个体的政治倾向及其变化机制

政治倾向是个体在意识形态上的定位, 可以分为自由主义和保守主义, 政治倾向使个体在认知和行为等方面存在显著差异。虽然个体的政治倾向相对稳定, 但也会受威胁的影响而变化。动机性社会认知理论认为威胁使所有人都变得更加保守, 恐惧管理理论认为威胁使个体更坚信自己原有的文化世界观, 使原有政治倾向更加明显。本文在深入分析讨论的基础上, 指出两种理论分歧的原因在于忽略了外部威胁与内部威胁的不同。内部威胁可加强人们原有的政治倾向, 外部威胁可使人们更趋向保守。未来研究应在内外部威胁影响政治倾向变化的机制、政治倾向的本土化研究以及促进不同政治倾向个体间的和谐关系上做出努力。

Political orientation and its changing mechanism

Political orientation refers to people’s ideological self-positioning and can be divided into liberalism and conservatism. Individuals with different political orientations exhibit significant differences in cognitive and behavioral characteristics. Although individuals’ political orientation is relatively stable, it may change under threat. Motivated social cognition theory postulates that threat makes people more conservative. Terror management theory proposes that threat makes people more firmly believe in their original cultural worldviews, and thus makes their political orientation more pronounced. This suggests that threat will cause liberals to be more liberal and conservatives to be more conservative. Based on deep analysis and discussion of relevant theories and empirical studies, we point out that failing to distinguish between external threat and internal threat may explain why these two theories are contradictory. We propose that internal threat can reinforce individuals’ original political orientation, while external threat makes people more conservative. Future research should endeavor to explore the mechanism underlying how external and internal threat affect political orientation, this phenomenon in Chinese context, and how to promote harmonious relationship between people with different political orientations.