Abstract
In down-regulating intergroup fear, an intense emotion common to intractable intergroup conflicts, people may employ various fear-reducing appraisals. Adopting a motivated reasoning perspective, we posited that the contents of individuals’ ideological beliefs influence the contents they employ to down-regulate fear, with rightists preferring ingroup-empowering content and leftists preferring outgroup-weakening content. In Study 1, rightists (vs. leftists) reported greater use of ingroup-empowering reappraisal to down-regulate fear, but no differences emerged in the use of outgroup-weakening reappraisal. Study 2 manipulated the contents’ perceived instrumentality in reducing fear, to examine this as an alternative mechanism. Perceived instrumentality influenced participants’ behavioral content preferences ahead of a fear induction, but the manipulation did not mitigate the right-left differences in ingroup-empowering reappraisal use once participants were confronted with the stimulus, replicating Study 1. Study 3 extended these findings, identifying ideological differences in two additional fear-reappraisal themes and in the attitudinal outcomes of fear regulation.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 482-502 |
Number of pages | 21 |
Journal | European Journal of Social Psychology |
Volume | 49 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Apr 2019 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Keywords
- emotion regulation
- fear
- ideology
- intergroup conflict
- reappraisal