Beyond “liberals” and “conservatives”: Complexity in ideology, moral intuitions, and worldview among Swedish voters

Abstract

This research investigated the congruence between the ideologies of political parties and the ideological preferences (N = 1515), moral intuitions (N = 1048), and political values and worldviews (N = 1345) of diverse samples of Swedish adults who voted or intended to vote for the parties. Logistic regression analyses yielded support for a series of hypotheses about variations in ideology beyond the left-right division. With respect to social ideology, resistance to change and binding moral intuitions predicted stronger preference for a social democratic (vs. progressive) party on the left and weaker preference for a social liberal (vs. social conservative or liberal-conservative) party on the right. With respect to political values and broader worldviews, normativism and low acceptance of immigrants predicted the strongest preference for a nationalist party, while environmentalism predicted the strongest preference for a green party. The effects were generally strong and robust when we controlled for left-right self-placements, economic ideology, and demographic characteristics. These results show that personality variation in the ideological domain is not reducible to the simplistic contrast between 'liberals' and 'conservatives', which ignores differences between progressive and non-progressive leftists, economic and green progressives, social liberal and conservative rightists, and nationalist and non-nationalist conservatives.

Moral Foundations Theory and the Psychology of Charitable Giving

“…The empirical data from past research (e.g. Davies, Sibley, & Liu, 2014;Graham et al, 2011;Nilsson & Erlandsson, 2015;Nilsson et al, 2020) are consistent with a hierarchical model with two superordinate foundations (individualizing and binding intuitions) with underlying facets (harm and fairness; loyalty, authority, and purity/sanctity). At the same time, a recent cross-cultural analysis of the structure of moral foundations across 27 nations indicated that there is substantial overlap between the specific facets of each superordinate factor (i.e.…”

“…Furthermore, right-wing ideology is intertwined with religion in many countries, and religious practices are associated with increased charitable giving (Bekkers & Wiepking, 2011;Brooks, 2007;Zagefka & James, 2015), particularly in countries that lack strong secular institutions and social safety nets (Norenzayan, Henrich, & Slingerland, 2013). By contrast, in a post-industrial welfare state such as Sweden, where the left-right conflict predominantly concerns issues pertaining to equality and redistribution rather than traditional values, social change, or religiosity (Aspelund, Lindeman, & Verkasalo, 2013;Nilsson et al, 2020), charitable giving is likely to be more prevalent on the left than on the right overall (Nilsson et al, 2016).…”

“…On the broadest scale, left-right divergences in political orientation can be described in terms of a distinction between resistance to (vs. advocacy of) social change and preference for social and economic equality (vs. acceptance of inequality; Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003). This distinction converges with the distinction between binding and individualizing moral foundations, in the sense that preference for equality entails an impartial concern for the well-being of all individuals while resistance to change involves protection of in-group traditions and norms (Federico, Weber, Ergun, & Hunt, 2013;Nilsson & Erlandsson, 2015;Nilsson et al, 2020).…”

“…Further research is needed also for elucidating more fine-grained aspects of the relation between moral foundations and charitable giving (and political ideology, see Nilsson et al, 2020). In the current research, we focused on the superordinate distinction between binding and individualizing moral foundations.…”

Politically motivated bullshit receptivity: Ideology, epistemology, and receptivity to pseudo-profound bullshit across domains

“…There is, however, growing awareness that political ideology is not reducible to the simple liberalism-conservatism contrast, which is rooted in the biparty systems of the English-speaking world (e.g., Nilsson et al, 2020;Zmigrod, 2022). In particular, sociocultural and economic-egalitarian ideology have distinct psychological underpinnings, although they often go together in elite political discourse (Feldman & Johnston, 2014;Malka et al, 2014).…”