Clarifying the Ideological Asymmetry in Public Attitudes Toward Political Protest

Abstract

Political protests cannot succeed without public support. Extant studies point to weaker average support among ideological conservatives, but researchers have yet to consider the extent to which such apparent ideological asymmetry is (a) an artifact of the particular protest cases that researchers have tended to investigate, and/or (b) conditioned by the precise meaning of “ideological conservatism.” In this investigation, we address these gaps. Specifically, we analyze public perceptions of protest legitimacy after exposing survey respondents to one of a series of experimental treatments that randomize the specific ideological and issue contents of the particular protests under consideration. In iterative models, we observe how political ideology, social dominance orientation and authoritarianism condition the effects associated with these experimental treatments. The data suggest that that the notorious ideological asymmetry that is often associated with support for protests is authentic, but it is also conditioned in important ways by these other factors.

Keywords

political protest attitudes ideology authoritarianism social dominance orientation

The right to petition is a 1st Amendment safeguard against tyranny and an important instrument of social change (e.g., Branton et al., 2015; Gamson, 1975; Gillion, 2012; Madestam et al., 2013; Piven & Cloward, 1979; Wallace et al., 2014). However, its efficacy depends upon mass perceptions of legitimacy (e.g., Agnone, 2007; Chenoweth & Stephan, 2012; Jeffries et al., 1971; Kernell, 1986; Lee, 2002; McAdams et al., 2001; Schattschneider, 1960; Schumaker, 1975; Stern et al., 1999).

Thus, it is important to understand the variance in mass attitudes toward political protest. Alas, though studies of political tolerance are abundant (for classic treatments, see Bobo, 1988; Bobo & Licari, 1989; Gibson, 1992; Stouffer, 1955; Sullivan et al., 1981), studies of protest attitudes are relatively scarce (but see Herrnson & Weldon, 2017; McCright & Dunlap, 2008; Mohamed, 2013). At first glance, the latter may appear to be a subset of the former, but they are not; whereas tolerance is the willingness to put up with expressions that one considers repugnant (e.g., Gibson, 1992; Stouffer, 1955; Sullivan et al., 1981), protest support is the embrace of collective action to redress perceived injustices. By extension, tolerance may not necessarily require the populist impulses that protest support does, and protest support may not necessarily require the libertarian impulses that tolerance does.¹ Therefore, focused examinations of protest attitudes, specifically, are critical to understanding why some protest movements succeed and others to fail.

The limited research on this subject suggests that support for protests tends to be weaker on the ideological Right (e.g., Hall et al., 1986; McCright & Dunlap, 2008; Olsen, 1968). However, it is not clear whether such ostensible ideological asymmetry is authentic or artifactual. Given the tendency of previous studies to rely exclusively on liberal protest case studies—especially the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Movement, Anti-Vietnam demonstrations, the Environmental Movement, or the 2006 Latino Immigration rallies (see Barreto et al., 2009; Benjamin-Alvarado et al., 2009; Branton et al., 2015; Martinez, 2008; Mohamed, 2013; Pantoja et al., 2008; Rim, 2009; Wright & Citrin, 2010)—it is conceivable that the disproportionately conservative antipathy toward protests that researchers have tended to observe is entirely a byproduct of case selection, reflecting heightened conservative antipathy toward liberals and particular liberal causes.² Furthermore, if such ideological asymmetry in protest attitudes is indeed authentic, it is not clear whether such asymmetry varies depending on (a) the specific issue content of political protests, or (b) the nature of what we mean, exactly, by “ideological.”

In this investigation, we analyze the ways in which the ideological and issue contents of a particular protest movement interact with different conceptualizations of liberalism-conservatism—ideological identification or two of the foremost psychological constructs that undergird it: authoritarianism or social dominance orientation—to affect perceptions of protest legitimacy. In a series of randomized experimental treatments, we gauge public perceptions of protest legitimacy while priming respondents to think about either liberal protests or conservative protests (generically, as well as within economic, religio-sexual, or racial policy realms). We find that (1) ideological asymmetry in perceptions of protest legitimacy is real, but (2) it is conditioned in meaningful ways by (a) the ideological content of a given protest, (b) the issue content of that protest, and (c) differences in the psychological ingredients that organize our understanding of liberalism-conservatism. Collectively, these results stand to validate the conventional scholarly wisdom with respect to ideological asymmetry in protest support in a way that has not been possible with previous data collections, while refining it in meaningful ways.

In the next section, we (1) provide some theoretical rationale for the “ideological asymmetry hypothesis”—focusing on the roles of SDO and authoritarianism as ingredients of economic and cultural conservatism, respectively—(2) offer reasons for skepticism, culminating in a competing “protest content” hypotheses, and (3) elaborate our expectations regarding how these patterns may interact with (a) the specific issue content of particular protests (economic, religio-sexual, racial) and (b) the precise meaning of “liberalism-conservatism” (symbolic, economic, or cultural).

The Psychology of Ideological Conservatism and Political Protest Antipathy

What is it about ideological conservatism, exactly, that would engender disproportionate antagonism toward protests? One potential mechanism is authoritarianism, which prioritizes social order, conformity, tradition, punitive justice, and (as the name suggests) respect for established authorities (e.g., Altemeyer, 1981, 1988; Feldman & Stenner, 1997; Stenner, 2005), and it is associated with both political intolerance and heightened threat sensitivity (e.g., Bobo, 1988; Bobo & Licari, 1989; Gibson, 1992; Huddy et al., 2005; Stenner, 2005; Stouffer, 1955; Sullivan et al., 1981). Authoritarianism underpins ideological conservatism in important ways, particularly as it relates to religio-moral/cultural traditionalism (e.g., Duckitt & Sibley, 2007; Haidt, 2012; Hetherington & Weiler, 2009; Jost et al., 2003). It stands to reason that authoritarianism might explain the relationship between ideological conservatism and protest antipathy—because protests are, by definition, expressions of defiance toward established authorities, and because perceived threats may be triggered by the prospect of socially disruptive protests (e.g., Huddy et al., 2005).

A second mechanism that might underlie heightened protest antipathy among conservatives is social dominance orientation (SDO; e.g., Duckitt & Sibley, 2007; Pratto et al., 1994; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999; Sibley & Liu, 2010). While authoritarianism values order and conformity, SDO prizes inter-group hierarchy and competition (e.g., Duckitt & Sibley, 2010)—resting on the premise that some groups of people are just naturally better suited to occupy positions of power than others (Pratto et al., 1994). As such, SDO is associated with prejudice and discrimination (e.g., Cohrs & Asbrock, 2009; Duckitt & Sibley, 2007, 2010). Accordingly, whereas the opposite of authoritarianism is libertarianism, the opposite of SDO is egalitarianism (Pratto et al., 2006). Thus, SDO is an important source of ideological conservatism, particularly as it relates to economic (free-market) and racial attitudes (Duckitt & Sibley, 2007). Intuitively, then, SDO may underlie the relationship between ideological conservatism and protest antipathy by reducing sympathy for those who challenge perceived injustices, including protestors. To be sure, if one believes that “life just isn’t fair, and that is OK”—as those high in SDO tend to do—then one would naturally resent behaviors that seek to challenge that premise and disrupt the power dynamics associated with the status quo. Perceived relative deprivation is, after all, associated with protest behavior (e.g., Gurney & Tierney, 1982; Gurr, 1970; Stouffer, 1955)—an association that mainstream media coverage of protestors tends to emphasize/exaggerate (e.g., McLeod, 1995; McLeod & Detenber, 1999; McLeod & Hertog, 1992)—so those high in SDO are likely to look upon protestors with disdain, at least as long as they view them as marginalized malcontents.

We do not intend to imply that (1) economic conservatism is nothing more than SDO, (2) religious/sexual conservatism is nothing more than authoritarianism, or (3) racial conservatism is nothing more than a combination of SDO and authoritarianism. Other identities, values, premises and psychological processes contribute to such ideological identities as well, but SDO and authoritarianism are useful undercurrents for our purposes because they provide clear theoretical expectations for why economic and cultural conservatism may each be related to protest antipathy.

Collectively, then, the psychology of authoritarianism and SDO, and their relationships to liberalism-conservatism, underlie the ideological asymmetry hypothesis, of which three specific versions are testable:

H₁: Ideological conservatives are less likely than ideological liberals to perceive protest behavior as legitimate

H_1a: Authoritarianism, as a psychological precursor to religious, sexual and racial conservatism, is negatively associated with perceptions of protest legitimacy

H_1b: Social Dominance Orientation, as a psychological precursor to economic and racial conservatism, is negatively associated with pereptions of protest legitimacy

Reasons for Skepticism

While the theoretical perspectives we just delineated provide some solid rationale for the ideological asymmetry hypothesis, there are also reasons for skepticism built-in to those perspectives. First, authoritarianism has been described as “groupiness” (Stenner, 2005), and protest behavior is by definition the mobilization of collective, not individual, grievances; it is a group activity, not an individualistic one. As such, it is conceivable that the groupiness that authoritarianism embodies might engender sympathy or even enthusiasm for the groupiness inherent in a mass political protest—which could soften or even reverse the relationship between ideology and protest support if that protest were for a conservative cause. This might be most apparent with respect to conservative protests that pertain to religious/sexual issues, like abortion or gay rights, given that authoritarians tend to disproportionately prize such causes. Providing some evidence of this, Parker and Barreto (2014) have observed that authoritarianism was associated with support for the Tea Party movement—which may have originated as a revolt against deficit spending in the wake of the Great Recession but evolved into an outlet for the expression of cultural grievances and was strongly associated with evangelical Christian identity (e.g., Skocpol & Williamson, 2012).

Second, given that SDO is about group hierarchy and a lack of empathy for dispossessed groups, the contempt that conservatives often appear to express toward generic protests might simply reflect their assumptions about the type of people who are most likely to protest, and their disdain toward such perceived malcontents. Thus, in protest contexts that contradict that narrative—in which protestors represent historically privileged groups rather than historically downtrodden ones—SDO-inspired negativity among conservatives might well vanish, replaced by support. Notably, Crawford and Xhambazi (2013) find that in the same way authoritarianism was associated with support for the Tea Party (which was a revolt of socially hegemonic groups of citizens who felt threatened by Obama’s presidency; Skocpol & Williamson, 2012), so was SDO.

Hence, and more generally, it is entirely possible that what looks like lopsided conservative antipathy toward protest behavior might just be conservative antipathy toward the liberal protest causes that social scientists have tended to analyze (Barreto et al., 2009; Benjamin-Alvarado et al., 2009; Branton et al., 2015; Martinez, 2008; Mohamed, 2013; Pantoja et al., 2008; Rim, 2009; Wright & Citrin, 2010). Conservative protest movements have become quite prolific over the past forty years (e.g., the Pro-Life, anti-immigration, pro-2nd Amendment, Tea Party, Blue Lives Matter and anti-Covid-19 quarantine movements), with comparatively little empirical analysis to match. With respect to such protest movements, ideological asymmetry in support may vanish or change.

It is also important to evaluate the degree to which the relationship between ideology and protest support might also be sensitive to the issue content of the protest in question (economic, religio-sexual or racial) as well as to the specific conceptualization of “liberalism-conservatism.” Specifically, given the difference between authoritarianism and SDO, and their relative contributions to different dimensions of liberalism-conservatism (which we described earlier), it is possible that support for protest causes that uphold/challenge religious/sexual norms are more likely to be affected by differences in authoritarianism, whereas support for protest causes that uphold/challenge economic hierarchies are more likely to be affected by differences in SDO. By contrast, because authoritarianism and SDO both contribute to racial conservatism, it is reasonable to suspect that support for protest causes that uphold/challenge racial hierarchies would be affected by both psychological constructs.

To that end, a series of protest content hypotheses, stated formally below, compete with the ideological asymmetry hypothesis stated above.

H₂: The relationship between conservative ideological identification and protest antipathy wanes, disappears, or even reverses when protests are for ideologically conservative causes, and/or strengthens when protests are for ideologically liberal causes

H₃: The relationship between authoritarianism and protest antipathy wanes, disappears, or even reverses when protests are for ideologically conservative causes, and/or strengthens when protests are for ideologically liberal causes

H_3a: H₃ does not apply to economic issue contexts

H₄: The relationship between SDO and protest antipathy wanes, disappears, or even reverses when protests are for economically conservative causes, and/or strengthens when protests are for economically liberal causes

H_4a: H₄ does not apply to religious/sexual issue contexts

Other Confounding Influences

Even if the ideological asymmetry hypothesis holds after the ideological and issue content of particular protests have been taken into account, it would remain conceivable that these relationships are a spurious function of differences in (1) educational attainment (e.g., Andrews et al., 2016; Hall et al., 1986), (2) Christian traditionalism (Lipka, 2016; Smidt et al., 2009), and/or (3) demographic privilege.

When it comes to educational attainment, there is already evidence that it predicts protest support (e.g., Andrews et al., 2016; Hall et al., 1986), as well as support for other civil liberties (e.g., Bobo & Licari, 1989; Niemi & Junn, 2005). So, given that higher educational attainment has become so strongly associated with contemporary Democratic partisanship and ideological liberalism (at least with respect to social or cultural issues and at least among Whites; e.g., Pew Research Center, 2016), conservative disdain for protest behavior could simply reflect lower levels of educational attainment (on average).

As for Christian traditionalism, it is well known that for the past 30 years or so, ideological conservatives have been much more likely than liberals to identify as “born again” Christians or “Christians,” period, and to attend church regularly (e.g., Lipka, 2016; Smidt et al., 2009). This brand of religiosity also tends to covary with a lack of enthusiasm for other civil liberties such as freedom of expression, the separation of church and state, and the right to privacy (e.g., Tuntiya, 2005), so it logically follows that it might predict attitudes toward the right to petition (a.k.a. protest behavior) as well, which some data have already borne out (e.g., Andrews et al., 2016).³

Finally, it is important to account for the demographic characteristics that confer/deny social privilege as important potential confounds affecting the ideology-protest attitudes relationship—especially the portions of that relationship that might be shaped by differences in SDO and/or authoritarianism. This is because authoritarianism and especially SDO might themselves be triggered by where one sits in the socioeconomic and cultural hierarchy. Those who have traditionally enjoyed a hegemonic position in American society—wealthy white males, to be precise—may naturally seek to protect that status by embracing a socially dominant mindset and other values that celebrate the free-market (competition, individualism). Furthermore, given that many of them currently perceive their hegemony to be under threat (e.g., Hochschild, 2016; Jones, 2016), the simpler explanation for any perceived relationship between ideological ID/SDO/authoritarianism and protest antipathy could be demographic privilege (see Reinka & Leach, 2017).

Research Design and Methods

In the remainder of this paper, we describe our empirical investigation of the relationship between mass perceptions of protest legitimacy and liberalism-conservatism (or its psychological undercurrents)—measured, in-turn, as (1) ideological identification, (2) authoritarianism (to capture the psychological roots of differences in religious/sexual traditionalism, in part), or (3) SDO (to capture the psychological roots of differences in free-market sentiment, in part)—and and the degree to which those relationships can be altered by randomly priming respondents to think about either liberal, conservative, or generic protestors in (a) vaguely ideological contexts, (b) economic issue contexts, (c) sexual “culture war” issue contexts, or (d) racial “culture war” issue contexts.

In-so-doing, we draw upon priming theory—which demonstrates that latent beliefs, attitudes, and identity consciousness can be activated by prompting people to think about one set of considerations rather than another before making a decision. (e.g., Fiske & Taylor, 1984; Goidel et al., 1997; Hastie & Park, 1986; Hetherington, 1996; Iyengar & Kinder, 1987; Iyengar et al., 1982; Jacobs & Shapiro, 1994; Krosnick & Kinder, 1990; Tversky & Khaneman, 1973; Valentino et al., 2002). Scholars have traditionally distinguished priming effects from agenda setting (e.g., Baum, 2002; McCombs & Shaw, 1972) or framing effects (e.g., Iyengar, 1991; Pan & Kosicki, 1993), but we concur with Chong and Druckman (2007) that, with respect to the psychological mechanisms at play, they are functionally equivalent (also see Barker, 2002; Riker, 1986).

Data Collection

On May 30 and 31, 2019, we collected survey data from 3002 Americans using the Qualtrics online platform. Our Institutional Review Board approved the survey as “exempt.” When obtaining consent, language ensured respondents that their responses would remain confidential. We compensated the respondents 40 cents for completing the survey, and we used the Qualtrics provision to prevent respondents from taking the survey more than once.

We recruited the sample from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk labor market. Samples using Mturk respondents are useful for predictive modeling (Berinsky et al., 2012; Clifford et al., 2015; Levay et al., 2016). However, Mturk samples do tend to attenuate treatment effects by an average of 10%, meaning that the findings we report below may be understated (Ahler et al., 2019). We attempted to preempt such attenation of effects to some degree by including an attention check half-way through the survey, and only including respondents in the sample for analysis who demonstrated that they were not bots and were paying attention. Remaining errors in measurement resulting from the data source serve to bias the statistical analyses toward making Type II errors of inference (Carmines & Zeller, 1979).

Using these data, we estimated a series of linear regression models that model differences in perceived protest legitimacy, which we measure with responses to the following survey question: In your view, to what extent are political protests legitimate or illegitimate?” (0 = Not at all; .25 = Not Very; .5 = Somewhat; .75 = Highly; 1 = Completely; mean = .63; SD = .28).⁴

We analyze the variance in such perceptions as a function of political ideology (operationalized in three ways, as we just mentioned), conditioned by whether experimental subjects were encouraged to use a (1) ideologically generic, liberal, or conservative protest cause as their mental frame of reference, and (2) an economic, sexual, racial, or vaguely ideological issue context as their frame of reference.⁵

Experimental Treatments

We randomly exposed respondents to one of nine experimental treatment conditions that manipulated language that respondents read right before being asked to express their perception of political protest legitimacy—in order to prime mental images of either liberal or conservative protestors. Again, both to gauge robustness and to evaluate the subsets associated with each main hypothesis, we also varied the issue content of the protests, distinguishing between (1) generic liberal/conservative protests, (2) liberal/conservative protests pertaining to an economic/social welfare issue, (3) liberal/conservative protests pertaining to a sexual “culture war” issue, or (4) liberal/conservative protests pertaining to a racial “culture war” issue.

More specifically, our initial treatments (1 and 2) simply primed respondents to think about vague “liberal” or “conservative” treatments, with no specific issue content, in order to minimize any uncertainty that respondents could possibly have as to the ideological nature of the protests, and to eliminate the possibility of respondents reacting to other characteristics of particular protests besides their ideological content.

Next, in each issue realm (economic/social-welfare, sexual, racial), we chose specific protest causes that have been prominent on each side of the ideological divide over the past thirty years and continue to be hot-button points of ideological conflict today. That is, with respect to the social welfare issue dimension, we chose “economic inequality” for the liberal protests because it corresponds to the purpose of the Occupy Wall Street protests of 2011, and “government spending on social welfare programs” for the conservative because it corresponds to the original purpose of the Tea Party protests in 2009–2010. Likewise, with respect to the sexual issue dimension, we chose “gender inequality” for the liberal protests because it corresponds to the Women’s Marches of 2017–2018, and “the right to an abortion” for the conservative protests because it corresponds to the anti-abortion protests that have been so prominent on the Right for the past thirty years.⁶ Finally, as for the racial issue dimension, we chose “police brutality” for the liberal protests because it corresponds to the Black Lives Matter protests, and “illegal immigration” for the conservative protests because it corresponds to prominent protests over the past ten years which fueled the rise of new conservative populists such as President Trump.⁷ To be precise:

Control condition:	Over the past fifty years or so in the US, many activist groups have taken to the streets to vigorously protest various things.⁸
Treatment 1 (liberal protest—vague):	Over the past fifty years or so in the US, many liberal activist groups have taken to the streets to vigorously protest various things
Treatment 2 (conservative protest—vague):	Over the past fifty years or so in the US, many conservative activist groups have taken to the streets to vigorously protest various things
Treatment 3 (liberal protest—social welfare):	Over the past fifty years or so in the US, many activist groups have taken to the streets to vigorously protest things like economic inequality
Treatment 4 (conservative protest—social welfare):	Over the past fifty years or so in the US, many activist groups have taken to the streets to vigorously protest things like the amount of government spending on social welfare programs ⁹
Treatment 5 (liberal protest—racial):	Over the past fifty years or so in the US, many activist groups have taken to the streets to vigorously protest things like police brutality
Treatment 6 (conservative protest—racial):	Over the past fifty years or so in the US, many activist groups have taken to the streets to vigorously protest things like illegal immigration
Treatment 7 (liberal protest—sexual):	Over the past fifty years or so in the US, many activist groups have taken to the streets to vigorously protest things like gender inequality
Treatment 8 (conservative protest—sexual):	Over the past fifty years or so in the US, many activist groups have taken to the streets to vigorously protest things like Roe vs. Wade–the Supreme Court case that guaranteed women the right to an abortion.

Models

In our first set of models, our explanatory variables of theoretical interest are (1) the randomized treatments, (2) ideological ID (“When it comes to politics, do you consider yourself liberal, moderate or conservative?”; 0 = liberal; .5 = moderate; 1 = conservative), and (3) interaction terms multiplying the various randomized treatments, in turn, by ideological ID. That is, in each model, we restricted the sample to those in the control group plus Treatments 1 and 2 (in Model 1), Treatments 3 and 4 (in Model 2), Treatments 5 and 6 (Model 3) or Treatments 7 and 8 (Model 4). This enables us to effectively replicate the first experiment three times, while also observing the degree to which the conditioning effects of liberal/conservative protest primes vary by issue realm.

Our second set of models replaced ideological ID with authoritarianism, which we measured with a principal component index (eigenvalue = 1.83; Cronbach’s alpha = .68) of three child-rearing items that have become standard in political psychology research (e.g., Barker & Tinnick, 2006; Hetherington & Weiler, 2009; Stenner, 2005): “There are a number of qualities that are important for children to have, but people disagree about which ones are most important. If you had to choose, would you say it is more important for children to learn . . .”: (1) Independence or Respect for Elders? (Loading = .59); (2) Self Reliance or Obedience? (Loading = .58); (3) Curiosity or Good Manners? (Loading = .56). We rescaled the resulting index to 0–1 for analysis (mean = .37; SD = .37).

Our third set of models replaced both ideological ID and authoritarianism with social dominance orientation (SDO), which we measured with a principal component index (eigenvalue = 2.57; Cronbach’s alpha = .81) of four Likert-scale items taken from the battery validated by Ho et al. (2015): (1) “Groups at the bottom are just as deserving as groups at the top” (Loading = −.49); (2) “Some groups of people are simply inferior to other groups” (Loading = .47); (3) “We should try to guarantee that every group of people has the same quality of life” (Loading = −.50); (4) “It is unjust to try to make groups equal” (Loading = .54). We rescaled the resulting index to 0–1 for analysis (mean = .27; SD = .24).

In all models, per our theoretical discussion above, we also included covariates for (1) educational attainment (0 = <high school graduate; 4 = post-graduate degree; rescaled to 0–1; mean = .54; SD = .24), (2) traditionalistic Christian religiosity (standardized index of two items: [church attendance [0–never; 5 = multiple times/week; mean = 1.23; SD = 1.50] and views of the Bible [1 = Literal or inerrant Word of God = 48%], rescaled to 0–1 [index mean = .47; SD = .40]), (3) race (White = 77%), (4) gender (Male = 49%) (5) income (0 = <$10k;14 = $250k or more; rescaled to 0–1; mean = .36; SD = .23), and (4) age (18–87; rescaled to 0–1; mean = .30; SD = .18).

To avoid post-treatment bias in the measures of our explanatory variables, and therefore to ward off causal inference concerns (e.g., Montgomery et al., 2018), we captured survey responses regarding the explanatory variables of interest before exposing respondents to any of the randomized treatments. By contrast, we captured the other covariates with survey items that appeared after the randomized treatments, because they represent characteristics that were fixed at the point of data collection, and so they were therefore not subject to manipulation based on previous survey questions in the same way that our explanatory variables of interest might have been.

Results

How does the ideological content of the protests in question affect the relationship between ideology and protest support? Figure 1 provides a summarized overview, by illustrating the relationship between liberalism-conservatism and protest support among those whom we primed to think about (a) any liberal protest cause and (b) any conservative protest cause. We see, on the whole, that (1) liberals and conservatives do not differ statistically in their support of conservative protest causes, (2) levels of support among conservatives do not tend to depend, statistically, on the ideological content of the protest, but (3) levels of support among liberals are nearly 20 percentage-points higher when the protest in question is for a liberal cause than when it is for a conservative cause.

Figure 1.

Ideology, ideological protest primes, and perceived protest legitimacy.

Table 1 provides the granular results, distinguished by whether the issue domain associated with the ideological protest primes was (a) vague/ideological (“liberal” or “conservative”), (b) economic, (c) sexual, or (d) racial. We do not display the coefficients associated with demographic covariates to enhance readability (full results are observable in the Supplemental Appendix, p. 2). The first results row provides the results as they pertain to control group respondents—showing that self-identified conservatives tended to be about 19 points less supportive of protest behavior (on the 0–1 scale) than were self-identified liberal respondents (p < .05). Furthermore, summing the coefficients in the first and third results rows show that the difference between such “symbolic” liberals and conservatives jumps to (a) 33 points among respondents who had been primed to envision generic “liberal” protestors (−.19−.14); p < .05), (b) 29 points among those who had been primed to envision protestors agitating for the liberal goal of economic equality (−.19−.10; p < .05), and (c) 28 points among those who had been primed to envision protestors agitating for the liberal goal of racial equality in the administration of criminal justice (−.19−.09; p < .05). It did not change among those who were primed to envision protestors agitating for the liberal goal of gender equality.

Table 1.

Linear Regressions: Predicting Perceptions of Protest Legitimacy by Experimental Treatments, Ideological Identification, and Interactions.

Predictors	Vague ideological treatments	Economic issue treatments	Sexual issue treatments	Racial issue treatments
Predictors	b (SE)	b (SE)	b (SE)	b (SE)
Ideological ID (conservative high)	−.19 (.02)*	−.19 (.02)*	−.19 (.03)*	−.19 (.02)*
Liberal protest treatment	.03 (.02)	.06 (.03)	.02 (.03)	.05 (.03)
Liberal protest treatment × ideological ID	−.14 (.04)*	−.10 (.05)*	−.06 (.05)	−.09 (.04)*
Conservative protest treatment	−.27 (.02)*	−.08 (.03)*	−.05 (.03)	−.07 (.03)*
Conservative protest treatment × ideological ID	.25 (.04)*	.16 (.05)*	.15 (.05)*	.10 (.05)*
Demographic covariates	Included	Included	Included	Included
Constant	.76	.72	.72	.74
N	1,362	963	974	974
Adjusted R²	.21	.13	.11	.15

Note. Equations are ordinary least squares regression models. All variables have been converted to 0–1 scales, so coefficients display the percentage-point increases or decreases in the predicted values of perceived protest legitimacy that are associated with minimum-to-maximum increases in each explanatory variable.

p < .05.

However, as the sums of the coefficients in the first and fifth results rows indicate, priming respondents to envision generically “conservative” protestors had the effect of flipping the ideological asymmetry in support, causing conservatives to be about six points more supportive of protest on the 0–1 scale than liberals (−.19+.27 = .06; p < .05). Likewise, priming respondents to envision protestors agitating about perceived excesses in social welfare eliminated the ideological asymmetry in support (−.19+.16 = −.03; p < .39), as did priming respondents to envision pro-life activists (−.19+.15 = −.04; p < .25). The trend holds when priming respondents to think about anti-immigration activists, though some of the baseline ideological asymmetry in protest support endures (−.19+09 = −.10; p < .02).

To sum things up so far, these results are broadly consistent with ideological asymmetry (H₁), but the ideological content of the protest in question appears to matter a lot as well (H₂). As an interesting side-note, the conditioning effects of ideological content priming are themselves asymmetrical: it does not seem to matter that much to conservatives, who tend to exhibit a fair amount of disdain toward conservative protests as well as liberal protests. Rather, it is liberals who appear to be most affected by the primes—expressing much less support for conservative protests than for either generic or liberal protests.

Models Using Authoritarianism or SDO in place of Ideological ID

As we discussed earlier, liberalism-conservatism can be measured—and in fact, conceptualized—in various ways, and it is important to keep in mind that the meaning citizens ascribe to the terms “liberal” and “conservative” often differs dramatically from what social scientists mean by those terms. It is also important to remember that liberalism-conservatism includes at least two major dimensions—an economic Left-Right dimension and a religio-sexual “culture war” dimension (with racial liberalism-conservatism being related to both). Significant bodies of research (cited earlier) indicate that the economic dimension is a reflection, to some degree, of social dominance orientation (SDO), whereas the culture-war dimension reflects authoritarianism in no small part. So it is possible that the relationship between liberalism-conservatism and protest support that we have observed using ideological ID might differ from patterns that could emerge when we replace liberalism-conservatism in our models with one or the other of these two ideogical undercurrents (authoritarianism or SDO).

Indeed, estimating these models enables us to evaluate specific theoretical mechanisms (which we reviewed earlier) that could connect liberalism to higher protest support. Based on that theoretical discussion, to reiterate, we anticipate that the negative relationship between authoritarianism and protest support is strongest in cultural issue contexts (whether racial or sexual), whereas the negative relationship between SDO and protest support is strongest in economic or racial issue contexts.

Though economic and cultural conservatism reflect more than SDO and authoritarianism, respectively, we consider it reasonable to think of the latter concepts as stand-in measures for the psychology that undergirds the former measures. This raises the question of why we do not just measure economic and cultural conservatism directly. There are three reasons: (1) we did not have space on our survey instrument to include a battery of policy preferences across different domains, which would have enabled us create those direct measures; (2) SDO and authoritarianism are cleaner measures of the theories we are evaluating than the broader indexes of economic/cultural ideology would be, and (3) because the protests we ask respondents to evaluate pertain to specific issues, conditioning those responses with indexes that include attitudes toward those issues would have created an analytical tautology; by substituting SDO and authoritarianism, we provide a layer of conceptual distinction that distinguishes one side of the analytical equation from the other.

As before, Figures 2 and 3 illustrate the summarized results (again, merging together all of the liberal protest primes and all of the conservative protest primes) when we replace ideological ID with one of the two undercurrents of liberalism-conservatism that we have described here: authoritarianism (Figure 2) or SDO (Figure 3). Figure 2 suggests that, generally speaking, the relationship between authoritarianism and such perceptions is quite muted by comparison to that which we observed with respect to ideological identification. Moreover, the relationship between authoritarianism and perceived protest legitimacy is not affected by whether people had been primed to think about a liberal protest cause vs. a conservative protest cause—at least in the aggregate. As such, these results do not provide unambiguous support for either H_1a or H₃.

Figure 2.

Authoritarianism, ideological protest primes, and perceived protest legitimacy.

Figure 3.

SDO, ideological protest primes, and perceived protest legitimacy.

By contrast, as Figure 3 illustrates, SDO appears to be a stronger predictor of protest antipathy than conservative ideological identification had revealed itself to be, but the relationship is highly sensitive to the ideological content of the particular protest that respondents had been primed to envision; SDO is not associated with weaker perceptions of legitimacy among those who had been primed to envision conservative protest causes, but it is associated with roughly a 60 percentage-point drop in support among those who had been primed to envision liberal protest causes. Thus, these results are consistent with H_1b and H₄.

To what extent do these patterns vary by the specific issue realm associated with the ideological protest primes (economic, sexual, racial)? Tables 2 and 3 enable us to observe differences across issue domain. Table 2 displays those differences as they pertain to the relationship between authoritarianism and perceived protest legitimacy, and Table 3 displays those differences as they pertain to the relationship between SDO and perceived protest legitimacy. To ease readability, as was the case with respect to Table 1, we only report the results relating to the explanatory variables of primary theoretical interest. Results with all covariates appear in the Supplemental Appendix, pp. 3–4.

Table 2.

Linear Regressions: Predicting Perceptions of Protest Legitimacy by Experimental Treatments, Authoritarianism, and Interactions.

Predictors	Vague ideological treatments	Economic issue treatments	Sexual issue treatments	Racial issue treatments
Predictors	b (SE)	b (SE)	b (SE)	b (SE)
Authoritarianism	−.19 (.03)*	−.20 (.03)*	−.19 (.03)*	−.18 (.03)*
Liberal protest treatment	−.01 (.02)	.03 (.03)	−.02 (.03)	.02 (.03)
Liberal protest treatment × authoritarianism	−.10 (.04)*	.01 (.06)	.04 (.06)	.00 (.06)
Conservative protest treatment	−.23 (.02)*	−.04 (.03)	−.03 (.03)	−.06 (.03)*
Conservative protest treatment × authoritarianism	.18 (.05)*	.06 (.06)	.12 (.06)*	.09 (.06)*
Demographic covariates	Included	Included	Included	Included
Constant	.79	.75	.76	.80
N	1,362	963	974	974
Adjusted R²	.22	.10	.09	.10

p < .05.

Table 3.

Linear Regressions: Predicting Perceptions of Protest Legitimacy by Experimental Treatments, SDO, and Interactions.

Predictors	Vague ideological treatments	Economic issue treatments	Culture war issue treatments	Racial issue treatments
Predictors	b (SE)	b (SE)	b (SE)	b (SE)
SDO	−.39 (.04)*	−.39 (.04)*	−.38 (.04)*	−.38 (.04)*
Liberal protest treatment	.01 (.02)	−.08 (.03)*	.03 (.03)	.04 (.03)
Liberal protest treatment × SDO	−.31 (.02)*	−.20 (.09)*	−.11 (.09)	−.11 (.08)
Conservative protest treatment	−.17 (.06)*	.08 (.03)	−.03 (.03)	−.09 (.02)*
Conservative protest treatment × SDO	.53 (.07)*	.22 (.09)*	.15 (.09)	.24 (.08)*
Demographic covariates	Included	Included	Included	Included
Constant	.83	.80	.81	.85
N	1,362	963	974	974
Adjusted R²	.22	.18	.15	.17

p < .05.

Looking at Table 2 first, we see that the essentially null findings revealed in Figure 1 mask some substantial differences across protest issue dimensions. Priming respondents to focus on conservative economic grievances, rather than liberal ones, does not alter the fundamental relationship between authoritarianism and perceived protest legitimacy (results column 2), but priming them to think about conservative cultural grievances, rather than liberal ones—whether sexual/gender-based, or racially-based, does tend to flatten the relationship somewhat (results columns 3 and 4). That is, (a) liberal-conservative differences in support for anti-welfare spending protests are comparable to liberal-conservative differences in support for anti-economic inequality protests, but (b) liberal-conservative differences in support for women’s rights protests are significantly greater than are such differences in support for anti-abortion protestors, and (c) liberal-conservative differences in support for anti-police brutality protestors are significantly greater than are such differences in support for anti-immigration protestors. This pattern is consistent with literature we referenced earlier showing that authoritarianism is an important building block of cultural conservatism but not of economic (free-market) conservatism, and it is consistent with H_3a. Having said that, it is important to emphasize that priming conservatives to think about culturally conservative protests does not typically translate into higher support, relative to that of liberals; while they tend to perceive culturally conservative protests as more legitimate than they do culturally liberal protests, they do not tend to view culturally conservative protests as more legitimate than liberals do.

When it comes the relationship between SDO and perceived protest legitimacy, a different set of patterns emerge. The first thing to notice from Table 3 is that SDO performs better as a predictor of protest antipathy than had authoritarianism in the previous model (within the control group, the coefficients are about twice as large). The second thing that stands out is that the ideological content associated with a given protest prime tends have a greater impact on the relationship between SDO and perceived protest legitimacy when it pertains economic and racial dimensions of politics than when it pertains to the sexual politics dimension of abortion rights and women’s rights more generally. This is nearly the opposite pattern of that which we observed with respect to the role of authoritarianism, and it is consistent with literature we referenced earlier showing that SDO is an important undercurrent of economic and racial conservatism but not necessarily of “culture war” conservatism as it relates to moral progressivism-traditionalism, religion, and the politics of sex. These results are consistent with H_4a.

In sum, when we measure liberalism-conservatism as SDO, we see the strongest support for both the ideological asymmetry hypothesis and the ideological content hypothesis. That is, those high in SDO tend to be much less inclined to view protest behavior as legitimate, but that relationship is largely (though not entirely) conditioned by the ideological content of the protest in question. Furthermore, as we anticipated given the that SDO is known to motivate economic/racial conservatism but not necessarily sexual/religious conservatism, the relationship between SDO and protest antipathy is much more apparent when protests are motivated by the politics of economics or race than when they are motivated by the politics of sex. This is precisely the opposite pattern from what we observed when we operationalized liberalism-conservatism as authoritarianism—which we had also anticipated given that authoritarianism is known to motivate cultural conservatism but not necessarily economic conservatism. The fact that authoritarianism and SDO both seem to predict protest antipathy when the protest is motivated by race also stands to reason, since racial politics is simultaneously economic and cultural.

Conclusion

Political protest is important, not only because it is a constitutionally protected civil liberty but also because it can spark social and policy change. Likewise, it is important to understand the roots of mass support for political protest, because such support contributes to the success or failure of individual protest movements. Based mostly on studies of support for civil liberties and political tolerance more broadly, the conventional wisdom is that ideological conservatives are typically less willing to view political protests as legitimate than are liberals. However, most of those studies have used liberal protests as case studies. No studies have manipulated the ideological content of protests directly, varying whether they are liberal or conservative, to see if the ideological asymmetry remains even when the protests in question are in support of conservative causes. Likewise, no studies have sought to understand how differences in the issue content associated with a particular protest cause might interact with different conceptualizations of “liberalism-conservatism” to either exacerbate or mitigate the ostensible ideological asymmetry in protest support that the conventional wisdom purports.

In this investigation, we begin to fill these gaps. We examine how ideology interacts with the ideological and issue content of specific protest movements to account for mass attitudes toward protests. Specifically, we set up competing “ideological asymmetry” and “protest content” hypotheses. We found that the ideological and issue content of particular protests does indeed condition ideological asymmetry with respect to protest support, but such content does not, on the whole, tend to eliminate ideological asymmetry entirely. Furthermore, we find that the ideological asymmetry that does often endure is less a function of disproportionate conservative antipathy toward protests than of disproportionate liberal enthusiasm. As such, our evidence stands to refine the ideological asymmetry hypothesis while also we also providing validation of its central premise in ways that previous data collections could not.

Furthermore, we evaluated the ways that these dynamics are affected by different conceptualizations of “liberalism-conservatism,” while also accounting for confounds pertaining to education, traditionalistic Christian religiosity and demographic privilege. We observe that the negative relationship between authoritarianism and protest support is apparent in cultural (especially sexual) issue contexts, and significantly affected by the ideological content of protests in those contexts, but is not apparent in economic issue contexts. By contrast, we observe that the negative relationship between SDO and protest support is strongest in economic issue contexts, and dramatically affected by the ideological content associated with those contexts, but is not apparent in sexual issue contests.

Of course, the findings we have uncovered here need to be replicated in other contexts, with other protests as case studies. We encourage other scholars to continue this investigation.

Supplemental Material

sj-pdf-1-apr-10.1177_1532673X20975329 – Supplemental material for Clarifying the Ideological Asymmetry in Public Attitudes Toward Political Protest

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-apr-10.1177_1532673X20975329 for Clarifying the Ideological Asymmetry in Public Attitudes Toward Political Protest by David Barker, Kimberly Nalder and Jessica Newham in American Politics Research

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

David Barker

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

Author Biographies

David Barker is a professor of Government and director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University

Kimberly Nalder is a professor of Government and director of the Project for an Informed Electorate at California State University, Sacramento.

Jessica Newham is a research analyst at the Institute for Social Research at California State University, Sacramento.

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