Beyond “pride or prejudice”: Conservatism, opposition to political correctness, and support for Confederate and other controversial statues

Abstract

Although controversial, numerous memorials venerating the Confederacy of the American Civil War remain standing across America, and removal efforts are met with backlash. Although research has investigated how racial bias and Southerner identification predict Confederate statue/symbol support, we investigated how conservatism and opposition to political correctness (anti-PC attitudes) explain attitudes toward controversial public statues. Across Studies 1a–5 ( N = 885), results revealed that conservatives consistently reported greater anti-PC attitudes than liberals, and anti-PC attitudes predicted support for Confederate statues even after accounting for anti-Black bias. However, conservatives’ anti-PC attitudes were not applied in a principled way. In Studies 2 to 5, conservatives and participants high in anti-PC attitudes opposed the removal of Confederate statues and statues of controversial right-wing figures. However, this pattern was reversed when participants considered statues of controversial left-wing figures. Furthermore, Study 5 investigated how participants’ immediate negative reactions (e.g., moral outrage) predicted their attitudes toward removing controversial statues.