Of unbiased beans and slanted stocks: Neutral stimuli reveal the fundamental relation between political ideology and exploratory behaviour

Fiagbenu et al. (2019, British Journal of Psychology) questioned the nature and extent of ideological differences in learning and behaviour documented by Shook and Fazio (2009, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 995). We correct a mischaracterization in their depiction of Shook & Fazio’s research, and in doing so, we outline why the original findings represent domain-general ideological differences in attitude-formation processes, rather than simple differences in responses to physical threat. We also report new data that suggest a potential mechanism for the authors’ findings and further highlight the importance of novel, ideologically neutral stimuli when examining fundamental psychological differences between liberals and conservatives.     

Political ideology, exploration of novel stimuli, and attitude formation

In this study, the relations among political ideology, exploratory behavior, and the formation of attitudes toward novel stimuli were explored. Participants played a computer game that required learning whether these stimuli produced positive or negative outcomes. Learning was dependent on participants’ decisions to sample novel stimuli and discover the associated valence. Political ideology correlated with exploration during the game, with conservatives sampling fewer targets than liberals. Moreover, more conservative individuals exhibited a stronger learning asymmetry, such that they learned negative stimuli better than positive. Mediational analyses revealed that the differences in learning were due to the extent of exploratory behavior during the game. Relative to liberals, politically conservative individuals pursued a more avoidant strategy to the game, which led to their development of a more pronounced valence asymmetry in learning and attitude formation.     

On the political right,the customer is always right: Political ideology,entitlement, and complaining

Across three preregistered studies and five supplementary datasets, we predicted and found that conservatives were more inclined to complain than liberals due to conservative consumers feeling a greater sense of entitlement. This research contributes to the literature by introducing consumer entitlement as a novel explanation for ideological differences in consumer behavior, and by building on previous work suggesting that conservative consumers complain less than liberals (Journal of Consumer Research, 2017, 44 , 477). Evidence is provided across several service contexts and types of complaining behaviors. Study 1 and 4 supplementary datasets supported the basic process. Next, theory-relevant boundary conditions provided converging process evidence. In Study 2, complaining intentions decreased among conservatives when they felt less (vs. more) entitled than the target of social comparison. In Study 3, complaining intentions decreased among conservatives when a service recovery was framed as providing special treatment. Implications and future research directions are discussed.     

How We Conceptualize Our Attitudes Matters: The Effects of Valence Framing on the Resistance of Political Attitudes

Three studies tested the valence-framing effect: that merely conceptualizing one's preferences as opposing something will make that preference more resistant to persuasion than will thinking about the same preference in terms of supporting something . In Study 1, participants who were led to conceptualize their political preferences as being against a candidate were more resistant to a counterattitudinal message than were participants who were led to conceptualize the same preference as being in favor of the other candidate. Study 2 showed that this effect was not due to a priming process, while Study 3 provided evidence for the effect's generalizability.     

Dating during the time of COVID-19: Risk perceptions and political ideology

This study examined predictors of single people's beliefs about COVID prevention behaviors, intentions to engage in COVID prevention behaviors while dating, and actual dating behavior during the pandemic. Results revealed that single participants engaged in “riskier” dating behaviors (i.e., in-person unmasked) more frequently than “safer” dating behaviors (i.e., remote, or in-person masked/distanced). Individuals who perceived greater (vs. lesser) risk associated with COVID more strongly endorsed beliefs about social distancing (self and other) and were more likely to personally (or request others) engage in COVID prevention behaviors while dating. However, perceived risk did not predict actual dating behaviors. Conservatives (vs. liberals) less strongly endorsed beliefs about social distancing (for others, but not the self) and were less likely to personally (or request others) engage in COVID prevention behaviors while dating. Conservatives also reported meeting potential romantic partners more frequently than liberals. However, political ideology did not predict actual dating behaviors. Results suggest there is a disconnect between college students' beliefs/intentions and their actual dating behavior. These results demonstrate the importance of developing public health interventions that take into account the disconnect between college students' health-related intentions and actual behaviors, particularly in the context of dating.     

On the Relation Between Religiosity and the Endorsement of Conspiracy Theories: The Role of Political Orientation

Religious and conspiracy beliefs share the feature of assuming powerful forces that determine the fate of the world. Correspondingly, they have been theorized to address similar psychological needs and to be based on similar cognitions, but there exist little authoritative answers about their relationship. We delineate two theory-driven possibilities. If conspiracy theories and religions serve as surrogates for each other by fulfilling similar needs, the two beliefs should be negatively correlated. If conspiracy and religious beliefs stem from the same values and cognitions, this would speak for a positive correlation that might be diminished—for example—by controlling for shared political ideologies. We approached the question with a meta-analysis (N = 10,242), partial correlations from large Christian-dominated datasets from Germany, Poland, and the United States (N = 12,612), and a preregistered U.S. study (N = 500). The results indicate that the correlations between religiosity and conspiracy theory endorsement were positive, and political orientation shared large parts of this covariance. Correlations of religiosity with the more need-related conspiracy mentality differed between countries. We conclude that similarities in the explanatory style and ideologies seem to be central for the relation between intrinsic religiosity and endorsing conspiracy theories, but psychological needs only play a minor role.     

On the Relationship Between Attitude Involvement and Attitude Accessibility: Toward a Cognitive-Motivational Model of Political Information Processing

A model of the relationship between attitude involvement and attitude accessibilitywas developed and tested. The model specifies that attitude involvement leads to selective(biased) issue-related information-gathering strategies, which in turn produce extreme andunivalent (unambivalent) attitudes. Finally, attitudes associated with univalent and extremeunderlying structures should occasion relatively little decision conflict and thus should be highlyaccessible. Questionnaire response data gathered in a national telephone survey and from twosamples of undergraduates revealed that both attitude extremity and attitude ambivalence onselected political issues mediated the relationship between attitude involvement and attitudeaccessibility. Some findings indicated that selective processing mediated the relationshipbetween attitude involvement and attitude extremity and ambivalence. Discussion focuses on theprocesses linking involvement to accessibility, the factors that moderate theambivalence-accessibility relationship, and the relevance of the model to media-based primingeffects and tothe nature of public opinion and the survey response.     

Moral Identity Predicts Adherence to COVID-19 Mitigation Procedures Depending on Political Ideology: A Comparison Between the USA and New Zealand

Reducing the spread of infectious viruses (e.g., COVID-19) can depend on societal compliance with effective mitigations. Identifying factors that influence adherence can inform public policy. In many cases, public health messaging has become highly moralized, focusing on the need to act for the greater good. In such contexts, a person's moral identity may influence behavior and serve to increase compliance through different mechanisms: if a person sees compliance as the right thing to do (internalization) and/or if a person perceives compliance as something others will notice as the right thing to do (symbolization). We argue that in societies that are more politically polarized, people's political ideology may interact with their moral identity to predict compliance. We hypothesized that where polarization is high (e.g., USA), moral identity should positively predict compliance for liberals to a greater extent than for conservatives. However, this effect would not occur where polarization is low (e.g., New Zealand). Moral identity, political ideology, and support for three different COVID-19 mitigation measures were assessed in both nations (N = 1,980). Results show that while moral identity can influence compliance, the political context of the nation must also be taken into account.     

History Matters: Effects of Culture‐specific Symbols on Political Attitudes and Intergroup Relations

A theory of the historical anchoring and mobilization of political attitudes is proposed, arguing that culture‐specific symbols, configured by historical charters, are an important resource in defining nationhood and legitimizing public opinion in a way that makes some political attitudes difficult to change. Five studies in New Zealand and Taiwan using diverse methods converged to show that historical events with “charter status” have an additive effect in explaining variance in political attitudes regarding biculturalism in New Zealand and independence in Taiwan even after controlling for the effects of Social Dominance Orientation, Right‐Wing Authoritarianism, relevant social identities, and collective guilt. Field and lab experiments showed that the impact of historical symbols did not depend on the mobilization of social identity (e.g., increasing mean scores and indirect effects), but the historical anchoring of political attitudes in representations was resistant to change. Manipulations of the salience of historical events changed levels of social identification, but did not change mean levels of support for New Zealand biculturalism or Taiwanese independence. Even an intense and immersive pretest/posttest design taking high school students on a national museum tour failed to change attitudes towards biculturalism in New Zealand.     

Within the Limits of Civic Training: Education Moderates the Relationship Between Openness and Political Attitudes

Research demonstrates that the Big‐Five's Openness to Experience is inversely associated with political conservatism. This literature, however, implicitly assumes that the strength of this relationship is invariant across the electorate. We challenge this assumption by arguing that education—an institution designed to increase civic competence—affects the degree to which personality predicts various political attitudes. Specifically, we posit that education facilitates people's ability to identify issue positions that (theoretically) resonate with their personality. Using a national probability sample of New Zealand voters (n = 6,518), we show that education consistently moderates the relationship between personality and a host of political attitudes. Whereas Openness to Experience is inversely associated with politically conservative issue positions among the highly educated, it is often uncorrelated with the same attitudes among those with low levels of educational attainment. These results identify an important—though often neglected—moderator of the relationship between personality and political attitudes.     

A test of vaccine endorsement by political in- versus out-group sources: Effect on vaccination likelihood and exploration of mediation through perceived bias and liking

This study investigated whether political endorsements from in- versus out-group political elites would influence likelihood of COVID-19 vaccination. In March 2021, we ran an experiment with Democrats and Republicans in the United States to examine whether they would be more likely to get vaccinated following endorsements by former Presidents Obama or Trump. Participants reported greater likelihood of getting vaccinated if the vaccine was endorsed by an elite from their own rather than the opposing party. This effect was driven by Trump, who increased vaccination likelihood among Republicans but decreased it among Democrats. We also investigated the mechanisms underlying this persuasion effect and found that perceived bias and liking were plausible mediators, whereas perceived trustworthiness and expertise were not. This study highlights the potential of having endorsements from both Democrat and Republican political elites to increase support for health behaviors in a politically charged climate.     

Between Remembering and Forgetting the Years of Political Violence: Psychosocial Impact of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Peru

This article analyzes the association between knowledge of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), evaluation of TRC's achievements, experience of victimization, attitudes toward remembering and forgetting past political violence, perceptions of socioemotional climate (SEC), belief in forgiveness and attitudes toward violence in Peru based on a study conducted in three Peruvian cities with different rates of victimization due to political violence during 1980–2000 (n = 1200). Results showed that a positive attitude toward remembering the past of political violence was predominant and related to a positive evaluation of TRC's achievements. Attitude toward remembering also has an ambivalent collective effect increasing both positive and negative SECs, and it is less accepted by victims of political violence. On the other hand, attitude toward forgetting is less accepted by participants, and it also has an ambivalent effect by increasing positive and negative SECs. Attitude toward forgetting has more societal costs, since it is related to attitudes toward violence and decreased knowledge and a positive evaluation of TRC. In general, findings suggest that remembering traumatic events has an emotional cost, but also it is shown that remembering seems to be more beneficial for society in the long‐term than forgetting.     

Negative misconceptions about disaster behaviour through availability cascades: An examination of secondhand information and the moderating effect of trait anxiety on disaster myths

The present study was designed to shed light on the origin of disaster myths, such as panic, looting, crime, and psychological shock in postdisaster situations, by examining effects of secondhand information and the moderating effect of anxiety on such negative misconceptions. It was hypothesized that secondhand information on disaster behaviour, such as media reports and word‐of‐mouth rumours, and trait anxiety would increase the degrees to which people gave credit to four popular disaster myths. Also, trait anxiety was predicted to moderate the association between information sources and disaster myths. Questionnaire data obtained from 1,500 Japanese participants indicated that people relying on secondhand information gave more credit to all the four misconceptions than those relying on firsthand information such as direct disaster experience. However, trait anxiety was not found to significantly affect the degrees of the disaster myths. Furthermore, the moderating effect of trait anxiety on the association between the information sources and the disaster myths was not observed in any of the four myths. The present results imply that although reliance on secondhand information increases the degree of disaster myths to some extent, there should be other causes from which disaster myths originate.     

The dynamics of motivated perception: Effects of control and status on the perception of ambivalent stimuli

Previous studies on attentional biases often show contradictory results. This suggests that important moderating variables have been neglected so far. We suggest that (1) control over potential consequences and (2) satisfaction with the current status are important factors that need to be considered. We explored the influence of these variables using a colour classification task, where colours are associated with financial gains and losses. Data were analysed with hierarchical logistic regression models and with stochastic diffusion models. The latter approach has the special advantage that it allows separating perceptual and judgemental biases. Results show an overall positive judgemental bias. In the absence of control, this positivity bias increases with the amount of money that has been gained, whereas the opposite pattern is present when dangers can be controlled. In the second experiment, no general feedback was given, which led to an increasing negativity bias. Results are discussed within an action theoretic framework.     

Analysis of the Mediating Effect of Personal-Psychological Variables on the Relationship Between Socioeconomic Status and Political Participation: A Structural Equations Framework

The goal of this research was to test whether the relationship between socioeconomic status and political participation is direct or mediated by personal variables such as self-esteem, locus of control, and political efficacy, and to detect how such a mediating process might operate if it exists. Two forms of participation, namely active political participation and the more passive psychological involvement of citizens in the democratic process, were treated as separate but related facets of participation. Four competing models were advanced and tested. The data were collected from 434 citizens in the north of Israel who were interviewed by questionnaire. The analysis was performed by structural equations modeling with LISREL VIII. The findings show that the relationship between socioeconomic status and political participation can be better understood as being mediated by personal variables rather than direct. This is demonstrated by the many nonsignificant paths in the direct model. The findings also reveal that active political participation and psychological involvement are distinct but related constructs, where involvement leads to active participation. In addition, all research variables were related more strongly to psychological involvement than to active political participation. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for future research on political participation.     

Unity and Diversity in American Political Culture: An Exploratory Study of the National Conversation on American Pluralism and Identity

Drawing on participant observation and quantitative analysis, this paper investigates the National Conversation on American Pluralism and Identity, a series of local conversation projects organized by the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1995 and 1996. After linking this program to debates about American political culture, the paper analyzes the observational and survey data in light of five hypotheses about the conversations. The conversations reveal fundamental, unresolved dilemmas regarding the compatibility between American identity and ethnic pluralism, although the participants sometimes cope with these dilemmas in culturally creative ways.     

政治技能与自我效能感对职业适应能力的影响——自尊的中介作用

本研究采用问卷调查法, 以492名高校大学生为研究对象,探索政治技能和自我效能感对大学生职业适应能力的影响及自尊的中介作用。结果表明：（1）政治技能和自我效能感对个体的职业适应能力有积极影响。（2）自尊在政治技能和职业适应能力之间,自我效能感与职业适应能力之间起着双重中介作用。     

Extending the metatheoretical framework of social/political influence to leadership: Political skill effects on situational appraisals,responses, and evaluations by others

Building off and extending the metatheoretical framework of political skill, we examined the cognitive and behavioral mechanisms through which the intrapsychic effects of political skill inform its interpersonal effects, and how these interpersonal effects ultimately are transmitted into desirable outcomes. Specifically, we argue that politically skilled leaders demonstrate better situational appraisals (i.e., understanding), and thus, more appropriate situational responses (e.g., consideration and initiating structure behaviors); the demonstration of appropriate situational responses is argued to positively affect subordinates’ evaluations of their leaders (i.e., instrumentality) and subordinates’ concomitant attitudes (e.g., job satisfaction) and behaviors (e.g., performance). Results provided mixed support for the hypothesized relationships. Specifically, leader understanding mediated the relationship between political skill and consideration but not the relationship between political skill and structuring behaviors. Moreover, consideration was positively related to subordinates’ group-level instrumentality perceptions, whereas initiating structure was not. Finally, subordinates’ individual (within-level) perceptions of leader instrumentality were positively related to job satisfaction and performance. The implications of these findings as they relate to theory and practice are discussed along with this investigation's strengths, limitations, and directions for future research.