Parental Care and Tenderness Questionnaire: relations with political ideology and intergroup attitudes.

The main objective of this study is to investigate the link between political ideology and the responses toward children as assessed by the Parental Care and Tenderness (PCAT) questionnaire which investigates parenting motivation. The norms promoted by conservatism can benefit individuals who are parents or are motivated to become parents. We hypothesized a correlation between conservatism and the PCAT and that adults' parenting motivation may be related to the their intergroup attitudes. Two different studies were conducted. In Study 1 (N = 305) the PCAT and the Social and Economic Conservatism Scale (SECS) were administered and results showed a significant positive correlation between parenting motivation and social conservatism. In Study 2 (N = 145) White adult participants were administered the PCAT and were also asked to predict the attitudes and behaviors of White children in an intergroup context (e.g., the desire to play with either a White or Black peer). Findings showed that adults hold clear naive theories about the presence of an ingroup bias in children. Most relevant for the aim of the present work, higher scores on the PCAT were associated to stronger expected pro-ingroup biases among children. Indeed, the higher the parenting motivation the more White children were expected to display loyalty towards other ingroup members. The present work further points to the relevance of adults' parenting motivation for understanding social attitudes in different domains.