US liberals ‘license’ antisemitism when framed as Israel criticism – psych study

US liberals judged individuals who expressed unqualified prejudice more harshly than conservatives did, but liked prejudiced individuals more when they justified antisemitism with statements about Israel, according to a recent peer-reviewed psychology study.

In two out of three experiments, anti-Jewish prejudice justified by Israel’s actions increased liking from liberals, but the “licensing effect” did not apply to conservatives. A third experiment did not find conclusive differences between liberals and conservatives.

The American Psychologist journal published the study in its June edition, an issue that focused on antisemitism. The authors were Jordan W. Moon of the UK’s University of Southampton and Brunel University of London, and Michael Barlev and Steven L. Neuberg, both of Arizona State University.

The article cited previous research that found that people “rarely express prejudices without accompanying justifications,” some of which make prejudice more socially acceptable.

The researchers defined prejudice as a negative view of a social group, or its members, regardless of the prejudice’s justifications. Liberalism and conservatism were self-reported on a scale, not defined by affiliation with political parties.

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The researchers recruited 979 participants, using the online platform, Prolific, in a sample meant to resemble the broader US population. The surveys took place in late 2024, and Jewish participation was negligible, the study said.

Participants read about hypothetical individuals expressing prejudice toward minority groups — either Jews, Muslims or Black people — with or without justification for their prejudice.

For unqualified prejudice, researchers told participants that “[Name] doesn’t like Jews,” and for justified prejudice, they said, “[Name] doesn’t like Jews, because [Name] strongly disapproves of Israel and its war in Gaza.”

Prejudice against Black people was justified by a belief that they “commit crimes,” and the anti-Muslim character was prejudiced against Muslims because their “culture and values conflict with Western culture and values.” The subjects were then asked how much they liked the hypothetical individuals.

If there were no justifications for prejudice, liberals viewed the prejudiced individual more harshly than conservatives in each set of questions, and viewed antisemitism as negatively as prejudice against Black people and Muslims.

When anti-Jewish prejudice was justified by “Israel and its war in Gaza,” liberals viewed the prejudiced individual more favorably by 1.1 points on a scale of 1-7. The Israel justification did not produce a statistical effect on conservatives.

For the prejudice against Muslim and Black people, the researchers did not find significant evidence that the justifications had a different effect on liberals and conservatives.

For another subject group, experimenters linked Jewish Americans to Israel “violating the human rights of Palestinians,” while linking Black, Muslim, Chinese, and Russian Americans to other human rights violations abroad. The researchers defined this as a “left-coded” justification for prejudice.

Again, without justifications, liberals judged the hypothetical, prejudiced individual more harshly than conservatives.

When the prejudice was justified by human rights violations against Palestinians, however, liberals, but not conservatives, viewed the prejudiced individual more favorably, by a score of 0.78 on a scale of 1-7.

The human rights justifications also “licensed” some prejudice against Black, Muslim, Chinese, and Russian Americans, although there was no statistical difference between liberals and conservatives.

“When an individual expressing antisemitism justified their prejudice by disapproval of Israel and the war in Gaza or violations of the human rights of Palestinians, liberal, but not conservative, participants liked him or her more,” the researchers wrote, summing up their findings.

A third line of questioning asking participants about a broader range of justifications for antisemitism — such as anti-Jewish conspiracies, race, and religion — did not find statistical differences between conservatives and liberals.

The researchers carried out further analysis on “ingroup favoritism” to measure how ideologically similar the subjects believed the hypothetical bigot was to themselves. The subjects rated their own political liberalism or conservatism, and how liberal or conservative they believed the prejudiced individual was.

Liberal participants viewed prejudiced individuals as more liberal, and similar to themselves, when the prejudice was coupled with a left-coded justification, such as the Gaza war. There was a similar effect among liberals for left-coded prejudice against other groups.

Liberals also saw conspiratorial justifications for antisemitism as closer to their own ideology.

“This was unexpected as narratives about Jewish power and influence have traditionally come from the political right,” the authors wrote.

Liberals also viewed racially coded antisemitism as worse than prejudice without any justification, the researchers said.

The authors suggested that individuals seen as broadly prejudiced against many groups could threaten political coalitions of minority groups, and that left-coded justifications made a prejudice seem more specific, and less threatening, than general intolerance.

“Although we do not suggest that liberals are generally more lenient toward antisemitism — our findings show that this is not the case — it is clear that certain framings do license some degree of antisemitism,” the researchers said. “Curbing antisemitism in liberal circles might require targeted interventions, aimed at recognizing antisemitism when it occurs and reminding liberals that it is wrong regardless of the guises it takes.”