The authors propose that the content of certain sociopolitical ideologies can be shaped by individuals in ways that satisfy their social motivations. This notion was tested in the context of color-blind ideology. Color blindness, when construed as a principle of distributive justice, is an egalitarian stance concerned with reducing discrepancies between groups' outcomes; as a principle of procedural justice, however, color blindness can function as a legitimizing ideology that entrenches existing inequalities. In Study 1, White people high in antiegalitarian sentiment were found to shift their construal of color blindness from a distributive to a procedural principle when exposed to intergroup threat. In Studies 2, 3A, and 3B, the authors used manipulations and a measure of threat to show that antiegalitarian White people endorse color blindness to legitimize the racial status quo. In Study 3B, participants' endorsement of color-blind ideology was mediated by increases in their preference for equal treatment (i.e., procedural justice) as a response to threat. In the Discussion section, the authors examine implications of the present perspective for understanding the manner in which individuals compete over the meaning of crucial ideologies.

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This article explores the possibility that dominant-group members will attempt to appease subordinate groups to protect the hierarchy. In four studies, we find that (a) prohierarchy Whites perceive more intergroup threat when they believe ethnic minorities hold Whites in low regard, (b) prohierarchy Whites respond to ethnic minorities' low regard for Whites by increasing their support for redistributive policies (e.g., affirmative action), (c) the increase in support only occurs when prohierarchy Whites perceive the hierarchy to be unstable, and (d) prohierarchy Whites perceive the hierarchy to be more stable if they believe Whites support redistributive policies. These results suggest that prohierarchy dominant-group members' support for redistributive policies can stem from a concern about maintaining the hierarchical status quo, and provides evidence that support for redistributive policies can be a hierarchy-enhancing strategy.

An algorithm is developed for the calculation of the density of states for an arbitrary ferromagnetic insulating alloy. The procedure is based upon enumerating the number of negative eigenvalues associated with a large matrix. While the theory is developed to treat any number of magnetic components in an arbitrary lattice, numerical results are presented for a binary alloy of the simple cubic type. The spectra are related to previously calculated isolated local magnetic excitations, and the effect of such spectra on the magnetization and specific heat is indicated.

The presence of an impurity spin in a Heisenberg ferromagnet can give rise to localized modes whose energies may lie above or within the spin-wave band, depending upon the magnitude of the impurity spin and its coupling to the host. We have calculated the eigenvalues of the p-\ike modes for a one-dimensional chain and a simple cubic lattice when two such impurities are present. In the case where the single-impurity mode lies outside the spin-wave band, we find two modes symmetrically located with respect to this original mode. This mode splitting defines an effective impurity-impurity interaction. We find that this interaction can be quite large when the modes lie close to the spin-wave band. When the single-impurity mode lies within the band, it is characterized by a redistribution of the density of states. We have also investigated this redistribution for the case of two impurities. It is found that these results are considerably different from those obtained by a spin-wave scattering approach. This difference illustrates the importance of the contribution of bound states to indirect coupling.