Left threatened by Right: political intergroup bias in the contemporary Italian context.
Using different evaluation targets (i.e., politicians’ pictures, ideological words, items referring to features attributed to political ingroup/outgroup) we characterized the intergroup bias among political groups in the Italian context (Study 1-2-3) and tested a model that may account for the bias itself (Study 3). For all evaluation targets, left-wing participants -compared to right wing participants - showed a greater intergroup bias, expressing more negative emotions towards the outgroup. The process was influenced by a greater perceived threat of the outgroup.