Punishing campus protesters based on ideology

Abstract

Recent protests on university campuses have inspired conservative claims that liberals allow partisanship to color their judgement of disorderly activists. Prior research suggests, however, that both ideologies are prone to political bias. Furthermore, because conservatives are typically more concerned with orderliness and authority, there are theoretical reasons to expect conservatives to respond more forcefully to protests than liberals, especially when those protesters are political opponents. Using an experimental design with two samples, one with Mechanical Turk participants and the other with current college students, the study finds support for the hypotheses that (1) conservatives are more punitive towards protesters than liberals, (2) both ideologies are more likely to punish when protesters are their political opponents, and (3) conservatives’ responses to protesters are more sensitive to their ideology than liberals’. These results support recent studies of the psychology of political ideology and punitiveness.