War and prejudice: A study of social values, right-wing authoritarianism, and social dominance orientation
Introduction
Since the advent of the “War on terror” in late 2001, the invasion of Iraq on 19 March 2003, and other bombings (e.g. in Bali, Madrid, and London), lively political debate has ensued on the need and legal basis for the war against Iraq, the causes of international terrorism, the alleged terrorist threat posed by Iraq, and other related issues. Public opinion appears to be sharply divided about some of these issues especially among members of the “coalition of the willing”.
The present research was begun just prior to the invasion of Iraq. We were interested in community support for war against Iraq and a related issue that was salient in Australia at the time, namely, attitudes to Middle Eastern people. These issues were at the forefront of political debate, especially following the Australian government’s vigorous stance against illegal migrants and boatpeople, many of whom, it was claimed, were from the Middle East, as well as the government’s removal of asylum-seekers to be processed on Pacific islands outside of Australia’s jurisdiction. We were also particularly interested in the extent to which these attitudes were related to a number of key individual difference variables said to be of relevance in understanding prejudice and social attitudes. In particular, we focused our research on the roles played by right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), social dominance orientation (SDO), and the social values national strength and order (NSO) and international harmony and equality (IHE). Many contemporary studies into prejudice focus on a comparison of RWA and SDO while neglecting the role of values. We shall demonstrate that this is a weakness of some previous work and that in order to give full consideration to the role that individual differences play in prejudice, attention needs also to be paid to social values.
Section snippets
The importance of social values
Values act like motivators that drive our attitudes and set the boundaries within which we act. They can be likened to needs and help shape our goal-directed behaviour (Feather, 1995). Rokeach (1968) maintained that values transcend situations and guide our appraisals of situations and individuals, while also having an impact on short-term as well as long-term goals (Feather, 1995). According to Dryzek and Braithwaite (2000) individuals have internalised value principles that guide their
Right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation
RWA and SDO are two key contemporary individual difference measures used to predict prejudice. Because, at best, they are usually only moderately related, evidence suggests that their psychological roots differ and that they explain different aspects of prejudice (e.g., Altemeyer, 1998, Duriez and Van Hiel, 2002, Ekehammar et al., 2004, Heaven and Bucci, 2001, Duckitt et al., 2002, Kreindler, 2005). Whereas RWA is concerned with conventionalism, and adherence to social norms (Altemeyer, 1998),
Aims and rationale of this study
To date, studies that have attempted to link RWA and SDO to prejudice have done so from a number of different vantage points including ideological and world views (e.g. Duckitt et al., 2002), personality (Ekehammar et al., 2004), and group categorization (Kreindler, 2005). None, it would seem, have specifically tested the extent to which measures such as RWA, SDO, and prejudice are underpinned by values. If individuals have indeed internalised certain value principles (Dryzek & Braithwaite, 2000
Participants
Participants were 148 members of the general public drawn from the Illawarra region of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. With about 300,000 inhabitants, this is a major population area of NSW located immediately south of the greater Sydney metropolitan area. The sample comprised 79 males and 68 females (one respondent did not indicate sex). Of the total sample, we collected data from 44 respondents (19 males; 25 females) before the invasion began on March 19, 2003 (see analyses below). The
Pre- and post-invasion scores
We conducted a one-way MANOVA to check for differences on the main outcome measures between respondents who had provided data before and after the war had begun. Attitudes to war and Middle Eastern people were the criterion variables and date of completion of the questionnaire was the independent factor. There was no significant multivariate effect, Wilks’ Lambda = .986, F (2, 144) = 1.03, p > .05, nor were there any significant univariate effects on the two attitude scores. Thus, the actual invasion
Discussion
We examined, among a community sample of Australians, the individual difference correlates of attitudes to people from the Middle East and the war in Iraq. The main aim of the research was to assess the ability of RWA, SDO, and the values national strength and order and international harmony and equality to predict these attitudes. Using structural equation modelling we tested the hypothesis that values, through their links with RWA and SDO, predict attitudes. The results of the modelling
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