The two trends of widening political divide and increasing attention given to social justice-related issues in the U.S. have implications for social progress. We assert that these two forces converge to affect perceptions of minorities in general and stereotype endorsement in particular. In this working paper, we seek to understand how political ideology affects the way Americans evaluate minority representations that are either stereotype congruent or incongruent. Specifically, we predict that perceptions of minority representations will depend on political ideology, such that conservative-minded individuals will prefer stereotype congruent portrayals, while liberal-minded individuals will prefer stereotype incongruent portrayals. Further, we test competing affective interventions that we propose may be effective at mitigating conservatives’ negative perceptions of incongruent minority representations. Across three pre-registered experiments (N = 1,557) that measure attitudes, financial evaluations, and downstream behavioral choices, we find evidence in support of our hypotheses that, firstly, political ideology moderates minority perceptions and, secondly, that a positive mood manipulation effectively boosts conservatives’ perceptions of incongruent representations. Our initial findings provide an emerging story on the interaction between political ideology and minority representation in American society.
