Ideological Threat Influences Political Prejudice: Evidence from Tweets and Real World Events

How do ideological threats influence people from different political ideologies? Prior work primarily focuses on the conservative-threat dynamic, but less is known about the progressive-threat dynamic and how Progressives’ group attitudes are influenced by threats against their values. We investigate this gap in three experimental studies (N1 = 400, N2 = 600, N3 = 600) and a time series analysis of political polarization polls (N4 = 34,000 respondents) that illustrate the impact of ideological threats, both on social media and in real-life contexts, on political prejudice in the US. We find experimental and correlational evidence that exposure to threats against ideology influences the endorsement of outgroup prejudice, with Progressives being more reactive to relevant threats. Our results highlight the psychological underpinnings of polarization and dangers associated with threatening content on social media, providing novel evidence showing that political ideology influences how people perceive threats, which in turn, influences prejudice.