The Ideological-Conflict Hypothesis: Intolerance Among Both Liberals and Conservatives

Abstract

Decades of research in social and political psychology have demonstrated that political conservatives appear more intolerant toward a variety of groups than do political liberals. Recent work from three independent labs (Chambers, Schlenker, & Collisson, 2013; Crawford & Pilanski, in press; Wetherell, Brandt, & Reyna, in press) challenges this conventional wisdom by suggesting that the psychological underpinnings of intolerance are not exclusive to people on either end of the political spectrum. These studies demonstrate that liberals and conservatives express similar levels of intolerance towards ideologically-dissimilar and threatening groups. We suggest future research and discuss the psychological and political implications of our conclusions.

Keywords: ideology, intolerance, prejudice, political psychology