Personality and Attitudes

Background

The Dual Process Model (DPM; Duckitt, 2001) has is a popular and throughly replicated model of generalised prejudice, with posits that generalised prejudice is primarily caused by higher levels of two ideological attitudes; right-wing authoritarianism (Altemeyer, 1981) and social dominance orientation (Pratto et al., 1994). This studies aims to replicate previous findings that support the DPM, and extend the DPM in two ways. Firstly, we aim to determine whether or not the DPM generalises to predict prejudicial and inclusive attitudes towards non-human animals. Secondly, we aim to determine whether or not Enlightened Compassion (Laham et al., 2022), a newly developed interstitial trait, can improve the predictive power of the DPM.

Research Questions / Hypotheses

We hypothesise the the main elements of the Dual Process Model (Duckitt, 2001) will be replicated: Openness to experience (Soto & John, 2017) will significantly negatively predict dangerous worldviews (Perry et al., 2013) and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA; Altemeyer, 1981), dangerous worldviews will significantly positively predict RWA, Agreeableness (Soto & John, 2017) will significantly negatively predict competitive worldviews (Perry et al., 2013) and social dominance orientation (SDO; Pratto et al., 1994), competitive worldviews will significantly positively predict SDO, and both RWA and SDO will significantly positively predict generalised prejudice. Will also hypothesise that RWA, SDO and Enlightened Compassion (Laham et al., 2022) will significantly predict speciesism (Caviola et al., 2019), solidarity with animals (Amiot & Bastian, 2017) and moral expansiveness (Crimston et al., 2016). We aim to determine whether or not including enlightened compassion in the dual process model adds incremental predictive power to the model.

Participants

348 REP participants completed the study. Data from participants who did not correctly click the correct answer on the question "Please select strongly agree" were excluded. A series of items to assess response quality were also presented at the end of the questionnaires.

Methods

Participants completed a series of questionnaires, including the Big Five Inventory 2 (Soto & John, 2017), Social Dominance Orientation (Pratto et al., 1994), Right-Wing Authoritarianism (Altemeyer, 1981), dangerous and competitive worldviews (Perry et al., 2013), Universal Diverse Orientation (Fuertes et al., 2000), Pro-Diversity Belief (Homan et al., 2010), Sensitivity to Diversity (Zhang & Goldberg, 2014), the Speciesism Scale (Caviola et al., 2019), the Solidarity With Animals Scale (Amiot & Bastian, 2017), the Moral Expansiveness Scale (Crimston et al., 2016), the Enlightened Compassion Scale (Laham et al., 2022), basic demographic information and a series of items to assess response quality.

Results

We intend to run a structural equation model (SEM) on the entire dual process model, the dual process model but with animal-related outcome measures rather than human-related outcome measures, and both these models with the inclusion of enlightened compassion as a predictor of animal-related/generalised prejudice/inclusivity. We will run all four of these models using summed scores and latent factors, yielding a total of eight models. Given the potentially high correlations between the variables in the model which may render the strengths of the paths of the model weaker than they truly are, we will also conduct a series of multiple regressions and mediation analyses to test each component of each model in turn. We expect to find support for all eight models, although it is uncertain whether or not enlightened compassion will add incremental predictive power to the models in which it is included.

Implications

The results will help to clarify the relationship that SDO and RWA have with attitudes towards animals, particularly RWA, which has been explored minimally in the literature. Furthermore, it could demonstrate that enlightened compassion explains prejudice towards non-parochial others beyond what more well-established measures explain, which would encourage further research into the applications and explanatory power of enlightened compassion.