Bias Within Because of Threat From Outside

Abstract

Prejudice against Muslim Americans increased after 9/11, but little is known about the extent to which anti-Muslim attitudes shift in response to external events, in particular calls for terrorism from individuals outside the United States. Motivated by the relevance of this question and guided by past research on both intergroup relations and emotion regulation, an experiment was conducted in which participants viewed a mock news video with an English voice-over of an Arabic speaker either calling for or condemning terrorism against the United States (or no video in the control condition). The terrorism provocation increased anti-Muslim bias but only for participants high in both in-group (American) glorification and revenge planning. The same three-way interaction was also found for anger toward Muslims. When glorification and revenge planning were both high, anger toward Muslims mediated the effect on bias against Muslims but mediation did not occur when the moderators were at low levels.