title: Ambivalence, prejudice and negative behavioural tendencies towards out-groups: The moderating role of attitude basis.
abstract: Two experiments explored the relations between prejudice (suppression), (cognitive) ambivalence and negative behavioural tendencies towards out-groups. The current work argues that expressing out-group ambivalence based on cognitive, but not affective, information is a strategy to justify one's otherwise suppressed prejudice, which may ultimately "cover" the discriminatory nature of out-group-directed negative behavioural tendencies. Two experiments show that (1) participants evaluating the out-group in a normative context inducing prejudice suppression are more likely to self-report ambivalent beliefs rather than ambivalent emotions concerning the out-group as compared with participants whose prejudice expression is induced and (2) high-prejudice participants compared with low-prejudice participants are more prone to out-group-directed negative behavioural tendencies when these latter are self-reported after the expression of ambivalent beliefs but not ambivalent emotions concerning the out-group, and when the expression of their prejudicial evaluations is salient but not when it is not. In light of the extent to which ambivalent attitudes towards out-groups are often seamlessly integrated into public discourse, the implications of the findings are discussed not only for intergroup research but also at the societal level.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences , University of Trento , Rovereto , Italy.
authors.forename: Sandro
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Costarelli
authors.forename: Justyna
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gerłowska
mesh_terms: D001290:Attitude; D003071:Cognition; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011287:Prejudice; D012094:Repression, Psychology; D035501:Uncertainty; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Ambivalence; Attitude structure; Attitudinal basis; Discrimination; Prejudice