Masi Noor m.noor@keele.ac.uk
‘Terrorist’ or ‘Mentally Ill’: Motivated Biases Rooted in Partisanship Shape Attributions about Violent Actors
Noor
Authors
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.
Citation
Noor. (2019). ‘Terrorist’ or ‘Mentally Ill’: Motivated Biases Rooted in Partisanship Shape Attributions about Violent Actors. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 485-493. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550618764808
Acceptance Date | Feb 16, 2018 |
---|---|
Publication Date | May 1, 2019 |
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 |
Files
Accepted_t_terrorism_vs_mental illness._16_Feb_2018.pdf
(663 Kb)
PDF
Publisher Licence URL
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
SOM_suppl_materials_terrorism_vs_mental illness_1st_Feb_2018.pdf
(316 Kb)
PDF
Publisher Licence URL
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
You might also like
Students' perceptions and experiences of taking a Leave of Absence (LOA) during their degree
(2024)
Journal Article