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‘Terrorist’ or ‘Mentally Ill’: Motivated Biases Rooted in Partisanship Shape Attributions about Violent Actors

Noor

‘Terrorist’ or ‘Mentally Ill’: Motivated Biases Rooted in Partisanship Shape Attributions about Violent Actors Thumbnail


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Abstract

We investigated whether motivated reasoning rooted in partisanship affects the attributions individuals make about violent attackers’ underlying motives and group memberships. Study 1 demonstrated that on the day of the Brexit referendum pro-leavers (vs. pro-remainers) attributed an exculpatory (i.e., mental health) versus condemnatory (i.e., terrorism) motive to the killing of a pro-remain politician. Study 2 demonstrated that pro-immigration (vs. anti-immigration) perceivers in Germany ascribed a mental health (vs. terrorism) motive to a suicide attack by a Syrian refugee, predicting lower endorsement of punitiveness against his group (i.e., refugees) as a whole. Study 3 experimentally manipulated target motives, showing that Americans distanced a politically motivated (vs. mentally ill) violent individual from their in-group and assigned him harsher punishment—patterns most pronounced among high-group identifiers.

Acceptance Date Feb 16, 2018
Publication Date May 1, 2019
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Social Psychology and Personality Science
Print ISSN 1948-5506
Publisher SAGE Publications
Pages 485-493
DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550618764808
Keywords terrorism; mental illness; attributions; punitiveness; motivated reasoning
Publisher URL http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1948550618764808

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