Slippery slope beliefs capture the idea that a non-problematic action will lead to unpreventable and harmful outcomes. While this idea has been examined in legal and philosophical literatures, there has been no psychological research into the individual propensity to hold slippery slope beliefs. Across five studies and six samples (combined N = 5,974), we developed and tested an individual difference measure of slippery slope beliefs, finding that it predicted intolerance of outgroup freedoms above and beyond key demographic and psychological predictors (Studies 1–2 and 5). We also found that slippery slope beliefs predict intolerance of debated behaviors in two countries (Study 3), and that it predicted agreement with real-world slippery slope examples across the political spectrum (Studies 4–5).

滑坡信念抓住了这样一种观点，即没有问题的行动将导致不可预防和有害的结果。虽然这个想法已经在法律和哲学文献中得到检验，但还没有对个人持有滑坡信念的倾向进行心理学研究。在五项研究和六个样本（合并N  = 5,974）中，我们开发并测试了滑坡信念的个体差异测量，发现它预测了超出关键人口统计和心理预测因素的外群体自由的不容忍（研究 1-2 和 5） . 我们还发现，滑坡信念预测了两个国家对有争议的行为的不容忍（研究 3），并且它预测了与政治光谱中真实世界滑坡示例的一致性（研究 4-5）。