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Right-Wing Authoritarianism Predicts weakened Attitude Change in an Evaluative Counter-conditioning Paradigm
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Description: RWA is associated with higher social prejudice. It is unclear, however, (i) whether RWA plays a role in attitude acquisition or attitude change (or both), and (ii) whether it influences attitudes unrelated to in/outgroup concerns. We relied on an evaluative conditioning-then-counter-conditioning paradigm simulating prejudice formation and change to examine this question. Neutral fictive group exemplars were first conditioned positively or negatively (attitude learning) and then counter-conditioned with the opposite valence (attitude change). We then measured the evaluative outcome of the conditioning and counter-conditioning phases. Experiment 1 (N=55) shows smaller attitude change in higher RWA. Experiment 2 (N=115) replicates and extends this finding to both social and less-social categories of stimuli, and rules out the role of contingency memory in the effect. Experiment 3 (N=399) shows that attitude change rather than attitude formation is the key contributor. A meta-analysis suggests that this RWA effect is mainly observed for negative attitude change.