Hierarchy-Legitimizing Ideologies Reduce Behavioral Obligations and Blame for Implicit Attitudes and Resulting Discrimination.

Three preregistered studies investigated people's judgments of whether someone with implicit racial bias is obligated to change their bias and to avoid discrimination based on that bias. Two studies showed that hierarchy-legitimizing ideologies-Belief in a Just World, Social Dominance Orientation, and political conservatism-predict lower obligation judgments. One study showed that hierarchy-legitimizing ideologies predicted greater protection of a potential discriminator; in another, they also predicted lower protection of a person who may be discriminated against. Lastly, one study showed that greater obligation judgments predicted greater blame of a person who discriminated based on implicit bias. Taken together, these four studies address how people's ideologies relate to their obligation judgments for implicit racial bias and how those obligation judgments are related to blame for discrimination resulting from implicit racial bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]