The Dual-Process Motivational Perspective on Anti-American Attitudes: Evidence from Russia

In this paper, we explore the psychological motivations of anti-American attitudes from the perspective of the dual-process model that emphasizes two basic human motivational goals: security (with the resulting perception of threat) and superiority (with the perception of competition). Among established measures in social psychology, the former most closely corresponds to authoritarianism, whereas the latter is captured by social dominance orientation (SDO). We analyze the case of Russia where grievances against the United States featured prominently in the justification of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. In Study 1, we find that political and cultural grievances against the United States, as well as anti-American attitudes and support for confrontation, are more strongly and consistently predicted by authoritarianism than by SDO. In Study 2, we replicate this result and also show that anti-American attitudes in the Russian public are motivated by perception of threat rather than perception of competition.