Political correctness: psychology, politics and prejudice

Political correctness (PC) has been a major influence on social, cultural, and political discourse in the 21st century. Opposition to PC helped persuade the UK that it would be better off leaving the EU in 2016, and helped propel Donald Trump to his first term as US President. Politicians are often forced to resign when past social media posts include racist or sexist language. Classic literature is condemned for political incorrectness. Disney release politically correct remakes of classic films like Aladdin and Snow White. More mundanely, PC is guaranteed to stimulate a lively discussion at any social gathering. Hitherto, an emotive and fractious debate has inhibited an objective and dispassionate assessment of PC. Within the academic community, there has been much commentary but surprisingly little empirical research on PC given its social and political significance. The aim of this thesis is to address this gap. The narrow objective of PC is to replace language that might be offensive to marginalised groups in society with non-stigmatising alternatives, although the scope of PC has been extended to include attitudes and behaviours that are regarded as discriminatory. The ultimate goal is to reduce prejudice and promote equality. The purpose of PC is positive and, in Western democracies that have become increasingly liberal over recent decades, is widely supported. However, opponents have sought to discredit and disparage PC, arguing that it inhibits legitimate freedom of expression. The first half of this thesis (Chapters 1-4) provides a comprehensive description of PC as a demographic, political, and psychological construct, supplementing existing published research with six new empirical studies. Chapter 1 reviews existing academic literature on PC, reinforcing the need for more empirical research and identifying deficiencies in current psychometric measures of PC. Chapter 2 provides a meta-analysis of 21 public opinion surveys on the demographic and political correlates of PC in the UK and the US. Chapter 3 details the development and validation across four studies of the Political Correctness Scale (PCS). Chapter 4 pulls together the results of Chapters 1-3 together with the results of a further study to provide an in-depth analysis of PC as an individual difference underpinned by enduring aspects of personality. The second half of the thesis (Chapters 5-8) addresses the question of PC's effectiveness as a strategy to reduce prejudice, and also explores whether PC triggers a backlash. Chapter 5 gives the results of a longitudinal study of UK students to measure any change in prejudice and support for PC during their first semester at university, an environment where PC norms are supposedly particularly salient. Chapter 6 covers a secondary analysis of American National Election Studies (ANES) data for 2016-2024 analysing prejudice and attitudes to PC among US adults during the Presidencies of Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Chapter 7 provides an experimental study on the impact of PC language on prejudicial attitudes and support for PC relative to a control group. Chapter 8 looks at prejudice and attitudes to PC among a large sample of adolescents in four UK secondary schools. None of this research provided evidence that the salience of PC reduces prejudice. Nor did it provide evidence for any backlash. These null results still leave open the question of whether PC is a useful anti-prejudice strategy. Neither does this thesis address the question of whether PC language avoids offense to marginalised groups. However, Chapter 9 reviews some evidence that PC, as currently defined, may have features that inherently limit its effectiveness, and that the effect of PC language on minority groups may be ambivalent. Finally, I suggest that a slightly different conceptualisation of PC might enhance its efficacy.