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Privilege and Marginality: How Group Identification and Personality Predict Right‐ and Left‐Wing Political Activism
Author(s) -
Blankenship Benjamin T.,
Frederick Jennifer K.,
Savaş Özge,
Stewart Abigail J.,
Montgomery Samantha
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
analyses of social issues and public policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.479
H-Index - 31
eISSN - 1530-2415
pISSN - 1529-7489
DOI - 10.1111/asap.12132
Subject(s) - openness to experience , privilege (computing) , social psychology , politics , personality , psychology , system justification , right wing , left wing politics , political activism , sociology , political science , law , ideology
In two studies, we examine how different processes might underlie the political mobilization of individuals with marginalized versus privileged identities for left‐wing activism (LWA) versus right‐wing activism (RWA). In the first study, with a sample of 244 midlife women, we tested the hypotheses that endorsement of system justification beliefs and social identities were direct predictors of political activism, and that system justification beliefs moderated the mobilization of social identities for activism on both the left and the right. We found that system justification predicted RWA only among those who felt close to privileged groups; the parallel reverse effect did not hold for LWA, though rejection of system‐justifying beliefs was an important direct predictor. In Study 2, we replicated many of these findings with a sample of 113 college students. In addition, we tested and confirmed the hypothesis that LWA is predicted by openness to experience and is unrelated to RWA, but not that openness plays a stronger role among those with marginalized identities. These two studies together support our overall hypothesis that different personality processes are involved with political mobilization of privileged and marginalized individuals on the right and the left.