Belief in a Dangerous World Does Not Explain Substantial Variance in Political Attitudes, But Other World Beliefs Do

Abstract

Decades of research suggest a correlation between belief in a dangerous world and political conservatism. However, research relied on a scale that may overemphasize certain types of dangers. Furthermore, few other world beliefs have been investigated, such that fundamental worldview differences between liberals and conservatives remain largely unknown. A preregistered study of nine samples ( N = 5,461; mostly US Americans) found a negligible association between a newly improved measure of generalized dangerous world belief and conservatism, and that the original scale emphasized certain dangers more salient to conservatives (e.g., societal decline) over others most salient for liberals (e.g., injustice). Across many measures of political attitudes, other world beliefs—such as beliefs that the world is Hierarchical, Intentional, Just, and Worth Exploring—each explained several times more variance than dangerous world belief. This suggests the relevance of dangerous world belief to political attitudes has been overstated, and examining other world beliefs may yield insights.

Political ideology and moral dilemmas in public good provision

“…Right-leaning individuals in our sample do not differentiate cooperation on the equal public good from the unequal public good, and they do not expect other people to do so. Both right-leaning individuals inside and outside of the multiple-public goods game expect (i.e., trust) others to cooperate relatively more on unequal public goods, speaking to previous findings that rightists see the world as a more dangerous place 38 , 40 – 42 or, as presented in recent findings, a more hierarchical place than leftists do 43 . However, uninvolved right-leaning individuals do deem it morally appropriate to cooperate more on the equal public good than on the unequal public good, as do left-leaning ones.…”

“…Specifically, because cooperation is potentially exploitable by others’ free-riding, cooperation also depends on the degree to which people expect (i.e., trust) others to cooperate or not 36 , 37 . Hence, leftists may cooperate more because they hold more positive, benign beliefs about the behavior of others 38 , 39 , whereas rightists view the world as a more dangerous 38 , 40 – 42 or hierarchical place 43 . Indeed, leftists cooperated more in trust games than rightists 33 , and trust partially mediates the relationship between ideology and cooperation in two-person public good games 17 (but see 26 ).…”

Worldviews about change: Their structure and their implications for understanding responses to sustainability, technology, and political change

“…For example, Clifton et al (2019) treat Declining as the opposite of Progressing (measured as a single scale), that leads to resisting change (conceptually linked to our Maintenance worldview) and thus a conservative political orientation. This combines three worldviews about change (Progress, Golden Age, Maintenance) that we propose (and show) are separable and are have different relationships with social issues, and theoretically it is unclear why it would be predicted that people would want to resist change when they believe the world is declining (and meta-analyses have failed to identify an overall association between Progressing and conservatism; Clifton & Kerry, 2023).…”

“…So far, research on the Progressing (vs. declining) subscale has been restricted to predicting conservative ideology, showing no overall effect (Clifton & Kerry, 2023). In contrast, our approach provides a more nuanced and detailed understanding of beliefs about trajectories of change, and we examine both relationships with political orientation and show the relevance of change worldviews to responses to a broad range of social issues, identifying relationships even after controlling for political orientation.…”

A systematic review on political ideology and persuasion

“…For instance, Jost (2017) argues that conservatives perceive the world as more dangerous, but recent studies suggest this relationship may be overstated. While both political groups agree on the existence of danger, they may differ in their views on the defining characteristics of danger (Clifton & Kerry, 2022). Further research can explore these nuanced relationships and their implications for persuasion.…”