Conservatives and liberals have similar physiological responses to threats

Abstract

About a decade ago a study documented that conservatives have stronger physiological responses to threatening stimuli than liberals. This work launched a paradigm aimed at uncovering the biological roots of ideology. Despite wide-ranging scientific and popular impact, independent laboratories have not replicated the study. We conducted a preregistered direct replication (N=202) and conceptual replications in the United States (N=352) and the Netherlands (N=81). Our analyses do not support the conclusions of the original study, nor do we find evidence for broader claims regarding the effect of disgust and the existence of a physiological trait. Rather than studying unconscious responses as the "real" predispositions, alignment between conscious and unconscious responses promise deeper insights in the emotional roots of ideology. Main In a study published by Science, Oxley et al. 1 demonstrate that individuals who express conservative political attitudes (e.g., a preference for tradition, clear group boundaries, and hierarchies) have stronger physiological reactions to threatening stimuli than those who express liberal views. One of the authors' explanations for this association is that "political attitudes and varying physiological responses to threat may both derive from neural activity patterns" (p.1669), 1 suggesting a biological basis for the robust, positive correlation between political conservatism and self-reported measures of sensitivity to uncertainty and threat 2-5. Research by others, including the Oxley, et al. research team, demonstrates that conservatives also have stronger physiological responses to disgusting stimuli than liberals do 6, 7. These findings motivated members of the Oxley, et al. research team to further elaborate that conservatism is linked to a more expansive form of "negativity bias" at a physiological level 9. This research helped usher in a new paradigm in psychology and political science that offers a provocative perspective on the biological roots of the centuries-old liberal/conservative divide 8. It implies that psychological traits, such as "threat sensitivity", "disgust sensitivity", and "negativity bias" can be captured in a straightforward and unobtrusive way with physiological reactions, and that these "physiological traits" have a direct and unmediated effect on

The Dark Side of Morality – Neural Mechanisms Underpinning Moral Convictions and Support for Violence

“…The opposite prediction-that liberals and conservatives exploit fundamentally different mechanisms to fuel their intolerance-is also plausible. This is because some differences in the moral psychologies of liberals and conservatives have been documented (Waytz et al 2019)-that said, counter to an extensive literature that reported effects of political orientation on threat sensitivity, the recent failure of a pre-registered replication study to reproduce these earlier findings suggests differences in political views may not reflect fundamental differences in physiology (Bakker et al 2020). Although these are interesting possibilities, they could not be tested here-it was not possible to recruit a sufficiently large sample of conservatives to justify group comparisons by political orientation.…”

What Can Biopolitics Teach us About Democratic Representation?

“…In the realm of political ideology, for instance, Bert Bakker and I are studying whether the concordance between automatic and self-reported reactions to negative stimuli provide the boundary conditions for when negativity bias predicts conservatism. While self-reported measures of negativity bias reliably predict social conservatism (Jost et al, 2003), the evidence that implicit measures do is more mixed (Bakker et al, 2019). Figure 4 describes our working hypotheses.…”

Yikes! Are we disgusted by politicians?

“…In the political domain, disgust has mostly been associated with the first function-the avoidance of pathogens. That is, pathogen avoidance is reported to correlate with negative attitudes toward immigrants (Aarøe et al, 2017), gay people (Balzer & Jacobs, 2011;Smith et al, 2011), premarital sex (Smith et al, 2011), and political conservatism in general (Inbar et al, 2011;Smith et al, 2011; but see Bakker, Schumacher, et al, 2020). In our view, it is hard to see how pathogen avoidance motivates disgust against politicians in general or politicians such as Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton in particular.…”

“…Based on this, we calculated that 80 respondents give acceptable power (0.95), conventional alpha level (.05), and sampling bias (0.00). Based on our earlier experiences using physiological data (Bakker, Schumacher, et al, 2020), we aimed to collect responses from at least 100 respondents to allow for some drop-out and failed physiological readings (electrodes that fall off, etc.). Code to replicate our power analysis is provided on our OSF page (https://osf.io/tp7yn).…”

“…Next, participants were randomly exposed to six images. Three images-used by Smith et al (2011) and Bakker, Schumacher, et al (2020)-were used to measure disgust sensitivity ("man eating worms," "human excrement in toilet," "vomit"), and three neutral IAPS images of a spoon (7004), mug (7035), and lamp (7175) were used. We showed a blank screen with a plus sign for 8 seconds, followed by one of the randomly drawn six images shown for 8 seconds (Codispoti et al, 2001).…”