Me, us, or them: who is more conformist? Perception of conformity and political orientation.
Research has shown that people perceive others as more vulnerable than themselves to media communication, and their political out-group as more vulnerable than their political in-group. In the present study, the authors predicted that the same two biases would appear with respect to another kind of influence--conformity--but that participants' judgments would display a different pattern according to their political orientations. Right-wing and left-wing university students were asked to evaluate conformity and to estimate how conformist they, their political in-group, their political out-group, and other groups are. As hypothesized, right-wingers expressed more ambivalence toward conformity and viewed it less negatively than did left-wingers. Political orientation had no impact on the discrepancy between self and others, but it did moderate the in-group-out-group discrepancy.
Cavazza
Nicoletta
N
Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, via Allegri 9, 42100 Reggio Emilia, Italy. nicoletta.cavazza@unimore.it
Mucchi-Faina
Angelica
A
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011057:Politics; D012649:Self Concept; D012919:Social Behavior; D012925:Social Conformity; D012938:Social Perception; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires