Political Conflict
Daniel Sullivan, Mark Landau & Zachary Rothschild
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, March 2010, Pages 434-449
Abstract:
Perceiving oneself as having powerful enemies, although superficially disagreeable, may serve an important psychological function. On the basis of E. Becker's (1969) existential theorizing, the authors argue that people attribute exaggerated influence to enemies as a means of compensating for perceptions of reduced control over their environment. In Study 1, individuals dispositionally low in perceived control responded to a reminder of external hazards by attributing more influence to a personal enemy. In Study 2, a situational threat to control over external hazard strengthened participants' belief in the conspiratorial power of a political enemy. Examining moderators and outcomes of this process, Study 3 showed that participants were especially likely to attribute influence over life events to an enemy when the broader social system appeared disordered, and Study 4 showed that perceiving an ambiguously powerful enemy under conditions of control threat decreased perceptions of external risk and bolstered feelings of personal control.
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When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions
Brendan Nyhan & Jason Reifler
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
An extensive literature addresses citizen ignorance, but very little research focuses on misperceptions. Can these false or unsubstantiated beliefs about politics be corrected? Previous studies have not tested the efficacy of corrections in a realistic format. We conducted four experiments in which subjects read mock news articles that included either a misleading claim from a politician, or a misleading claim and a correction. Results indicate that corrections frequently fail to reduce misperceptions among the targeted ideological group. We also document several instances of a "backfire effect" in which corrections actually increase misperceptions among the group in question.
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Conflict of interest and the intrusion of bias
Don Moore, Lloyd Tanlu & Max Bazerman
Judgment and Decision Making, February 2010, Pages 37-53
Abstract:
This paper explores the psychology of conflict of interest by investigating how conflicting interests affect both public statements and private judgments. The results suggest that judgments are easily influenced by affiliation with interested partisans, and that this influence extends to judgments made with clear incentives for objectivity. The consistency we observe between public and private judgments indicates that participants believed their biased assessments. Our results suggest that the psychology of conflict of interest is at odds with the way economists and policy makers routinely think about the problem. We conclude by exploring implications of this finding for professional conduct and public policy.
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Jeffrey Mondak, Matthew Hibbing, Damarys Canache, Mitchell Seligson & Mary Anderson
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
People's enduring psychological tendencies are reflected in their traits. Contemporary research on personality establishes that traits are rooted largely in biology, and that the central aspects of personality can be captured in frameworks, or taxonomies, focused on five trait dimensions: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability. In this article, we integrate a five-factor view of trait structure within a holistic model of the antecedents of political behavior, one that accounts not only for personality, but also for other factors, including biological and environmental influences. This approach permits attention to the complex processes that likely underlie trait effects, and especially to possible trait-situation interactions. Primary tests of our hypotheses draw on data from a 2006 U.S. survey, with supplemental tests introducing data from Uruguay and Venezuela. Empirical analyses not only provide evidence of the value of research on personality and politics, but also signal some of the hurdles that must be overcome for inquiry in this area to be most fruitful.
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Political Ideology and Psychological Symptoms Following Terror
Avital Laufer & Zahava Solomon
Youth & Society, March 2010, Pages 414-433
Abstract:
The article examines the associations between political ideology and level of psychological symptoms in youth exposed to terror attacks. The study included 2,999 7th to 10th graders from various parts of Israel. Political ideology was examined in two ways: (a) as a content dimension: "political stand" - holding right, centrist, or left wing views and (b) as a content-free dimension: "ideological commitment" - which measured the strength of the political ideology regardless of its content. Findings indicated that youth holding right wing beliefs reported less distress. However, strong ideological commitment was associated with higher levels of symptoms, regardless of the political stand. The discussion concerns the differentiated role of content and content-free dimensions of a political ideology and its implication in psychological distress in the wake of political terror.
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Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent
Satoshi Kanazawa
Social Psychology Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
The origin of values and preferences is an unresolved theoretical question in behavioral and social sciences. The Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis, derived from the Savanna Principle and a theory of the evolution of general intelligence, suggests that more intelligent individuals may be more likely to acquire and espouse evolutionarily novel values and preferences (such as liberalism and atheism and, for men, sexual exclusivity) than less intelligent individuals, but that general intelligence may have no effect on the acquisition and espousal of evolutionarily familiar values (for children, marriage, family, and friends). The analyses of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Study 1) and the General Social Surveys (Study 2) show that adolescent and adult intelligence significantly increases adult liberalism, atheism, and men's (but not women's) value on sexual exclusivity.
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Opening the Partisan Mind? Self-Affirmation and Information Processing about the Surge in Iraq
Brendan Nyhan & Jason Reifler
University of Michigan Working Paper, August 2009
Abstract:
Numerous studies have found that prior beliefs have a strong influence on how individuals process information about politics. To counteract this tendency, we draw on recent psychology research showing that affirming individual's self-worth can make them more open to information that might otherwise be perceived as threatening (Cohen et al. 2000, Correll et al. 2004, Cohen et al. 2007). We test this hypothesis in the context of the debate over the effect of factual information on public support for the war in Iraq - specifically, the success of the troop surge, which conservative elites have suggested is being withheld from the American people by the press. In a 2x2 between-respondents survey experiment that was part of the 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we independently manipulate exposure to a treatment designed to reinforce respondents' self-concepts and a graph showing the number of insurgent attacks in Iraq before and after the troop surge. We find that the graph decreases support for withdrawal among Republicans under normal conditions, but increases support for withdrawal among Republicans under affirmation - a striking and counter-attitudinal reversal.
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Political Orientation and Ideological Inconsistencies: (Dis)comfort with Value Tradeoffs
Clayton Critcher, Michaela Huber, Arnold Ho & Spassena Koleva
Social Justice Research, September 2009, Pages 181-205
Abstract:
People are often inconsistent in the way they apply their values to their political beliefs (e.g., citing the value of life in opposing capital punishment while simultaneously supporting abortion rights). How do people confront such inconsistencies? Liberals were more likely to say that issues that could draw on several competing values were complex issues that required value tradeoffs, whereas conservatives were more likely to deny the comparability of the issues. We argue that this difference is rooted in the distinct ways that liberals and conservatives represent political issues. Additional evidence suggested that conservatives' higher need for closure leads them to represent issues in terms of salient, accessible values. Although this may lead conservatives' attitudes to be more situationally malleable under some circumstances, such shifts do serve to protect an absolutist approach to one's moral values and help conservatives to deny the comparability of potentially inconsistent positions.
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From moral to legal judgment: The influence of normative context in lawyers and other academics
Stephan Schleim, Tade Spranger, Susanne Erk & Henrik Walter
Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience, forthcoming
Abstract:
Various kinds of normative judgments are an integral part of everyday life. We extended the scrutiny of social cognitive neuroscience into the domain of legal decisions, investigating two groups, lawyers and other academics, during moral and legal decision-making. While we found activation of brain areas comprising the so-called ‘moral brain' in both conditions, there was stronger activation in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and middle temporal gyrus particularly when subjects made legal decisions, suggesting that these were made in respect to more explicit rules and demanded more complex semantic processing. Comparing both groups, our data show that behaviorally lawyers conceived themselves as emotionally less involved during normative decision-making in general. A group × condition interaction in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex suggests a modulation of normative decision-making by attention based on subjects' normative expertise.
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A Dirty Word or a Dirty World? Attribute Framing, Political Affiliation, and Query Theory
David Hardisty, Eric Johnson & Elke Weber
Psychological Science, January 2010, Pages 86-92
Abstract:
We explored the effect of attribute framing on choice, labeling charges for environmental costs as either an earmarked tax or an offset. Eight hundred ninety-eight Americans chose between otherwise identical products or services, where one option included a surcharge for emitted carbon dioxide. The cost framing changed preferences for self-identified Republicans and Independents, but did not affect Democrats' preferences. We explain this interaction by means of query theory and show that attribute framing can change the order in which internal queries supporting one or another option are posed. The effect of attribute labeling on query order is shown to depend on the representations of either taxes or offsets held by people with different political affiliations.
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Social Networks and the Affective Impact of Political Disagreement
Bryan Parsons
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although few studies have explored the link between emotion and political talk, here I argue that political disagreement depolarizes emotional reactions via information exchanged in social networks. Analyzing data from the ANES 2008-2009 Panel Study, several conclusions are drawn. First, disagreement increases negative emotions and decreases positive emotions toward the in-party candidate, and also increases positive emotions and decreases negative emotions toward the out-party candidate. In other words, disagreement depolarizes emotions toward political candidates. Second, the affective impact of disagreement does not vary with political knowledge. Finally, positive emotions toward the out-party candidate and negative emotions toward the in-party candidate reduce political interest, candidate issue placement accuracy, and political participation. Overall, this study develops important theoretical connections between affect and political talk that have implications for the value of political disagreement.
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Christopher Federico, Corrie Hunt & Damla Ergun
Social Justice Research, September 2009, Pages 259-279
Abstract:
The psychological bases of ideology have received renewed attention amid growing political polarization. Nevertheless, little research has examined how one's understanding of political ideas might moderate the relationship between "pre-political" psychological variables and ideology. In this paper, we fill this gap by exploring how expertise influences citizens' ability to select ideological orientations that match their psychologically rooted worldviews. We find that expertise strengthens the relationship between two basic social worldviews - competitive-jungle beliefs and dangerous-world beliefs and left-right self-placement. Moreover, expertise strengthens these relationships by boosting the impact of the worldviews on two intervening ideological attitude systems - social dominance orientation and right-wing authoritarianism. These results go beyond previous work on expertise and ideology, suggesting that expertise strengthens not only relationships between explicitly political attitudes but also the relationship between political attitudes and their psychological antecedents.