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

This article examines how political conservatism and opposition to political correctness (anti-PC attitudes) influence support for Confederate statues and other controversial public statues in the United States. Across six studies involving non-Black American participants, conservatives consistently reported stronger anti-PC attitudes than liberals, and these attitudes predicted opposition to removing Confederate statues and statues of ideologically similar right-wing figures, even after controlling for racial bias and Southern identity. However, conservatives' anti-PC attitudes were not applied uniformly; they did not predict opposition to removing controversial left-wing statues, which instead elicited moral outrage and greater support for removal among conservatives. The findings suggest that conservatives exhibit intuitive political intolerance, applying anti-PC attitudes selectively based on ideological alignment, thereby creating a double standard in defending controversial monuments.