The mediating role of moral exclusion between authoritarianism and outgroup discrimination

Abstract

It has been well-documented that right wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation as two facets of the authoritarian personality differentially account for a variety of negative intergroup behaviors. Integrating the Dual Process Model (Duckitt, 2001), with the literature on “Moral exclusion” (e.g., Opotow, 1990; Tileagă, 2007) we investigated whether or not moral exclusion would mediate such a relationship. Employing survey data (N = 1015), collected from a representative Hungarian sample, we found that moral exclusion mediated the effects of both RWA and SDO on the negative behavioral intentions against Roma as well as Jewish minorities in Hungary. Moreover, we argued that the concept of moral exclusion should be interpreted not as a generalized tendency, but as a mechanism which can be stemmed from distinct social cognitive motivations.