dutch sample? This leads to the following hypothesis. Hypothesis 1: When the political ideology of people is (in)congruent with the perceived political ideology of a group, people will be less (more) intolerant towards those groups. To be able to answer the question postulated above we measured the political orientation of our participants, the intolerance to each target group, and the perceived political orientation of each target group. For each target group we looked at the degree of intolerance
POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND GROUP INTOLERANCE 8 people on the political left and right had towards those groups and checked if the results were in line with the perceived political value of the target groups. The first part of the study entailed an evaluation of the EVS. The second part was designed to add extra information to see if the data from the EVS supported the hypothesis as well as to generate some new data in support of our hypothesis. The EVS provided the political views of Dutch citizens as well as a measurement of intolerance to fifteen target groups. The second part of the study built on the findings of the first by addressing some methodological concerns and generated a richer, more comprehensive view of the Dutch political ideology in relation to the intolerance to perceived politically incongruent target groups. Secondly the added data from the second sample allowed us to see if the data from the EVS supported our hypothesis by adding an averaged perceived political ideology score per target group. Method Our first data source is the 2008 round of the European Values Study survey conducted in the Netherlands (Sample A). The participants were Dutch residents selected through random stratified sampling and were all interviewed face-to-face (N=1554; 45,1% men, 54,9% women; M age =60,8, SD=17,43). The participants were primarily Dutch (94,1%), other ethnicities (5,9%). The political view of participants was measured on a ten point likert-scale (1=left, 10=right). We used this measure as the main measurement for the political ideology of each participant for ease of interpretation and because of its correlation with other related questions in the EVS. We decided to add another question from the EVS as a second measure; which political party would you vote for on a left/right scale to see if these results converged or diverged from the political view main measurement. The following target groups were used in the EVS; people with a criminal record, people from a different race, heavy drinkers, emotionally unstable people, Muslims,
POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND GROUP INTOLERANCE 9 immigrants/foreign workers, people with AIDS, drug addicts, homosexuals, Jews, gypsies, Christians, left wing extremists, right wing extremists, large families. The following question was asked of the participants as a measurement of intolerance; I don t like as a neighbour (group) in which they could choose one of two provided options per target group (1=mention, 2=not mention). Research from Skitka, Bauman and Sargis (2005) showed that the physical distance people maintain from others provides information about how they feel towards them, and the greater the distance the less positive those feelings. Sechrist and Stangor (2001) showed that distance can be used as a valid measurement of prejudice. O Bryan, Fishbein and Ritchey (2004) showed that intolerance is a general factor underlying a variety of targets of prejudice as well as sex-role stereotyping. For our second sample (Sample B) participants were contacted to participate in a short online survey (N=236; 43,2% men, 56,8% women; M age =46,3, SD=17,8). The sample size >200 was determined to allow for a reasonable margin of error. It is assumed that the participants were primarily residents from the Netherlands since the researchers used their own networks to disperse the online survey through different social media as well as email. The participants did not receive any compensation for their participation in the online survey. We used list wise deletion to exclude cases without data, no other data was removed. The political view of participants was measured on a ten point (1=left, 10=right) likertscale: When it comes to politics some people view themselves as right oriented whereas others view themselves as left oriented, What about you? Do you view yourself as rightwinged, left-winged or something else? Please indicate the degree of your preference below. This question served as a single-item measure of political ideology. This measure has been shown to be a powerful indicator of respondents ideological self-placement, with correlations exceeding.90 between ideology and voting decisions (Jost, 2006). Based on their answer each participant was allocated to either the political left of right using a cut-off score of 5.5.
POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND GROUP INTOLERANCE 10 The target groups were the same as the EVS, with an additional five target groups; Business people, Rich people, Atheists, Environmentalists and Feminists. Business people and Rich people were added as target groups because of research suggesting they are seen as high-status groups and are usually indentified as right-winged (Wetherell, Reyna & Sadler, 2013; Chambers et al, 2013). Atheists, Environmentalists and Feminists were added as groups because of research suggesting they are identified as left-winged (Chambers et al, 2013). The following question was asked of the participants as a measurement of intolerance to each target group; To which degree would you like to live next door to the following groups of people? The groups were randomly presented in a list wise manner in which participants could indicate their preference on a ten point likert-scale per target group (1=not at all, 10=very much so). We also added a measurement of perceived ideology of the target groups. This measurement served as a crux in our study since we were able to compare the intolerance scores of each target groups with their perceived political ideology. This measurement allowed us to see if the data from the EVS supported our hypothesis as well as being able to test the hypothesis using the second sample. The perceived political ideology of each target group was measured using the following question; When it comes to politics, some people view certain groups as right oriented whereas others view those groups as left oriented, What about you? Please indicate below the extent to which you view each group, right-winged, leftwinged, or something else? The groups were randomly presented in a list wise manner on a ten point likert-scale (1=left, 10=right). A similar measurement has been used by Chambers et al., (2013) to asses an average rating of each target group s ideology. Lastly we added an individual measurement on social dominance, the short Dutch version of the SDO (Pratto et al, 2013). The alpha for this scale is (.52) but was preferred over the longer scale of the SDO due to time and resource restrictions. Research conducted by
POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND GROUP INTOLERANCE 11 Reynolds et al. (2007) suggested that under certain conditions SDO is predictive of discrimination and it thus seemed to make sense to add the SDO as it could potentially be a confounding factor. We used the SDO scores to see if the results converged or diverged from the measurement of political ideology since we suspected both variables to have some overlap. Results Figure 1 presents the percentages of each value of political ideology of samples A and B. Using a cut-off score at the 5.5 point in sample A; left=52,3%, right=47,7%, sample B; left=59,1%, right=40,9%. The adherence for left-oriented views in sample B is in line with the notion indicating that student samples are generally more left-oriented than the population in general. Figure 1. Percentage of each value on the political view scale for sample A and B. Figure 2 shows the average tolerance of the participants from sample B for each target group. The groups are ordered from politically perceived left to right. The horizontal line indicates the neutral point of tolerance, this figure suggest that people are relatively more tolerant towards groups viewed as neutral or right winged.
POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND GROUP INTOLERANCE 12 Figure 2. The average tolerance per target groups, listed left- to right-winged. The horizontal line represents the divide between tolerance and intolerance. To asses the relationship of both measurements used in Sample A and Sample B we calculated Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients. For Sample A we assessed the relationship between the measurements; political view of participants and the political party they would vote for. There was a moderate positive correlation between the two measurements (r(1167)=0,60, p<0,001). This correlation suggests that both questions measure the same underlying construct to some degree. For Sample B we assessed the relationship between the measurements; political ideology of each participant and the SDO of each participant. There was a weak positive correlation between political ideology and SDO (r(212)=0,31, p<0,001). This result suggests that the measures used in Sample B both measure something different but share an underlying construct (e.g. political orientation). Our main interest was looking at the direction and slopes of the intolerance to each target group in relationship to the political ideology of the participants. We therefore listed them in order of their respective perceived political values acquired from the second sample. For each target group from Sample A we used a binary logistic regression analysis since the
POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND GROUP INTOLERANCE 13 measurement of intolerance was dichotomous. In Sample B we used linear regression analyses because the intolerance towards each target group was measured on a ten-point likert scale. The direction of the regression coefficients from all four measurements seems to indicate a general trend; when target groups are perceived as more right-winged the slope of the Beta becomes less negative and even positive (Table 1). These results support our assumption that intolerance is at least partially explained by a relation between political ideology and the perceived political value of target groups. In Figure 3 we plotted for each of the four measurements used the regression coefficients of each target group against the perceived political ideology of each target group. The horizontal line shows the zero-point of the regression coefficient, the vertical line the cut-off score between target groups viewed as left and right and the diagonal line shows the fit between the two variables. Figure 3. Regression lines sample A and B. Each node represents the result of a target group.
POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND GROUP INTOLERANCE 14 Table 1. Regression slopes between measurements of political ideology and intolerance towards target groups. Sample A Sample B Perceived Target Group Left-right view Vote for party, leftright SDO Left-right view political Beta Exp(B) Sig Beta Exp(B) Sig Beta Std. Beta Sig Beta Std. Beta Sig value Right wing extremists 0,033 1,034 0,039 1,04 0,299 0,17 * 0,151 0,152 * 8,29 Business people - - - - - - -0,077-0,048 0,136 0,146 * 7,29 Rich people - - - - - - 0,191 0,111 0,118 0,122 7,25 Christians -0,129 0,879 * -0,056 0,946-0,227-0,128 0,003 0,003 5,97 Jews -0,148 0,863 ** -0,019 0,982-0,281-0,161 * -0,083-0,086 5,87 People with criminal record -0,135 0,874 *** -0,095 0,909 *** -0,307-0,184 ** -0,157-0,163 * 5,24 Large families -0,131 0,877 ** -0,089 0,915 * -0,4-0,202 ** -0,178-0,158 * 5,19 Homosexuals -0,158 0,854 *** -0,05 0,951-0,207-0,107-0,044-0,04 5,18 Atheists - - - - - - -0,257-0,134-0,166-0,153 * 5,15 People with AIDS -0,168 0,845 *** -0,1 0,905 * -0,316-0,169 * -0,167-0,156 * 5,11 Heavy drinkers -0,063 0,939 * -0,014 0,987-0,077-0,052-0,087-0,102 5,07 Emotionally unstable people -0,077 0,926 * -0,05 0,951-0,251-0,152 * -0,209-0,218 *** 5 Muslims -0,234 0,791 *** -0,243 0,784 *** -0,578-0,288 *** -0,176-0,154 * 4,91 People of different race -0,242 0,785 *** -0,217 0,805 *** -0,377-0,219 *** -0,154-0,16 * 4,88 Gypsies -0,173 0,841 *** -0,126 0,882 *** -0,42-0,206 ** -0,293-0,253 *** 4,79 Drug addicts -0,107 0,898 *** -0,048 0,954-0,062-0,043-0,156-0,191 ** 4,74 Feminists - - - - - - -0,491-0,259 *** 0,188-0,178 ** 4,55 Immigrants/foreign workers -0,194 0,823 *** -0,152 0,859 *** -0,469-0,242 *** -0,259-0,235 *** 4,53 Environmentalists - - - - - - -0,333-0,166 * -0,322-0,281 *** 3,71 Left wing extremists -0,216 0,806 *** -0,159 0,853 *** -0,084-0,048-0,263-0,258 *** 2,37 Note. *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001. Logistic regression was used in Sample A, Linear regression in Sample B.
POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND GROUP INTOLERANCE 15 For sample B each target group was split between the participants who perceived it to be left and who perceived it to be right. Average tolerance scores per left perceived and right perceived target group where calculated for each participant and those scores were used to calculate an average tolerance score for each target groups viewed as left and as right. A paired-samples t-test was conducted to compare the averaged tolerance scores of target groups viewed as left and right. There was a significant difference in tolerance scores for perceived left (M=4,74, SD=1,33) and right (M=5,41, SD=1,34) target groups t(203)=-6,044, p<0,001. These results indicate that people were more tolerant to right perceived target groups than left perceived target groups. The mean tolerance scores for perceived left and right target groups are presented in figure 4. Independent-samples t-tests were conducted to compare the mean tolerance scores of left/right perceived target groups between participants on the political left and right. There was a significant difference in the tolerance scores of left perceived target groups for people on the left (M=4,94, SD=1,51) and right (M=4,08, SD=1,31) of the political divide; t(222)=-4,53, p<0,001, d=0,60. There was a non-significant difference in the tolerance scores for right perceived target groups for people on the left (M=5,46, SD=1,32) and right (M=5,40, SD=1,39) of the political divide; t(204)=-0,30, p=0,764, d=0,04. These results suggest that the difference in tolerance towards groups perceived as left is at least partially dependant on the political ideology of participants. Figure 4. The x-axis represents the political ideology of participants.
POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND GROUP INTOLERANCE 16 We conducted a Repeated measures ANOVA to check whether there was a significant difference between the mean tolerance for target groups that were perceived to be left and right in relation to the participants with a left and right political ideology. Because there were only two distinct groups, namely the target groups viewed as left and target groups viewed as right, we met the assumption of sphericity. The results showed that there was a significant effect of political ideology of the participant F(1, 146)=15,32, p<0,001, ηp2=0,095. These results suggest that there is a significant influence of political ideology of participants on the tolerance towards groups be it either left or right. This influence has a small to medium effect size. There was no statistically significant interaction effect between the perceived ideology of the target groups and political ideology of the participants F(57, 146)=1,22, p=0,166, ηp2=0,324. These results suggest that political ideology of participants does have an influence on the tolerance to groups viewed as left and right but that we can not generalise these results to the population. Figure 5 shows the effects from the Repeated Measures ANOVA. Figure 5. The direction of tolerance for target groups perceived as left and right.
POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND GROUP INTOLERANCE 17 Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients were computed to assess the relationships between the political ideology of participants and the average intolerance to target groups viewed as left and right. The averaged intolerance variables were also correlated against the SDO score of participants. There was a negative correlation between political ideology and the average intolerance to groups viewed as left (r(202)=-,299, p<0,001). There was no correlation between political ideology and the average intolerance to groups viewed as right (r(204)=0,00, p=0,999). There was a negative correlation between SDO and the average intolerance to groups viewed as left (r(208)=-,199, p=0,004). There was a non-significant correlation between SDO and the average intolerance to groups viewed as right (r(202)=0,049, p=0,488). Scatter plots summarize the results (Figure 5). Overall, there was an average negative correlation between political ideology and the average intolerance to groups viewed as left. Increases in right-winged ideology were correlated with decreases in tolerance to groups perceived as left. A surprising result was that there was a zero-correlation between the political ideology of participants and the average intolerance to groups viewed as right. Similar results were found when using SDO instead of political ideology. The SDO score had a weak negative correlation with the average intolerance to groups viewed as left. Increases in SDO were correlated with decreases in tolerance to groups perceived as left. A nonsignificant positive correlation was found between SDO and the average intolerance to groups viewed as right.
POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND GROUP INTOLERANCE 18 Figure 5. Scatter plots of the correlations between the political ideology of participants and the average tolerance to target groups viewed as left or right. Because, in contrast to our expectations, no correlation was found between the political ideology of participants and the average tolerance of groups viewed as right we looked at the individual correlations between the political ideology of participants and the tolerance to each subgroup. Of the twenty target groups only three significantly correlated with political ideology. There was a weak positive correlation between political ideology and the tolerance to Right wing extremists (r(174)=0,182, p=0,016). There was a weak positive correlation between political ideology and the tolerance to Rich people (r(169)=0,183, p=0,017). Lastly, there was an average negative correlation between political ideology and the tolerance to Environmentalists (r(48)=-0,393, p=0,006). These positive and negative
POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND GROUP INTOLERANCE 19 correlations could be cancelling each other out when looking at the averaged tolerance to groups viewed as right. Running the Pearson product-moment correlation between the political ideology of participants and the averaged tolerance to groups viewed as right without the target group Environmentalists shows a non-significant positive correlation (r(204)=0,022, p=0,755). This indicates that the positive and negative correlations between the political ideology of participants and the tolerance to target groups perceived as right are indeed at least partially cancelling each other out. Table 2 provides a summary of the correlations between the individual measures of political ideology and SDO and the tolerance to target groups perceived as left and as right. Table 2. Summary of the correlations between political ideology/sdo and tolerance of the target groups viewed as left and right. group Ideology (groups right) Ideology (groups left) SDO (groups right) SDO (groups left) r. Sig. N r. Sig. N r. Sig. N r. Sig. N Right wing extremists 0,182 * 176 0,118 26 0,206 ** 175 0,078 25 Business people 0,136 165 0,234 33 0,042 164-0,373 * 32 Rich people 0,183 * 171 0,072 30 0,179 171-0,216 28 Christians 0,043 110 0,041 63-0,147 110-0,122 62 Jews -0,096 100 0,052 61-0,069 100-0,281 * 59 People with criminal record 0,043 67-0,215 * 92-0,058 67-0,147 91 Large families -0,179 73-0,175 107-0,11 73-0,154 106 Homosexuals 0,048 65-0,088 97 0,1 65-0,237 * 96 Atheists -0,112 58-0,262 ** 102-0,15 58-0,171 100 People with AIDS -0,151 45-0,112 99-0,063 45-0,244 * 98 Heavy drinkers 0,059 53-0,219 * 105 0,1 53-0,083 103 Emotionally unstable people -0,188 44-0,223 * 105 0,004 44-0,168 103 Muslims 0,115 56-0,216 * 122-0,362 ** 56-0,233 * 120 People of different race 0,046 46-0,179 111-0,129 45-0,293 ** 110 Gypsies -0,2 47-0,367 *** 119-0,173 47-0,236 ** 117 Drug addicts 0,162 11-0,204 ** 213-0,113 10-0,68 199 Feminists 0,148 34-0,262 *** 163 0,162 34-0,335 *** 161 Immigrants/foreign workers -0,189 39-0,235 ** 135-0,22 39-0,268 ** 134 Environmentalists -0,393 ** 48-0,332 *** 131-0,118 47-0,17 130 Left wing extremists 0,156 11-0,251 *** 191 0,337 11-0,037 189 Note. *p<0.05, **p<0,01, ***p<0,001
POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND GROUP INTOLERANCE 20 Discussion This study tested the hypothesis that the political ideology of participants, be it either left- or right-winged, influenced the degree of intolerance towards an array of target groups that were either perceived to be left- or right-winged by the participants. It was hypothesized that when the political ideology of participants was congruent with the perceived political ideology of target groups participants would indicate higher degrees in which they would like to live next to people from those target groups. In addition when the political ideology of participants was incongruent with the perceived political ideology of a target group, participants would indicate lower degrees in which they would like to live next to people from that target group. The degree in which participants would like to live next to people from certain target groups was viewed as a measure of tolerance. The predicted pattern of results consistent with this hypothesis is that people on the political left would be more tolerant towards target groups perceived as left than right and the reverse for people on the political right. The results from the regression analyses did offer support for our hypothesis. While not all regression coefficients between the tolerance of target groups and political ideology of participants were statistically significant we did find a trend. The size and direction of the regression coefficients depended on the perceived ideology of the target groups. Although this relationship gives support for the hypothesis that the perceived ideology of the target groups determines the association between the political ideology of participants and tolerance, for some target groups, like Muslims, people of a different race, and Gypsies negative regression coefficients were steeper than the model predicted based on their perceived political ideology. This suggests that there are other factors besides the right-winged political orientation of participants exacerbating the intolerance towards these target groups. Although the regression results were not as clear-cut as we would have hoped they did suggest that at least partially the political ideology of Dutch people influences their tolerance towards certain target groups.
POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND GROUP INTOLERANCE 21 The analyses from the Pearson product-moment correlations, T-tests and Repeated Measures ANOVA yielded similar results that were more conclusive. There was a main effect of political ideology of participants on the tolerance to the target groups perceived as left and right. People with a left political ideology were significantly more tolerant towards target groups. This finding is in line with other research suggesting that people on the left of the political divide are more tolerant in comparison to people on the right (Jost et al, 2003; Reyna et al, 2005). To have the data support our hypothesis there had to be an interaction effect, however no statistically significant interaction effect was found between the political ideology of participants and the perceived political ideology of the target groups. These results do not support our hypothesis, political ideology of participants only significantly influences the tolerance to target groups when they are perceived as left. The tolerance to target groups perceived as right is not significantly influenced by the political ideology of participants. Research from Wetherell et al. (2013) offers a possible explanation for this finding suggesting that although people with a left or right political ideology are both equally likely to discriminate, people adhering to a left ideology may alleviate discrimination trough abstract liberal values like egalitarianism and universalism. This could explain why we found that people on the political left are equally tolerant to target groups perceived as left and right and that people on the political right are more intolerant to target groups perceived as left in comparison to target groups perceived as left. Currently we have to reject the hypothesis that; for people on the political right, the tolerance to target groups is influenced by the perceived political ideology of those target groups which is in line with our hypothesis but for people on the political left, the tolerance to target groups was not influenced by the perceived political ideology of those target groups. The rejection of this hypothesis is in conflict with other research collaborating the relationship between ideological beliefs and values and intolerance to social groups with inconsistent
POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND GROUP INTOLERANCE 22 beliefs and values (i.e. the ideological-conflict hypothesis; Brandt et al., 2014). It is possible that the ideological-conflict hypothesis supported in U.S. samples does not extend to Dutch samples. Dutch society is less strictly divided between political left and right and people may therefore experience less tension between left and right beliefs and values. Because the target groups perceived as right in this study were generally high-status groups and Dutch people could be less occupied with political discourse the missing result of intolerance expressed by people on the political left to right-winged target groups can be explained. Another explanation why the ideological-conflict hypothesis could not extend to Dutch society could be because of possible differences of participants in self-placement on the left/right political scale. Knutsen (1998) showed that people in Western-Europe place themselves on the political left or right based on religion/secularity, economic values, and materialistic/postmaterialistic values. There is no way of knowing which factors influenced the choices of the participants during their self-placement on the political ideology scale since we did not incorporate such factors. Perhaps we would have found support for our hypothesis if we used other questions assessing political ideology. Research from Achterberg and Houtman (2006) could shed some light on this question. Achterberg showed that cultural conservatism was the largest explanatory factor in voting behaviour of unnatural voters (e.g. people that vote in contrast of what you would expect from an economic point of view). Measuring self-placement of Dutch participants on a progressiveness-conservatism scale could therefore yield results that would be more consistent with the ideological-conflict hypothesis. By studying intolerance to groups based on political ideology we extended the literature on group intolerance and added to the understanding of political ideology on group intolerance in the Netherlands. We showed that in the Netherlands, in line with research from other countries, people on the political left are generally more tolerant to a variety of groups.
POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND GROUP INTOLERANCE 23 Also we demonstrated that people on the political right are more intolerant to groups which they perceive as left in comparison to groups perceived as right-winged. This research is helpful in understanding the differences between people on the political left and right in Dutch society. One limitation of this study was the absence of possible confounding factors contributing to intolerance to the target groups. In addition to political ideology stereotypes and symbolic threats (i.e. perceived differences in beliefs, norms and values) have also been found to contribute to prejudice towards Muslims (Velasco Gonzales, Verkuyten, Weesie and Poppe, 2008) and perceptions of parasitism and profligacy have been found to contribute to the negative image of Gypsies (Lucassen, 1991). Confounding factors could be controlled for in future studies and would generate a clearer picture of the influence of political ideology on intolerance to groups. A second limitation was the participant sample, although it was a large enough pool to have discriminatory power it was a convenience sample with no predetermined differences in background characteristics representative of the Dutch population. A more representative sample could warrant generalisation towards a larger population. A third limitation of this research was the variation in target groups, because of time and resource restrictions we could only incorporate a limited amount of target groups in our study. Participants were more tolerant overall towards target groups perceived as right irrespective of the political ideology of the participants. This could be due to a weakness in the methodology of this study; that only a few target groups were perceived as right(5) and four of these groups are generally viewed as positive in Dutch society (e.g. Christians, business people). This would also explain why people who are left-winged were more tolerant to target groups perceived as right-winged than target groups perceived as left-winged. The addition of more target groups could lead to a more evenly proportioned amount of politically different groups. Further studies could examine which target groups are viewed as negative by people with a left ideology, not by people with a right ideology, and combine them with the
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