The more you want to fit in, the more similar you become: How others' ideologies relate to our own intergroup attitudes

Abstract Why people develop prejudice has been under the spotlight of many political and social psychological studies. The current contribution bridges the gap between individual and contextual perspectives and conceptualizes attitudes as joint products of personal ideologies and social norms, as such adopting a person‐within‐context approach. In two US samples (total N = 1150), representative in terms of age, gender, ethnic background (Studies 1–2), and political orientation (Study 2), we examined whether perceived levels of Right‐Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) in one's close groups (family, friends, colleagues, and people in one's town) were related to outgroup warmth and avoidance through one's own RWA and SDO. We also included norm enactment as a moderator of close‐group ideologies' effect on one's own ideologies. The results showed that close‐group ideologies were positively linked to participants' own RWA and SDO, which, in turn, were associated with lower outgroup warmth and higher outgroup avoidance in both studies. Most importantly, these effects were strongest for those who have a high desire to enact close‐group norms, and weakest for those who have a low desire for norm enactment. These findings highlight the significance of situating personal ideologies within their contextual plenum while studying intergroup relations.