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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Soc. Psychol.
Sec. Attitudes, Social Justice and Political Psychology
Volume 2 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/frsps.2024.1447842

Ideological symmetry in outgroup bias: a neuroimaging study in the context of vaccine hesitancy

Provisionally accepted
  • 1 Aalto University, Otakaari, Finland
  • 2 Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Tel Aviv District, Israel

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    One of the most contentious debates in political psychology relates to the existence of ideological (a)symmetry in outgroup bias. Recent neuroimaging and psychological studies circumvented previous critics on the inclusion of ideologically biased outgroups by targeting the ideological outgroups themselves (rightists for leftists, and leftists for rightists); their findings confirmed the asymmetry claim – this was particularly robust and informative at the neural level. Nevertheless, the recent pandemic provided a new opportunity for the investigation of ideological (a)symmetry in outgroup bias by introducing an ideologically-neutral, yet highly discriminated and stigmatized group – vaccine hesitant individuals. In this pre-registered study, 50 Finnish adults were scanned in magnetoencephalography to delineate function-specific neural mechanisms of bias against vaccine hesitancy. The results show a clear neural bias against vaccine hesitancy regardless of political inclination. The findings reported here contribute to the present debate by selecting a unique ideologically neutral target and revealing that ideological (a)symmetries in outgroup bias are highly context dependent.

    Keywords: political neuroscience, Ideological symmetry, Outgroup bias, Neural oscillations, Vaccine hesitancy

    Received: 12 Jun 2024; Accepted: 31 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Kluge and Levy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Jonathan Levy, Aalto University, Otakaari, Finland

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.