Perceived group threat tracks real-world politics more than psychological insecurity

Evidence

Research on political tolerance has addressed this point. Sullivan, Piereson, and Marcus (1982) found that blacks and Jews (and other liberal whites) tended to feel threatened by right-wing extremist groups such as the KKK, whereas more conservative whites tended to feel threatened by left-wing groups. Interestingly, Sullivan et al. found little differences between the correlates of perceived threat among blacks and Jews as compared to other whites, even though the two former groups presumably confronted more real-world external threats. The data do not rule out a purely psychological basis for feelings of threat; indeed, some of the open-ended comments reflect simple prejudice (Sullivan et al., 1982, pp. 165–175), but it appears that, on the whole, people are capable of realistically assessing threats to what they take as their values and interests. Shamir and Sullivan (1983) provided cross-national data (for the United States and Israel) that also indicate that expressions of perceived threat are based more in real-world politics than in psychological insecurity or projection. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3370

Categorization

• QUESTION: The finding that blacks and Jews showed similar threat correlates to whites despite facing more real external threats suggests a mechanism worth probing — how do group members calibrate threat against actual risk?
• XREF: Connects to the ‘complaints about immodesty’ article’s theme of perception being shaped by identity position rather than objective conditions. — connects to: Four threat types explain 36 percent of variance in outgroup attitudes — Blake M. Riek, Eric W. Mania, and Samuel L. Gaertner, Intergroup Threat and Outgroup…, 105; the MOC “The Enemy-Making Machine: How Ourselves, the True, and Every Other Are Built from War”