'Terrorist' or 'mentally ill': Motivated Biases Rooted in Partisanship Shape Attributions About Violent Actors

Noor, Masi, Nour Kteily, Birte Siem, and Agostino Mazziotta 2018. “'Terrorist' or 'mentally ill': Motivated Biases Rooted in Partisanship Shape Attributions About Violent Actors”. PsyArXiv. February 16. psyarxiv.com/49kac

Abstract: We investigated whether motivated reasoning rooted in partisanship affects the attributions individuals make about violent attackers’ underlying motives and group memberships. Study 1 demonstrated that on the day of the Brexit referendum pro–leavers (vs. pro–remainers) attributed an exculpatory (i.e., mental health) versus condemnatory (i.e., terrorism) motive to the killing of a pro-remain politician. Study 2 demonstrated that pro– (vs. anti–) immigration perceivers in Germany ascribed a mental health (vs. terrorism) motive to a suicide attack by a Syrian refugee, predicting lower endorsement of punitiveness against his group (i.e., refugees) as a whole. Study 3 experimentally manipulated target motives, showing that Americans distanced a politically-motivated (vs. mentally ill) violent individual from their ingroup and assigned him harsher punishment— patterns most pronounced amongst high group identifiers.