Abstract
Understanding motivations underlying acts of hatred are essential for developing strategies to prevent such extreme behavioral expressions of prejudice (EBEPs) against marginalized groups. In this work, we investigate the motivations underlying EBEPs as a function of moral values. Specifically, we propose EBEPs may often be best understood as morally motivated behaviors grounded in people’s moral values and perceptions of moral violations. As evidence, we report five studies that integrate spatial modeling and experimental methods to investigate the relationship between moral values and EBEPs. Our results, from these U.S. based studies, suggest that moral values oriented around group preservation are predictive of the county-level prevalence of hate groups and associated with the belief that extreme behavioral expressions of prejudice against marginalized groups are justified. Additional analyses suggest that the association between group-based moral values and EBEPs against outgroups can be partly explained by the belief that these groups have done something morally wrong.
Highlights
Understanding motivations underlying acts of hatred are essential for developing strategies to prevent such extreme behavioral expressions of prejudice (EBEPs) against marginalized groups
We propose that the moralization of a perceived threat is a central factor in the process underlying acts of hate, such as hate speech and hate group activity—behaviors we refer to collectively as extreme behavioral expressions of prejudice (EBEPs)
Given recent increases in EBEPs aligned with right-wing ideology[10,12,44] and concerns over the role of hate speech in violent crimes toward social identities often demonized by rightwing extremist groups[45], we focused largely on EBEPs that were aligned with right-wing ideologies
Summary
Understanding motivations underlying acts of hatred are essential for developing strategies to prevent such extreme behavioral expressions of prejudice (EBEPs) against marginalized groups. Research addressing acts of hate has often focused on the role of inter-group threat as a focal mechanism in the emergence of behaviors, such as hate crime[4,19], hate group activity[20,21,22,23], and hate speech[24] Echoing these findings, psychological investigations of prejudice have observed that perceptions of either realistic or symbolic outgroup threat[25,26] lead to increased prejudice toward outgroups and that this effect is mediated by attitudes associated with right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance[27,28,29,30,31]. This account raises an essential question: what is it about some perceived threats—and the people who perceive them—that contributes to acts of hate?
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