Abstract
Can targeted messages from political elites impact the relationship between valuing conformity and prejudice? We answer this question in a survey experiment on a national probability sample from the Netherlands by exposing respondents to a favorable vs. unfavorable statement about East European immigrants. We find that individuals attaching relatively high importance to the value of conformity express greater agreement with the statement, independently of its content or partisanship. Further, the positive association between valuing conformity and prejudice is significantly decreased when individuals are presented with a favorable statement about East European immigrants. Thus, valuing conformity is not only associated with higher prejudice but can also reduce prejudice because it makes individuals susceptible to elite normative pressure to respond positively.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 65-77 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Social Influence |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:While working on this paper, Kirill Zhirkov was supported in part by Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia Research Grant at the University of Michigan; Maykel Verkuyten was supported by a European Research Council Advanced Grant under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant No. 740788); and Eduard Ponarin was supported by the HSE University Basic Research Program. Portions of these findings were presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Society of Political Psychology and several workshops at the University of Michigan. We would like to thank two reviewers and the editor for their helpful comments. We have no conflicts of interest to disclose.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Funding
While working on this paper, Kirill Zhirkov was supported in part by Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia Research Grant at the University of Michigan; Maykel Verkuyten was supported by a European Research Council Advanced Grant under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant No. 740788); and Eduard Ponarin was supported by the HSE University Basic Research Program. Portions of these findings were presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Society of Political Psychology and several workshops at the University of Michigan. We would like to thank two reviewers and the editor for their helpful comments. We have no conflicts of interest to disclose.
Keywords
- Conformity values
- immigration
- political messaging
- prejudice
