Reactions to Violent Extremist Groups: Militia Race Determines Whether Low and High Authoritarians Have “Selective Contextual Blindness” to Critical Information That Diminishes Punishment

Objectives: One pressing social issue involves how the ethnicity of a citizen group that commits violence influences societal reactions to these illegal acts. In an incident involving violence committed by Black or White American militia members, we examined the interactive effects between the severity of violence and participants’ ideological attitudes (i.e., right-wing authoritarianism, RWA) on support for punitive reactions (i.e., arrest, surveillance of the group) directed at themilitia members. We propose that high RWAparticipants would view Black militia members as ideological adversaries and White militia members as ideological proponents, and that this pattern would be reversed for low RWA participants (viz., White militia are adversaries, Black militia are proponents). Method: WhiteU.S. participants completed anRWAmeasure and read about a Black or White militia engaging in minor or severe violence against an innocent individual. Participants reported their support for arresting the militia members (Study 1, N = 159) and perceived symbolic threat and support for surveillance of the militia (Study 2, N = 154). Results: Across both studies, among participants low and high in RWA, support for punitive reactions of ideological proponents (but not ideological adversaries) was diminished by the severity of violence (i.e., minor vs. severe). Study 2 findings showed that diminished perceived militia symbolic threat in the minor versus severe violence condition mediated the violence severity effect on support for surveillance of ideological proponents. Conclusion: Both left- and rightleaning participants displayed “selective contextual blindness”—they ignored punishment-reducing contextual information for ideological adversaries but not for ideological proponents.