Autoritarisme de droite et changement d’attitude dans le conditionnement évaluatif

Right wing authoritarianism (RWA) is a co-variation of social conservatism, traditionalism, and authoritarianism. One of the characteristics of RWA is a less malleability of attitudes over time. However, the link between RWA and rigidity of attitudes has mainly been observed in intergroup relation contexts. Such studies focus on the relationship between RWA and attitude change towards real groups. While the value of this work is undeniable, it is not possible to examine attitude formation and attitude change in a controlled manner. Indeed, studying real social groups implies context effects or social preconceptions on the attitude formation and on attitude change. In this thesis, we are interested in the understanding of RWA in attitude change within a standardized and controlled framework, the evaluative conditioningcounter-conditioning paradigm. Across 11 experiments, we tested whether RWA predicts a lower change of attitude towards new artificial stimuli. We observed that RWA was negatively associated with sensitivity to counterconditioning. This effect, present in the great majority of our experiments, has been modulated by the characteristics of conditioning-counter-conditioning. More specifically, the amount of counter-attitudinal information available, the presence of instructions, and the decrease in attentional resources were shown to modulate the link between RWA and attitude change. Overall, these results support the hypothesis that a smaller change in attitude is related to RWA even with novel artificial stimuli.