My research draws on Susan Opotow and Sara McClelland’s (2007) “Intensification Theory of Hating” as a framework to explore the psychological mechanisms of intergroup hate.
In their landmark paper, Opotow and McClelland describe hate as a process that begins with certain dispositions towards hateful attitudes that stem from personal experiences or political events and can escalate to hatred via the multidirectional relationship among beliefs, emotions, and morals (Opotow & McClelland, 2007). In this way, someone who has been exposed to a “dispositional event,” like an adverse encounter with an outgroup member, could develop hatred towards this outgroup if they are also exposed to negative cognitions (that is, the “labels, categories, stereotypes, and social representations” that create dynamics where one group is “in” while another is “out”) about the outgroup, feel negative emotions towards an outgroup (e.g., fear or anger related to the dispositional event or held beliefs), and view the outgroup as being immoral (Opotow & McClelland, 2007). For example, the terrorist attack that took place in the United States on September 11th, 2001 could be considered a dispositional event. When combined with the endorsement of labels such as “terrorist” and harmful stereotypes for Muslims, emotions such as fear, and the acceptance of the idea that Muslims as an “outgroup” are immoral, such an event can transform the original disposition toward hate into an Islamophobic attitude. As this hateful attitude toward an outgroup escalates, it may then manifest as hateful behavior, even violence (Opotow & McClelland, 2007).
My project aims to examine specifically how these patterns of beliefs, emotions, and morals differ across different types of discrimination, with the goal of producing an exploratory analysis of these patterns. I hope to understand better how the types of morals, beliefs, and emotions associated with racism may differ from those associated with queerphobia.
Identifying whether or not all forms of discrimination follow a similar pattern or have distinct patterns can better inform potential interventions, in that researchers can then determine if it is more effective to tailor interventions to specific types of discrimination or to develop a general intervention that can be applied more universally to different forms of discrimination. For example, returning to the scenario above, it would be helpful to know whether cognitions that label an outgroup as dangerous, such as the label “terrorist” associated with Islamophobia, in combination with a sense of fear and the perception that Muslims violate certain morals, are similar to the ways outgroups are perceived in other types of discrimination, such as racism or queerphobia. It’s important to understand these nuances in discrimination because if the labeling of an outgroup as dangerous is common among most forms of discrimination and most outgroups are perceived to violate the same moral values, then it could be more effective to design general anti-hate interventions that address the commonalities across different forms of discrimination. This could mean designing an intervention that facilitates intergroup contact in a way that minimizes the perception of outgroups as dangerous and immoral.
Refining these types of future anti-hate interventions is especially pertinent today as the existence of hateful rhetoric becomes increasingly widespread. For instance, queerphobia and xenophobia, along with anti-immigrant sentiment, have come to be weaponized within the context of American politics; political figures incite hateful attitudes through their use of negative cognitions (including xenophobic stereotypes and the labeling of the LGBTQ+ community as predatory). They also generate fear over the mere existence of these groups, and exploit morality to other the LGBTQ+ community and immigrants in order to further their political agenda. Given the widespread increase of hate in public spaces, it is especially important that we further our understanding of the psychological mechanisms that drive these hateful attitudes in order to change them more effectively.
References
Opotow, S., & McClelland, S. I. (2007). The Intensification of Hating: A Theory. Social Justice Research, 20(1), 68–97. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-007-0033-0