Angst and Expressed Biases Against Single People: Responses to Threats to the Institution of Marriage

Abstract

Three studies were conducted to test whether people, including singles themselves, experience personal angst or worry about their own future when the value of marriage is threatened and, as a result, they attempt to protect the institution of marriage by expressing prejudice against single people. Study 1 (a community sample) found that even when controlling for SES, age, and religious and political ideology, participants' expectations for a negative future mediated the positive relationship between angst concerning the state of marriage in the United States and expressed biases against single people. There was a positive relationship between angst and biases against single people, and expected negative future mediated this relationship. Study 2 is an experimental design (with an all single sample) that tested whether threatening or affirming the value of marriage would affect single people's feelings of angst and expressed biases against their own group. Participants expressed more biases against singles when the value of marriage was affirmed and angst mediated the effects of the experimental condition on biases against singles. The mediated effect was a suppressed effect such that when controlling for angst, the direct affirm condition effect on biases against singles became stronger. Participants in the threat condition, in contrast, reported increased angst, and angst positively predicted biases against single people. Study 3 replicates the findings of Study 2, but also provides support for a double mediation model in which angst mediates the relationship between the condition effect on expected negative future, as with Study 2. Further, expected negative future mediated the relationship between angst and biases against single people, as with Study 1. Together, these findings suggest that single people who are told that the institution of marriage is failing are more apprehensive about expressing prejudice toward their own potential future group membership. Further, these results support the suppression-justification model such that single people who are given justifications to express biases against their own group will do so if they do not experience angst in response to the threat. In contrast, when singles experience angst in response to threats to the institution of marriage, they respond by derogating their own group.