The Relationship Between Perception of Societal Threats, Political Orientation and Political Intergroup Bias

Abstract: Intergroup bias is a phenomenon of favoring one’s own group and derogating other groups. This can be expressed through an individual’s positive evaluations of the ingroup and negative evaluations of outgroups. Research has found that feeling threatened plays a relevant role for the occurrence of bias, i.e., when under threat, people tend to express increased intergroup bias. Given numerous recent societal crises (e.g., COVID-19, war, inflation) this study investigated the relationship between various types of threats, political orientation, and political intergroup bias. The groups studied were the Swedish political left and right. Data was collected via an online survey (N = 149) in which participants initially rated threat perception, followed by evaluations of political left and right supporters. The participants’ in- and outgroups were defined through stating their political identification prior to the evaluations. Threat of the political situation in Sweden was shown to be the only threat to significantly correlate with political intergroup bias. Linear regression analysis showed that both Swedish political threat and political orientation were significant predictors of intergroup bias, although political orientation was a stronger predictor. In other words, the results provided insight into the relevance of contextual correspondence between the examined threat and groups. Methodological and theoretical limitations are discussed. Controlling for personality traits and degree of political identification is suggested for future research.