Villains in the Middle East: A Moral Typecasting Theory of Antisemitic Attitudes and Perceptions of Israelis
Abstract
We examined how right- and left-wing authoritarianism (RWA and LWA) predict intergroup prejudice in the U.S. during the Israel–Gaza conflict. Drawing on Dyadic Morality Theory (DMT) and the theorized asymmetry between RWA's norm-enforcement motivation and LWA's value-contingent egalitarianism, we predicted that each form of authoritarianism would produce ideologically structured moral typecasting of Israelis and Palestinians. We analyzed data from two U.S. surveys (Ns = 500 and 400) using path models that positioned moral typecasting as a mediating mechanism between authoritarianism and prejudice outcomes, with political orientation included as a covariate throughout. We found evidence that villain perceptions (maliciously causing harm) and victim perceptions (innocently suffering harm) of Israelis and Palestinians mediate the link between left- and right-wing authoritarianism (LWA & RWA) and Judeophobia (ethnic prejudice toward Jewish people), Antizionism (political intolerance of Israel and its supporters), and Islamophobia (ethnic prejudice toward Muslims). The most consistent mediational effects emerged between RWA and Islamophobia and LWA and Antizionism. The results suggest that moral typecasting of conflict parties is a meaningful mechanism through which authoritarian dispositions translate into prejudice, extending DMT to the domain of intergroup conflict and highlighting how moral narratives about ongoing geopolitical events can amplify hostility toward Jews and Muslims across the political spectrum.
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