The Role of Individual Differences in Inciting Anger and Social Action
Donald A. Saucier, Russell J. Webster, Conor J. O’Dea, and Stuart S. Miller
Anger is a social emotion. Individuals and, consequently, groups get angry. Their anger is often instigated by political or social issues and events that they find objectionable or threatening. This, in turn, may prompt social actions ranging from peaceful acts such as voting, campaigning, and boycotting to more violent acts such as rioting and revolution. However, individuals might experience different levels of anger based on the same instigating events, as well as have different reasons for being angry. The purpose of our chapter is to examine several individual difference variables that might help to explain why some individuals become angry in response to political or social issues and events and, consequently, are moved to collective action. These will include individual difference factors connected directly to specific worldviews and beliefs (i.e., political orientation, right-wing authoritarianism [RWA], and social dominance orientation [SDO]) as well as individual difference factors more generally related to the strength and perceived superiority of individuals’ beliefs and attitudes (i.e., attitude strength and social vigilantism). Our overall objective is to discuss how individual difference factors are associated with the arousal of anger and the inspiration for action when individuals’ social and political beliefs are challenged.
Political Orientation
People get angry over political issues. The political divide between liberal and conservative individuals (especially in the United States) appears to be real and growing (Voteview, 2015; for a historical retrospective, see Webster, Saucier, & Parks, 2011).1 This is likely due to Republicans becoming more conservative since the early 1980s, and Democrats becoming more liberal since the 1940s (Haidt & Abrams, 2015). Political affiliations (Democrat, Republican, Independent, etc.) correlate highly (but not perfectly) with political orientations (liberal vs. conservative), with Republicans being generally more conservative, and Democrats being more liberal (Jost, 2006). This increasing division between Republicans and Democrats functions to increase conflict, anger, and antagonism between them. Indeed, there has been more gridlock in the U.S. Congress during President Obama’s tenure than in any other time in history, per the number of cloture votes to break Republican filibusters (U.S. Senate, 2015).
Several researchers have attempted to identify the variables that underlie the differences between liberals and conservatives. Jost and colleagues (Jost, 2006; Jost, Federico, & Napier, 2009) have argued that support for social equality and openness to social change explain the differences between liberals and conservatives, with liberals being more likely to support and conservatives being more likely to oppose social equality and change. Empirical support exists for their model. Generally, liberals do tend to support social action that increases social equality (e.g., affirmative action) and tend to report less prejudice toward disadvantaged groups (e.g., Blacks, gay men, and lesbian women) than do conservatives. Additionally, various proxies for general attitudes toward social equality (e.g., SDO; see the next section, “Dual Process Model of Ideology and Prejudice,” for more information) and social change (e.g., RWA; see the next section, “Dual Process Model of Ideology and Prejudice”) help explain the differential support for these more specific policy positions and intergroup attitudes by liberals and conservatives (e.g., Webster, Burns, Pickering, & Saucier, 2014; Wetherell, Brandt, & Reyna, 2013).
Although emotion plays only a small part in Jost and colleagues’ (2009) theoretical model (see p. 319), it is important to note that there is a strong link among emotion, social prejudices, and social actions (Cottrell & Neuberg, 2005; Whitley & Kite, 2010). Of particular importance in this chapter, our goal is to illustrate the functional role that emotions play in maintaining individuals’ core belief systems about their social world. Individuals may develop particularly negative emotions and attitudes toward social groups (e.g., gay men, Blacks) because the groups are perceived to threaten or violate the individuals’ worldviews (e.g., eliminating or violating traditional gender norms, violating meritocratic principles through affirmative action). To help alleviate the perceived threat, individuals may endorse sociopolitical actions that directly impede the threatening group (e.g., greater opposition to same-sex marriage; Saucier & Cawman, 2004; Smith, Zanotti, Axelton, & Saucier, 2011; Webster & Saucier, 2010). According to this perspective, perceived violations of individuals’ core social belief systems or worldviews may produce the differences in anger experienced by liberals versus conservatives, leading to their opposition to, or support for, sociopolitical actions that either create or restrict opportunities for other social groups.
In an effort to explain why emotional reactions to perceived worldview transgressions differ between liberals and conservatives, Graham, Haidt and their colleagues offered the moral foundations theory (MFT; Graham et al., 2013), which complements Jost and colleagues’ theoretical model of political attitudes. MFT states that there are five universal moral foundations: care/harm (the ability to feel and dislike the pain of others), fairness/cheating (supporting justice, rights, and autonomy), loyalty/betrayal (adhering to your ingroups, from your family to your nation), authority/subversion (obeying tradition and legitimate authority), and sanctity/degradation (the belief that the body is a temple and should not be contaminated by impure things). Liberals and conservatives differentially support these moral foundations. Given that liberals focus on increasing social equality and social progress, they endorse the moral foundations of care and fairness more so than do conservatives; concurrently, conservatives endorse loyalty, authority, and sanctity more so than do liberals (Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009). Haidt and colleagues are clear in explaining that these results do not mean that conservatives, for example, do not regard care or fairness as good; it is just that liberals tend to emphasize these foundations more. MFT predicts that violations of each moral foundation result in negative emotions (while, unsurprisingly, affirmations of these moral foundations result in positive emotions). These emotions then function to influence moral reasoning, judgment, and action (for similar models, see Cottrell & Neuberg, 2005; Haidt, 2001). Accordingly, the strength of an individual’s emotional reactions to violations of his or her moral foundations and subsequent social action will be dependent on the individual’s political orientation and the type of moral foundation that is violated.
For example, disgust seems to be most closely related to violations of sanctity.2 However, disgust and anger (as well as contempt) are very closely related. Self-report measures and physiological measures both show that disgust and anger are moderately correlated, yet are distinct constructs (e.g., Hutcherson & Gross, 2011; Vrana, 1993). Anger occurs more frequently when individuals perceive themselves as victims, whereas disgust occurs more frequently when individuals evaluate others’ behaviors (Hutcherson & Gross, 2011). Further showing support for these differential emotions, after prompting individuals to think about circumstances that may affect their perceptions of the severity of moral violations, their levels of anger decreased, but levels of disgust were unchanged. Unfortunately, these studies did not assess differences as a function of political orientation. Nonetheless, much research does show that conservatism is positively related to disgust sensitivity (especially about sex; Jarudi, 2009), and that disgust sensitivity correlates with intergroup hostility and support for more restrictive social legislation on sanctity issues, such as gay marriage and abortion (Inbar, Pizzaro, & Bloom, 2009, 2011; Inbar, Pizzaro, Iyer, & Haidt, 2012).
Research has also examined whether individuals’ perceptions of violations to their care and fairness moral foundations produce anger and social action. Three studies showed that among non–Aboriginal Australians, those who perceived the existence of unfair ingroup advantages (over their minority counterparts) felt greater anger and guilt about their advantages. Their levels of anger and, to a lesser extent, their levels of guilt positively predicted their willingness to engage in political action to minimize marginalized groups’ disadvantages (Small & Lerner, 2008). Additionally, Small and Lerner (2008) showed that experimental inductions of sadness increased financial allocations for individuals in need, but inductions of anger decreased such allocations.
However, although this research does show that perceived violations of care and fairness foundations are related to anger and social action, there is little empirical support linking liberalism, violations of the care and fairness foundations, and social action (although research has shown that liberals express more prejudice toward right-wing groups because liberals perceived these groups as generally threatening people’s rights, relating to the moral foundation of fairness; Crawford, 2014). Although we expect that political orientation may moderate these effects (e.g., with liberals being more likely than conservatives to feel guilty or angry about marginalized groups’ disadvantages and therefore be more prone to political action), more research is needed to confirm our expectations. Research by Napier and Jost (2008), who showed that conservatives are generally happier than liberals, suggests that liberals will be angrier about, for instance, increasing income inequality than conservatives will be. Furthermore, from their data they argue that differences between liberals’ and conservatives’ levels of happiness are at least partially explained by the tendency of liberals to not endorse system-justifying beliefs that rationalize social injustices and perceived violations of fairness (Jost & Banaji, 1994).
Research linking lower endorsement of system-justifying beliefs to higher levels of moral outrage and increased willingness to help the disadvantaged (Wakslak, Jost, Tyler, & Chen, 2007) suggests that liberals’ moral concerns about fairness may lead to increased anger about social and economic inequalities. This may lead to intentions to engage in political action to address these issues. Other speculations from the system justification perspective suggest that justifying the system can reduce the negative emotional responses related to perceiving harm caused to others, such as in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (Napier, Mandisodza, Andersen, & Jost, 2006; Saucier, McManus, & Smith, 2010). Thus, in this situation, because liberals (compared to conservatives) may have been less likely to rationalize the (then Republican-led) government’s inadequate helping response to those in need following the hurricane, they may have experienced greater levels of anger as they perceived their stronger moral concerns about care to have been violated by government’s inadequate helping response. This process likely replicates continually, with liberals and conservatives championing different causes in response to different violations of their moral foundations that have instigated their anger and compelled their social action.
It is important to understand that the effects of political orientation on anger and on social action may not be entirely linear, especially considering that individuals on the political extremes (i.e., those who are very conservative or very liberal) may exacerbate the perceived differences between their groups. Politically extreme individuals show greater differences for specific sociopolitical issues (e.g., health care reform; van Boven, Judd, & Sherman, 2012) as well as for the five moral foundations (Graham, Nosek, & Haidt, 2012), and how these processes work for politically moderate individuals is less well-documented. In addition, other individual difference variables that are unrelated to specific sociopolitical or moral values may interact with political orientation (see the “Attitude Strength” and “Social Vigilantism” sections) to predict anger and social action.
We face many global problems today that are unlikely to be solved by political conflict and further polarization (e.g., climate change). So what can be done to decrease the levels of anger and conflict between liberals and conservatives? Perhaps small changes can be made to the way that we portray the political divide. Referring to individuals as “liberal” and “conservative” suggests a polarized dichotomy, and although we use this same convention in this chapter in order to better illustrate the ideological and emotional processes associated with political orientation, emphasizing this dichotomy may function to further polarize political attitudes and emotional reactions. A recent study illustrates this point. Rutchick and colleagues (Rutchick, Smyth, & Konrath, 2009) demonstrated that viewing pictures of electoral maps that clearly indicate whether electoral votes went to the Democratic (blue states) or Republican (red states) candidate increased perceived differences between liberals and conservatives when compared to viewing a proportional “purple” map that weights the ratio of “blue” to “red.” Perhaps by making small changes, such as the media showing proportional voting maps, we may actually lessen the divide between liberals and conservatives (i.e., break down intergroup “boundaries” and create more of a feeling of “oneness”; Cialdini, Brown, Lewis, Luce, & Neuberg, 1997; Gaertner, Dovidio, Anastasio, Bachman, & Rust, 1993), lessen negative morally charged feelings, and foster compromise among those on the political extremes.
However, small changes may not be enough. Perhaps the best way to break down group boundaries and encourage more collaborative social action is to foster positive intergroup contact between liberals and conservatives (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). This may be a difficult task. Haidt and Abrams (2015) suggest that changes to Congressional work habits by Newt Gingrich and the Republican Congress in 1995 contributed to the current political divide. Gingrich encouraged new members of Congress not to move to Washington because they would perhaps become too moderate after socializing with members of Congress (and their families) across party lines. Gingrich and the Republican Congress also eliminated the seniority system for committee chairs and positions. Instead, such positions were filled based on one’s perceived loyalty to the party, which decreased individuals’ willingness to reach across the aisle (in fear of not appearing loyal to the party). Haidt and Abrams (2015) noted that the divide between Congressional Democrats and Republicans has seemingly permeated the American public over time, which is highlighted in stark regional differences, with rural areas becoming increasingly more conservative, and urban areas becoming increasingly more liberal, since the late 1980s. People who have the privilege to choose where they live may increasingly choose to live in areas that are more politically homogeneous. This could reduce the potential for intergroup contact across party lines, and further contribute to the polarization of political attitudes and adversarial tendencies.
In sum, MFT (Graham et al., 2013) provides a useful framework for examining the relationship among political orientation, collective anger, and social action. Accordingly, violations of conservatives’ most deeply held moral foundations (loyalty, authority, and sanctity) may provoke negative emotional reactions in conservatives that compel their collective action. Similarly, violations of liberals’ most deeply held moral foundations of care or fairness may provoke their negative emotional reactions in liberals that compel their collective action. Unfortunately, the differences in the moral emphases of conservatives and liberals may create collective anger and action in these groups that puts them in constant, and potentially unavoidable, conflict.
Dual Process Model of Ideology and Prejudice
Related to theories of political orientation, theories of intergroup attitudes and prejudice also attempt to explain the individual differences associated with anger-related emotional reactions to sociopolitical issues. In addition to political orientation, individual differences in ideologies, especially those that are intimately related to individuals’ perceptions of their social world, may be instrumental in understanding when individuals may experience anger and be moved to collective action in the political and social domain. Two broad, ideologically based individual difference factors are entwined in the fabric of social hierarchy, impacting both political/social attitudes and intergroup attitudes, such as prejudice. Duckitt and colleagues’ (Duckitt, 2006; Duckitt & Sibley, 2010) dual process model of ideology uses one model to integrate two of the best individual difference predictors of prejudice and discrimination: RWA (Altemeyer, 1981) and SDO (Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994).
RWA is a constellation of three broad worldviews (Funke, 2005): opposition to social progress (i.e., adherence to more traditional or conventional norms), submission to authority (especially that of parents and religion), and sanctioned aggression against those who violate conventional norms or such authorities. Duckitt (2006) posits that an upbringing that fosters the perception of the world as a dangerous place results in greater RWA, which in turn fosters negative attitudes and social action against “socially deviant” groups who are perceived to threaten conventional norms or relevant authorities. Thus, for individuals who more strongly endorse RWA ideology, anger and hate may be experienced in response to groups who are perceived to present “symbolic” threats to one’s way of life (Stephan, Ybarra, & Morrison, 2009).
SDO, on the other hand, is a constellation of two broad worldviews (Jost & Thompson, 2000): opposition to social equality and justified aggression by ingroup members to protect resources that are either material (e.g., money) or abstract (e.g., power). Individuals who have had an upbringing that fosters the perception of the world as a “competitive jungle” often have higher levels of SDO, which in turn fosters prejudice and social action against “socially subordinate” groups who are perceived to threaten the “natural” ingroup-outgroup hierarchy. Thus, for individuals who more strongly endorse SDO ideology, anger and hate may be experienced in response to groups who are perceived to present “realistic” threats to their resources (Stephan, Ybarra, & Morrison, 2009). Accordingly, individuals who have greater perceived social status (e.g., men, Whites, CEOs) typically score higher in SDO (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999).
Duckitt and colleagues have amassed an impressive body of research to support the dual process model (see Duckitt & Sibley, 2010). As with emotion and political orientation, MFT can combine with the dual process model to theoretically ground the links between RWA/SDO, emotion, and social action. SDO and RWA are best thought of as attitudinal constructs that exhibit relative stability over time, but experimental manipulations can increase or decrease the levels of RWA and SDO that participants report. Experimentally inducing the perception of a dangerous world can increase individuals’ reported levels of RWA (Duckitt & Fisher, 2003), while experimentally inducing the perception of the world as a competitive jungle, or increasing one’s group status, can increase individuals’ reported levels of SDO (e.g., Guimond, Dambrun, Michinov, & Duarte, 2003; Schmitt, Branscombe, & Kappen, 2003). However, to our knowledge, no research has examined the effects of these experimental manipulations of dangerous-world and competitive-jungle threats on emotion and social action as a function of RWA or SDO, which likely is a fruitful direction for future research.
Based on RWA’s emphasis on opposition to social progress and obedience to authority, RWA should—and does—most closely and positively relate to endorsing the moral foundations of loyalty, authority, and sanctity (i.e., the “binding” or “communal” foundations). Thus, violations of loyalty, authority, or sanctity should make individuals higher in RWA angrier (or more disgusted), and more greatly support social action to remedy the violation. There is some preliminary support for this hypothesis. By using a Polish sample, Kossowska, Bukowski, and Van Hiel (2008; see also Van Hiel & Kossowska, 2006) found that individuals higher in RWA reported feeling angrier in general across a one-month period. Moreover, as people scored higher on RWA, the link between dispositional anger and intergroup prejudice/discrimination toward the Roma (a socially subordinate group in Europe that is also perceived to be socially deviant) also increased. Experimentally inducing anger also exacerbated the link between RWA and prejudice toward the Roma. Kossowska, Bukowski, and Van Hiel (2008) further investigated the link between SDO and emotion. Individuals higher in SDO adhere less to the moral foundations of care and fairness (Federico, Weber, Ergun, & Hunt, 2013). As certain sectors of society push for greater social equality, individuals higher in SDO will more likely fear the collapse of the social hierarchy and their consequent loss of access to resources. Thus, Kossowska et al. (2008) found that as individuals scored higher in SDO, the link between fear and prejudice toward the Roma strengthened.
Previous research has examined the effects of RWA and SDO on emotional reactions and responses to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and found that RWA and SDO significantly predicted support for military aggression in Iraq as well as negative attitudes toward Middle Eastern individuals (Crowson, 2009; Crowson, DeBacker, & Thoma, 2005; Heaven, Organ, Supavadeeprasit, & Leeson, 2006; Henderson-King, Henderson-King, Bolea, Koches, & Kauffman, 2004; McFarland, 2005; Skitka, Bauman, Aramovich, & Morgan, 2006). These effects are grounded in social dominance theory (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). Providing empirical support for this, Henry, Sidanius, Levin, and Pratto (2005) examined a sample of individuals from Lebanon and the United States, comparing support for violence toward one another. Similar to the previously discussed findings, the findings showed support for their hypothesis that the effects of SDO on support for violence would be domain-specific; they found that individuals high in SDO from high status groups (i.e., from the United States) supported greater violence in response to terrorism. These results suggest that individuals who have both higher status and higher levels of SDO get angrier in response to threat, and consequently support even very extreme collective actions to repel the threat.
Further, Hodson and Costello (2007) examined the link between disgust sensitivity, RWA, SDO, and intergroup attitudes toward immigrants. As predicted, RWA strongly and positively correlated with disgust sensitivity, but SDO also moderately and positively correlated with disgust sensitivity. Although Hodson and Costello (2007) did not examine anger, they tested and confirmed that SDO and RWA helped explain the link between disgust sensitivity and negative attitudes toward immigrants. In a more recent study in which anger was measured, SDO more strongly predicted Palestinians’ anger toward Americans through perceptions of economic threats, while RWA more strongly predicted disgust toward Americans through perceptions of values threat (Levin, Pratto, Matthews, Sidanius, & Kteily, 2013). In sum, it appears that the negative emotional reactions of anger, fear, and disgust are related to individual differences in RWA and SDO. These two sociopolitical ideologies may be especially important for eliciting action-oriented emotions, such as anger, and aggressive responses related to approach-oriented tendencies (Corr, Hargreaves-Heap, Tsutsui, Russell, & Seger, 2013). Given the positive correlations between such negative emotions, future research should pursue more systematic study of each emotion in relation to RWA, SDO, and social action.
Individual differences in political orientation and ideological worldview beliefs, such as RWA and SDO, help to explain why some individuals perceive threat, experience anger, and are moved to collective action in social and political domains. Individuals differ in how they perceive threats in these domains on the basis of these individual difference factors in predictable ways. However, it may be that other individual differences that are less related to specific ideological positions may also contribute to understanding the foundations for collective anger and action. We will now consider two of these, attitude strength and social vigilantism, as potential inspirations for collective anger and action.
Attitude Strength
Beyond organized belief systems, such as those represented by liberal and conservative political orientations, individuals might, simply, have strong beliefs toward a particular issue. The strength of their position on that one issue may create the opportunity to form social connections to others who share that position. These groups may then rally around that position, experiencing anger when their position is challenged or threatened, and engaging in collective action to defend or advance their position. In this way, the strength of individuals’ attitudes toward specific political or social issues is a factor likely to influence the ways in which individuals respond in situations related to those issues.
Attitude strength (Krosnick, Boninger, Chuang, Berent, & Carnot, 1993; Visser, Krosnick, & Simmons, 2003) generally refers to the extent to which an attitude demonstrates “durability or impactfulness or both” (Krosnick & Petty, 1995, p. 3). Unsurprisingly, strong attitudes are resistant to change (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993; Jacks & Devine, 2000; Krosnick & Petty, 1995; Zuwerink & Devine, 1996). Krosnick and Petty (1995) identified 10 intercorrelated dimensions of attitude strength: extremity, intensity, certainty, importance, interest, knowledge, accessibility, direct experience, latitudes of rejection and noncommitment, and affective-cognitive consistency. Each of these dimensions may independently and/or collectively predict anger in response to challenges or threats to strongly held attitudes or beliefs.
Attitudes about all topics or “objects” may vary in strength. Thus, it is the strength of the attitude, and not the attitude itself, that is important when considering how challenges or threats to strong attitudes may provoke collective anger and action. Consistent with our discussion of moral foundations above, research on attitudes confirms that moral convictions are particularly strong attitudes that are related to intergroup behavior (Skitka, Bauman, & Sargis, 2005) and emotions (Mackie, Devos, & Smith, 2000). As such, moral attitudes, and by extension political attitudes, may be particularly strong, and thus particularly prone to producing collective anger and action when threatened. And strong attitudes are hard to change (Jacks & Devine, 2000; Saucier & Webster, 2010; Zuwerink & Devine, 1996).
In response to being challenged or threatened, attitudes manifest their strength in several ways. Indeed, as individuals’ levels of attitude strength increase, so do their tendencies to engage in resistance strategies to protect the attitude in the face of challenge (Jacks & Cameron, 2003). There are several different resistance strategies that individuals may employ in protecting their attitudes. Research that assessed how individuals reported that they would respond to a challenge to their opinions identified seven such strategies (Jacks & Cameron, 2003). These included assertions of confidence (stating one’s position cannot be changed), attitude bolstering (supporting one’s own position without refuting the opposing position), counterarguing (directly refuting the opposing position), negative affect (getting angry or upset), selective exposure (withdrawing from the challenge), social validation (thinking about others who share one’s position), and source derogation (insulting and/or dismissing the opposing position and the opponent). These strategies are unsurprisingly correlated (Saucier, Webster, Hoffman, & Strain, 2014), given that each strategy is motivated by individuals’ overall levels of attitude strength. However, these strategies are also arguably distinct. These strategies are commonly used to resist persuasion (Cameron, Jacks, & O’Brien, 2002; Jacks & Cameron, 2003; Wellins & McGinnies, 1977). Strategies such as counterarguing and attitude bolstering are most commonly used (Jacks & Cameron, 2003). However, their value for successfully resisting persuasion varies, with the strategy of counterarguing being particularly effective (Abelson, 1959; Cameron, Jacks, & O’Brien, 2002; Festinger & Maccoby, 1964; Jacks & Cameron, 2003; Jacks & Devine, 2000; Wellins & McGinnies, 1977). Further, the use of these resistance strategies in the face of challenges to individuals’ attitudes, beliefs, and opinions generally increases as the individuals’ challenged attitudes, beliefs, or opinions are stronger (Jacks & Cameron, 2003; Saucier, Webster, Hoffman, & Strain, 2014).
Because many attitudes are goal-directed, and resistance strategies have the goal of protecting challenges to personally held attitudes, the frustration-aggression hypothesis (Berkowitz, 1989; Dollard, Doob, Miller, Mowrer, & Sears, 1939) may help explain how threats to attitudes result in anger and hostility. According to this hypothesis, perceived barriers to goal attainment arouse frustration and anger. The resistance strategy of negative affect is most obviously connected to the elicitation of anger following a challenge to individuals’ attitudes, beliefs, and opinions. The arousal of negative affect in response to this challenge serves the dual purpose of resisting the challenge and inspiring subsequent action in response the challenge. Additionally, because anger is an approach-related emotion associated with appetitive behaviors (Carver & Harmon-Jones, 2009), the approach-related resistance strategies may be particularly more likely to be used when anger is aroused. These would include resistance strategies such as source derogation (by which angry individuals would attack the source of the challenge or threat) and counterarguing (by which angry individuals would counterattack the position taken by the challenge or threat). Other resistance strategies that relate to actions that may be motivated by angry responses to threats to one’s attitudes include the strategies of assertions of confidence, attitude bolstering, and social validation, with each of these strategies manifesting as behaviors intended to resist the challenge through direct action. Of the seven resistance strategies offered by Jacks and Cameron (2003), only selective exposure fails to be obviously related to the arousal of anger that leads to action in defense of the challenged attitudes, beliefs, or opinions. Although withdrawing from the challenge is an action, the action of selective exposure does not directly resist the challenge in the ways that the other strategies do. This leaves a wide variety of strategies that arise in response to attitude challenges that may combine to be the direct foundations for collective anger and action. Further, it is possible that individuals may do more than simply attempt to resist persuasion, but because anger may be experienced in response to persuasion attempts, individuals may engage in approach-related behaviors by attempting to turn the tables on an opponent.
Beyond the seven resistance strategies identified by Jacks and Cameron (2003), Saucier, Webster, Hoffman, and Strain (2014) hypothesized that another strategy individuals could enact when faced with challenges to their attitudes would be to attempt to impress their own positions onto the challengers. Beyond just refuting the position of the challengers, such as would be the case with counterarguing, this sort of counter-persuasion would be motivated to perpetuate their own positions onto others, such that the attitude challenge would present an opportunity not only to maintain one’s own positions, but to spread them to others. Indeed, they found that the extent to which individuals reported that they would attempt to impress their positions onto others when faced with a challenge to their attitudes was predicted by each of the nine dimensions of attitude strength that they assessed across two studies and three different political topics for which they assessed their participants’ attitudes (i.e., abortion, the war in Iraq, the constitutional rights of pornographers). This resistance strategy directly relates to the concept of collective action; the attempt to impress one’s views onto others is a common purpose for collective action in political and social discourse, and that the engagement in this attempt is related to attitude strength through the previously discussed mechanisms, in the way that moral outrage demonstrates the importance of attitude strength in understanding the etiology of collective anger and social action.
Research suggests that individuals’ feelings of anger in response to challenges to their attitudes, and their actions motivated to protect and advance those attitudes, may be more extreme when the attitudes being challenged are stronger or are associated with moral convictions. The implications here are that when individuals have stronger attitudes, they will be more moved to anger and action, but will be less moved to anger and action when they have weaker attitudes. Although we believe this to be true, we also believe that some individuals will be more predisposed to become angry and be moved to action, regardless of the strength of their attitudes. That is, we believe an individual difference factor accounts for the predisposition toward defending one’s own attitudes against challenges and impressing one’s own attitudes onto others, above and beyond the strength of those attitudes. We have labeled this individual difference “social vigilantism.”
Social Vigilantism
Social vigilantism is an individual difference in one’s tendencies to resist persuasion and assert one’s own “superior” beliefs onto others. We recently designed a scale to assess social vigilantism as an individual difference factor, and established the scale’s internal consistency and test-retest stability, as well as its convergent, discriminant, predictive, incremental, and construct validity (Saucier & Webster, 2010). Our research to date suggests and confirms that social vigilantism is an important individual difference factor to consider in understanding the inspirations for collective anger and action.
To begin, social vigilantism as a measured construct is composed of three interrelated subfactors (Saucier & Webster, 2010). The first of these subfactors refers to individuals’ tendencies to believe that their own attitudes, beliefs, and opinions are superior to those of others, and that it is their responsibility to spread these attitudes, beliefs, and opinions to others. The second of these subfactors refers to individuals’ tendencies to perceive others and, in particular, those who disagree with them as ignorant or stupid. The third of these subfactors refers to individuals’ tendencies to believe that others do not base their attitudes, beliefs, and opinions “on good evidence.” Thus, at its core, the individual difference of social vigilantism taps into a predisposition that one’s own positions are superior to those of others, whose positions are categorically inferior. Thus, individuals with high levels of social vigilantism, logically, would be expected to experience challenge or threat if someone were to oppose their positions, would be expected to experience negative affect and anger in response, and would be expected to defend and advance their positions relentlessly.
Our empirical work on the construct of social vigilantism supports these predictions. In one study, we asked participants to read and respond to an individual’s set of opinions. We constructed these opinions so that they reflected either an extremely liberal (e.g., I am grateful for political correctness; I hate the rich and I pity the poor) or an extremely conservative political position (e.g., I am sick of political correctness; I don’t hate the rich and I don’t pity the poor), such that even participants who considered themselves to be politically affiliated in the same direction as the individual would be unlikely to fully agree with the stated opinions. Participants wrote a response to the individual. Our results showed that participants’ levels of social vigilantism were positively related to both their reported and actual levels of counterarguing in response to the individual’s opinions, and that this effect was mediated by the participants’ perceptions of their own beliefs as superior (Study 2; Saucier & Webster, 2010). We replicated this effect in a subsequent study (Study 3; Saucier & Webster, 2010). These results demonstrate that social vigilantism is an important individual difference factor in predicting individuals’ tendency to engage in actions to repel opposing attitudes through behaviors such as counterarguing, which, as noted above, is one of the most effective strategies for resisting persuasion (Abelson, 1959; Cameron, Jacks, & O’Brien, 2002; Festinger & Maccoby, 1964; Jacks & Cameron, 2003; Jacks & Devine, 2000; O’Dea, Zhu, & Saucier, in progress; Wellins & McGinnies, 1977).
We then examined how social vigilantism would predict actual resistance to persuasion. We discussed a study above that examined how attitude strength was related to levels of attitude change after a challenge to participants’ attitudes about teaching sex education in public schools. In that study, we also measured the participants’ levels of social vigilantism. We found that participants’ levels of social vigilantism were associated with both their reported use of counterarguing as a resistance strategy and their resistance to persuasion as indicated by their lower levels of attitude change following the challenge. Moreover, these effects held even after controlling for the effects of attitude strength (Study 4; Saucier & Webster, 2010). These results further confirmed our hypotheses that individual differences in social vigilantism are important for understanding how individuals respond to attitude challenges.
Having established that individuals’ levels of social vigilantism predict their successful defense of their attitudes in response to challenges, such as by engaging in counterargument, we sought to more closely examine social vigilantism’s relationships with the various attitude strength dimensions and as a predictor of a variety of strategies to resist persuasion. In this work, we examined how social vigilantism predicted resistance strategies, including, but also extending beyond, counterarguing (Saucier, Webster, Hoffman, & Strain, 2014). We asked participants to report their attitudes toward political issues (i.e., abortion, the war in Iraq, or the Constitutional rights of pornographers) along with the strength of those attitudes along nine attitude strength dimensions (i.e., extremity, certainty, importance, knowledge, intensity, interest, direct experience, accessibility through talking, and accessibility through thinking). We then used these to predict the participants’ use of the eight resistance strategies discussed above (i.e., assertions of confidence, attitude bolstering, counterarguing, negative affect, selective exposure, social validation, source derogation, and impression of beliefs). We also assessed the participants’ levels of social vigilantism, which allowed us to assess how social vigilantism levels were associated with both their levels of the various dimensions of attitude strength and their levels of reported use of the various resistance strategies. Across two studies, we found that participants’ levels of social vigilantism were generally unrelated to their levels of attitude strength. But, consistent with our hypotheses, we found that participants’ levels of social vigilantism were correlated with their reported use of several of the resistance strategies, including negative affect, source derogation, counterarguing, and impression of views, and that these effects emerged even after controlling for the participants’ levels of argumentativeness and attitude strength. Importantly, these findings suggest that while those who have higher levels of social vigilantism may not necessarily have stronger attitudes, they do tend to attempt to defend and advance them more, providing further evidence that social vigilantism is a key individual difference factor that relates to the arousal of anger and the inspiration for action in political discourse and debate.
Further, some of our work in progress suggests that social vigilantism may be associated with extreme political ideologies on both the liberal and conservative ends of the political spectrum, and may predict extreme attitudes toward specific political policies above and beyond individuals’ general political ideologies (Till, Miller, & Saucier, 2015). In that study, participants completed the Social Vigilantism Scale (Saucier & Webster, 2010), a measure of political orientation, and reported their attitudes toward several contemporary political issues (e.g., Affordable Care Act, same-sex marriage laws, welfare programs). The results showed that participants’ levels of social vigilantism were positively correlated with the extremity of their political orientations, but not the direction of their political orientations (i.e., as liberal vs. conservative). Similarly, participants’ levels of social vigilantism were positively correlated with the extremities, but not the directions, of their attitudes toward the political issues. This latter relationship held even after controlling for the extremity of the participants’ political orientations. These results suggest that social vigilantism may be an individual difference factor that contributes to ideological conflict by its association with extreme positions, both on the political spectrum and in relation to specific political policies. That social vigilantism would correlate with the extremity, but not the direction, of these positions indicates that those with extreme political beliefs and attitudes, be they extremely liberal or extremely conservative, would be equally likely to consider their own beliefs and attitudes to be superior to the attitudes of others, and that their own beliefs and attitudes should be defended and advanced in response to challenge. Accordingly, social vigilantism may be a key factor in understanding the anger and action that arise during political debate in members of both ends of the political spectrum.
Other recent studies that we have conducted more directly illustrate how social vigilantism may result in individuals acting in ways that impede the sharing and consideration of others’ points of view and consequently sabotage productive conversations and resolutions about political and social issues. In a correlational study, we showed that individuals’ levels of social vigilantism are associated with the strategies they employ when handling conflict, such that higher levels of social vigilantism were associated with greater use of strategies to force their position onto an opponent in a conflict (e.g., doing anything to win). Further, higher levels of social vigilantism were marginally associated with lesser use of strategies to avoid conflict (e.g., such as not trying to avoid a confrontation about their differences; Saucier, O’Dea, & Zhu, in progress). These results combine with our previously reported research on social vigilantism’s associations with strategies to resist persuasion, to suggest that social vigilantism may be a driving force in individuals’ persistence in discussions of political and social issues. Holding their own beliefs and attitudes to be superior, individuals with high levels of social vigilantism may be predisposed to advancing their own beliefs and attitudes over those of others, and be motivated, in a sense, to “win” the discussion. This further suggests that individuals higher in social vigilantism, who become angry, resist persuasion, and attempt to force their own positions onto others, will be less willing to engage (and perhaps less capable of engaging) in productive discussions or in reaching compromises between opposing positions.
We further examined how individuals’ levels of social vigilantism were associated with their actual conflict management strategies, particularly their resistance to compromise, in a behavioral study of negotiation about political issues. We asked participants to engage in a task in which they, with a partner, divided a sum of money to be donated to two nonprofit organizations. The study began with the participants’ choosing the organization to which they would donate their portion of the sum from a list provided. Their partners, who were actually confederates in the study posing as participants, then chose an organization from the list that had a mission that conflicted with the mission of the organization chosen by the participants. For example, if a participant chose to make his or her donation to Planned Parenthood, a liberal organization that supports women’s reproductive rights, then the confederate chose to make his or her donation to the National Right to Life Committee, a conservative organization that is anti-abortion. The participants and confederate then engaged in a series of offers and counteroffers in which they negotiated the division of the money between the two organizations. Our results showed that participants’ higher levels of social vigilantism were associated with their taking more rounds of negotiation to accept the division of the money between the two organizations. Further, participants’ higher levels of social vigilantism were associated with their reported motivations to devote as much money as possible to their chosen organization, but were even more highly associated with their reported motivations to prevent money from being donated to the other organization (Webster, Cooper, & Saucier, 2015).
Social vigilantism is an individual difference factor that is associated with individuals’ use of strategies to defend their positions when they are challenged or threatened. Beyond ideological factors, such as political conservatism, and even attitude strength, individuals higher in social vigilantism appear to have a predisposition to experiencing approach-oriented emotions (such as anger) and engaging in approach-oriented behaviors (such as source derogation, counterarguing, and impression of views) when their attitudes and beliefs are challenged. Thus, our research on social vigilantism suggests that some individuals are primed for collective anger and action, and these responses just need to be triggered by challenge or threat in political or social discourse. Of further note, it may be that these same individuals who are primed for collective anger and action would be the ones who naturally gravitate toward groups who engage in collective action. Additionally, such individuals may have the loudest, most ardent voices in those groups, potentially making them attractive candidates for leadership roles where their anger, activism, and self-righteousness may become contagious. We expect that research on social vigilantism in the near future will further confirm the importance of this individual difference factor in understanding the processes underlying collective anger and action.
Implications for Individual Differences Related to Collective Anger and Action
Our exploration of how various individual differences may relate to collective anger and action leads to a number of potentially troubling conclusions. One such conclusion is that the possession of more extreme levels of political orientation, and higher levels of RWA, SDO, social vigilantism, and attitude strength, may predispose individuals to experience and display collective anger and action. Although these individual differences are likely not as stable as pure personality traits (e.g., the Big Five, Costa & McCrae, 2011; the HEXACO model, Ashton & Lee, 2007) in that their levels may more dynamically develop and change over time, they are likely to exhibit some degree of temporal stability. What this means is that these individual differences likely motivate greater degrees of collective anger and action in response to challenge or threat to the individuals’ political and social positions, and that this reaction will be relatively stable. If individuals have, at the center of their being, some tendency toward collective anger and action, then thwarting these reactions becomes a more difficult endeavor.
A second troubling conclusion is that these individual differences are associated with tendencies to see one’s attitudes and beliefs as superior, and to see opposing attitudes and beliefs as threatening. It is possible that these tendencies may drive individuals toward careers and social activities that engage them in discussions of these attitudes and beliefs. Consequently, political and social leaders engaging in these conversations and navigating potential compromises may be those among us who are most suited to championing their own positions but least suited to finding the common ground between competing positions. Anyone who has observed the bipartisan conflicts in American government has witnessed evidence of this possibility. Ironically, it may be that Republicans and Democrats are too different in their specific attitudes and beliefs, and too similar in their underlying tendencies (i.e., both of them being high in political extremity, attitude strength, and social vigilantism), to even allow for the possibility that anger and social conflict be avoided in their interactions.
Conclusion
Several individual difference factors contribute to how individuals experience and demonstrate collective anger and action. Some of these individual difference factors, such as political orientation, RWA, and SDO, are directly connected to a specific constellation of beliefs, attitudes, and moral foundations, such that individuals on different sides of an issue may experience and demonstrate collective anger and action differently. Other individual difference factors, such as attitude strength and social vigilantism, are independent of individuals’ specific beliefs, attitudes, and moral foundations. As such, individuals on different sides of an issue who are higher on attitude strength and social vigilantism may experience and demonstrate collective anger and action similarly, resulting in conflict. As long as disagreement occurs in the nature of social and political discourse, these individual difference factors may contribute to perceptions that the attitudes and beliefs individuals hold dear are threatened, and this provokes anger. As we stated at the beginning of this chapter, anger is a social emotion. As individuals find others who share their anger, and build social power and momentum toward collective action, they will seek to better their societies by promoting the beliefs that they know to be exclusively right. Optimistically, we hope that the honest and true exchange of ideas will result in communication that leads to more critical consideration of alternative perspectives and better collective understanding, rather than to collective anger and action.
Notes
1. Political orientation can be measured both categorically as discrete groups (liberal, moderate, conservative, etc.) or continuously (e.g., on a Likert-type numerical scale). Generally, we find similar results regardless of how we measure political orientation (e.g., Webster, Burns, Pickering, & Saucier, 2014). Thus, for simplicity, we will refer to political orientations categorically in this chapter.
2. Although Jost and colleagues’ (2009) model of ideology is limited by its lack of inclusion of disgust, they do argue that conservatives are more concerned with managing existential fears related to death, uncertainty, and ambiguity. However, we are unsure as to whether such existential fears can be operationally included under the construct of “emotion.” Nonetheless, given that the focus of this chapter is on anger, we will not discuss this further.
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