We examine whether individual differences in needs for security and certainty predict conservative (vs. liberal) position on both cultural and economic political issues and whether these effects are conditional on nation-level characteristics and individual-level political engagement. Analyses with cross-national data from 51 nations reveal that valuing conformity, security, and tradition over self-direction and stimulation (a) predicts ideological self-placement on the political right, but only among people high in political engagement and within relatively developed nations, ideologically constrained nations, and non-Eastern European nations, (b) reliably predicts right-wing cultural attitudes and does so more strongly within developed and ideologically constrained nations, and (c) on average predicts left-wing economic attitudes but does so more weakly among people high in political engagement, within ideologically constrained nations, and within non-Eastern European nations. These findings challenge the prevailing view that needs for security and certainty organically yield a broad right-wing ideology and that exposure to political discourse better equips people to select the broad ideology that is most need satisfying. Rather, these findings suggest that needs for security and certainty generally yield culturally conservative but economically left-wing preferences and that exposure to political discourse generally weakens the latter relation. We consider implications for the interactive influence of personality characteristics and social context on political attitudes and discuss the importance of assessing multiple attitude domains, assessing political engagement, and considering national characteristics when studying the psychological origins of political attitudes.

During the last decade, a great deal of news media attention has focused on informing the American public about scientific findings on global warming (GW). Has learning this sort of information led the American public to become more concerned about GW? Using data from two surveys of nationally representative samples of American adults, this article shows that the relation between self-reported knowledge and concern about GW is more complex than what previous research has suggested. Among people who trust scientists to provide reliable information about the environment and among Democrats and Independents, increased knowledge has been associated with increased concern. But among people who are skeptical about scientists and among Republicans more knowledge was generally not associated with greater concern. The association of knowledge with concern among Democrats and Independents who trust scientists was mediated by perceptions of consensus among scientists about GW's existence and by perceptions that humans are a principal cause of GW. Moreover, additional analyses of panel survey data produced findings consistent with the notion that more knowledge yields more concern among Democrats and Independents, but not among Republicans. Thus, when studying the relation of knowledge and concern, it is important to take into account the content of the information that different types of people acquire and choose to rely upon.

The right-left dimension is ubiquitous in politics, but prior perspectives provide conflicting accounts of whether cultural and economic attitudes are typically aligned on this dimension within mass publics around the world. Using survey data from ninety-nine nations, this study finds not only that right-left attitude organization is uncommon, but that it is more common for culturally and economically right-wing attitudes to correlate negatively with each other, an attitude structure reflecting a contrast between desires for cultural and economic protection vs. freedom. This article examines where, among whom and why protection-freedom attitude organization outweighs right-left attitude organization, and discusses the implications for the psychological bases of ideology, quality of democratic representation and the rise of extreme right politics in the West.Keywords: public opinion; political ideology; political attitude constraint; political psychology; comparative politicsThe right-left ideological dimension is a fundamental feature of politics in many nations around the world. 1 This article examines the relationship between two preference dimensions that are widely recognized as central to ideological differences between the right and left: the economic dimension, which concerns redistributive social welfare preferences and views about the proper scope of government economic involvement, and the cultural dimension, which concerns views on matters such as sexual morality and immigration. 2 Within mass publics around the world, do people who hold right-wing cultural attitudes also tend to adopt right-wing economic attitudes? Do left-wing cultural attitudes typically go with left-wing economic attitudes? The established view from political science is that there do not exist psychological constraints that would make this the case for most of the people most of the time. 3 In contrast, an influential research tradition within psychology specifies that cultural and economic conservatism have common psychological origins and thus typically co-occur. 4 Despite its theoretical importance and potential implications for quality of democratic representation, the typical association between cultural and economic attitudes within mass publics around the world has not been firmly empirically established.In this article we report what is to our knowledge the largest cross-national test to date of this empirical relationship, using World Values Survey (WVS) data from 229 national samples spanning ninety-nine nations. We furthermore examine how the alignment of these two dimensions varies across people and contexts. Our findings suggest that: (1) it is not typical for

Research on the dispositional origins of political preferences is flourishing, and the primary conclusion drawn from this work is that stronger needs for security and certainty attract people to a broad-based politically conservative ideology. Though this literature covers much ground, most integrative assessments of it have paid insufficient attention to the presence and implications of contingencies in the relationship between dispositional attributes and political attitudes. In this article, we review research showing that relationships between needs for security and certainty and political preferences vary considerably-sometimes to the point of directional shifts-on the basis of (1) issue domain and (2) contextual factors governing the content and volume of political discourse individuals are exposed to. On the basis of this evidence, we argue that relationships between dispositional attributes and political preferences vary in the extent to which they reflect an organic functional resonance between dispositions and preferences or identity-expressive motivation to adopt a political attitude merely because it is discursively packaged with other need-congruent attitudes. We contend that such a distinction is critical to gaining a realistic understanding of the origins and nature of ideological belief systems, and we consequently recommend an increased focus on issue-based and contextual variation in relationships between dispositions and political preferences.KEY WORDS: political preferences, ideology, needs for security and certainty, political expertise Why do individuals' political preferences lean to the left or to the right? To put it mildly, a great amount of social-scientific ink has been spilled addressing this question. Some perspectives suggest that political preferences are a function of interests associated with the positions of the social groups one belongs to, with members of more powerful groups adopting more conservative views (e.g., Bobo, 1999;Huber & Form, 1973;Kluegel & Smith, 1986; Marx & Engels, 1846/1970Runciman, 1966;Sears & Funk, 1991;Sidanius & Pratto, 1999;Weeden & Kurzban, 2014). Other approaches have focused more closely on social relationships, with a sizable body of research suggesting that people adopt the political attitudes and beliefs that are normative in the reference groups with which they identify (Berelson, Lazarsfeld, & McPhee, 1954;Merton, 1957;Newcomb, 1943) or common within their families or social networks (Huckfeldt, Johnson, & Sprague, 2004;Jennings & Niemi, 1981; Advances in Political Psychology, Vol. 39, Suppl. 1, 2018 doi: 10.1111 bs_bs_banner Jost, Ledgerwood, & Hardin, 2008;Sears & Levy, 2003). Last but not least, research in political science zeroes in on the role of political parties, arguing that individuals acquire the preferences enunciated by the leaders of the parties they identify with (Campbell, Converse, Miller, & Stokes, 1960;Goren, 2005;Lenz, 2013;Zaller, 1992). Approaches like these share a common thread: They focus on the social or contextua...

To many commentators and social scientists, Americans' stances on political issues are to an important extent driven by an underlying conservativeliberal ideological dimension. Self-identification as conservative vs. liberal is regarded as a marker of this dimension. However, past research has not thoroughly distinguished between ideological identity (a self-categorization) and ideology (an integrated value system). This research evaluates the thesis that conservative-liberal identity functions as a readiness to adopt beliefs and attitudes about newly politicized issues that one is told are consistent with the socially prescribed meaning of conservatism-liberalism. In Study 1, conservative-liberal identity, measured in 2000, had an independent prospective effect on support for invading Iraq in 2002 and support for the Iraq war in 2004, controlling for substantive ideology, party identity, and demographics. In Study 2, conservative-and liberal-identifiers adopted stances on farm subsidy policy based on randomly varied cues indicating which ideological group supports which stance. This cue-based influence was mediated by adoption of attitude-supportive beliefs. Discussion addresses the joint impact of political discourse and identity-based social influence on the organization of political attitudes.