Dying the right-way? Interest in and perceived persuasiveness of parochial extremist propaganda increases after mortality salience

Frontiers in Psychology

Maia eHein¹  Gary eBente²  Diana eRieger³  Lena eFrischlich³ 

[1] Academia for applied psychology and psychotherapy;Michigan State University;University of Cologne;University of Mannheim;

关键词: propaganda;    media psychology;    Mortality salience;    Parochial altruism;    Right-wing extremism;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01222

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Research on parochial altruism demonstrated that hostility toward out-groups (parochialism) represents the dark side of the willingness to benefit one’s in-group even at own costs (altruism). Parochial aggression thereby emerges mainly under conditions of threat. Extremist propaganda videos, for instance by right-wing extremists, try to capitalize on parochial altruistic mechanism by telling recipients sharing their national identity that this nation is under threat wherefore these recipients have to join the extremist’s cause to defend their nation. Most of the time, propaganda videos are rated as uninteresting and non-persuasive by the target audience. Evolutionary media psychology posits that the interest in and effectiveness of media increases when evolutionarily relevant problems are addressed. Consequently, interest in parochial altruistic propaganda should increase under conditions of threat. The current study tested this assumption by randomly assigning German/non-Muslims (N=109) to either an existential threat (here: mortality salience) or a control condition and asking them to evaluate extremist propaganda that addressed them as either in-group members (right-wing extremists) or not. In support of the hypotheses, subjects under conditions of threat reported a higher interest in the right-wing extremist propaganda and perceived it as more persuasive. We discuss the results concerning their implications.

【 授权许可】

Unknown