Celine Tsoi

Presentation Title

Do I Stand with You Because We’re Alike—or Because It’s Right? Identity vs. Morality in Interminority Solidarity

Abstract

Often, social change in the United States has been the result of different marginalized groups working together in interminority coalitions. Past research has explained interminority solidarity as being motivated by recognizing shared identities and experiences of discrimination (Gaertner & Dovidio, 2000; Craig & Richeson, 2012). This research tested whether moral violations can foster interminority solidarity even when shared experiences are not obvious or apparent. In a between-subjects survey experiment (N = 904), Asian Americans read vignettes about recent deportations of Latino Americans that were framed in four different ways: as either 1) shared experiences, 2) uniquely Latino experiences but morally charged, 3) uniquely Latino experiences, or that 4) participants read nothing at all. We found limited evidence for differential effects between the three intervention conditions. Instead, mere exposure to outgroup discrimination was enough to increase perceived similarity and moral conviction. These effects, however, had limited downstream consequences on solidarity-related outcomes. There were unsurprising partisan differences in all outcome variables, and that emphasizing shared experience seemed to be more effective in increasing perceived similarity for Democrats, but emphasizing moral violations was more effective in increasing moral conviction for Republicans. Thus, this study served as a first step in moving beyond identity in understanding interminority solidarity, but further work is needed to better understand solidarity among polylithic racial minority groups.