Incidental Disgust Increases Adherence to Left-Wing Economic Attitudes

Petrescu, Dragoş; Parkinson, Brian

doi:10.1007/s11211-014-0221-7

Cited by 11 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…They found that this safety manipulation lowered the conservatism of their social preferences, but not of their economic preferences, suggesting that “socially (but not economically) conservative attitudes are driven, at least in part, by needs for safety and security” (p. 1). And, as we discuss below, Petruscu and Parkinson () found that disgust manipulations also lead to left‐wing economic preferences. Clearly, type of threat matters, as does political attitude domain (Crawford, ; Kettle & Salerno, ; Lambert et al, ).…”

Section: The Psychological Bases Of Political Preferencesmentioning

confidence: 87%

“…Meanwhile, manipulated disgust and measured disgust sensitivity tend not to relate to economic conservatism (Inbar et al, ; Kam & Estes, 2010; Malka et al, ; Petruscu & Parkinson, ; Smith et al, ; Terrizzi et al, ; but see Brenner & Inbar, ). In fact, one set of studies demonstrated an effect of manipulated incidental disgust on economic liberalism (Petruscu & Parkinson, ), and another showed a correlation between individual differences in disgust sensitivity and a preference for greater food‐safety regulation (a form of government intervention in the economy; Kam & Estes, ). And not surprisingly, disgust‐related variables predict moral traditionalism more strongly than egalitarianism (which has relevance to both economic and cultural preferences; Tybur et al, ; Tybur et al, ).…”

Section: The Psychological Bases Of Political Preferencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Contingent, Contextual Nature of the Relationship Between Needs for Security and Certainty and Political Preferences: Evidence and Implications

Federico

Malka

2018

Political Psychology

148

222

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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...

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Section: The Psychological Bases Of Political Preferencesmentioning

confidence: 87%

Section: The Psychological Bases Of Political Preferencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Contingent, Contextual Nature of the Relationship Between Needs for Security and Certainty and Political Preferences: Evidence and Implications

Federico

Malka

2018

Political Psychology

148

222

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Thus, the purity foundation is linked with the experience of disgust, and, like binding foundations in general, disgust sensitivity seems to most reliably predict attitudes related to traditional morality (Crawford, Inbar, & Maloney, 2014;Hatemi & McDermott, 2012;Inbar, Pizarro, Knobe, & Bloom, 2009;K. B. Smith, Oxley, Hibbing, Alford, & Hibbing, 2011;Terrizzi, Shook, & McDaniel, 2013; see also Petrescu & Parkinson, 2014).…”

Section: Moral Foundations and Domain-specific Political Attitudesmentioning

confidence: 97%

Binding Moral Foundations and the Narrowing of Ideological Conflict to the Traditional Morality Domain

Malka

Osborne

Soto

et al. 2016

Pers Soc Psychol Bull

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Moral foundations theory (MFT) posits that binding moral foundations (purity, authority, and ingroup loyalty) are rooted in the need for groups to promote order and cohesion, and that they therefore underlie political conservatism. We present evidence that binding foundations (and the related construct of disgust sensitivity) are associated with lower levels of ideological polarization on political issues outside the domain of moral traditionalism. Consistent support for this hypothesis was obtained from three large American Internet-based samples and one large national sample of New Zealanders (combined N = 7,874). We suggest that when political issues do not have inherent relevance to moral traditionalism, binding foundations promote a small centrist shift away from ideologically prescribed positions, and that they do so out of desire for national uniformity and cohesion.

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“…Thus, experimentally inducing disgust can increase prejudice toward out‐groups (Terrizzi et al., ), and showing people primes related to cleanliness can influence political attitudes (Helzer & Pizarro, ) . Experimental primes that induce disgust may, however, also increase concerns about fairness, leading to more left‐wing scores on measures of political attitudes that focus on economic inequality (Petrescu & Parkinson, ). Overall, these findings are consistent with the suggestion that some dimensions of political ideology are associated with pathogen‐related variables (such as disgust).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Personality, Parasites, Political Attitudes, and Cooperation: A Model of How Infection Prevalence Influences Openness and Social Group Formation

Brown

Fincher

Walasek

2015

Topics in Cognitive Science

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What is the origin of individual differences in ideology and personality? According to the parasite stress hypothesis, the structure of a society and the values of individuals within it are both influenced by the prevalence of infectious disease within the society's geographical region. High levels of infection threat are associated with more ethnocentric and collectivist social structures and greater adherence to social norms, as well as with socially conservative political ideology and less open but more conscientious personalities. Here we use an agent‐based model to explore a specific opportunities‐parasites trade‐off (OPTO) hypothesis, according to which utility‐maximizing agents place themselves at an optimal point on a trade‐off between (a) the gains that may be achieved through accessing the resources of geographically or socially distant out‐group members through openness to out‐group interaction, and (b) the losses arising due to consequently increased risks of exotic infection to which immunity has not been developed. We examine the evolution of cooperation and the formation of social groups within social networks, and we show that the groups that spontaneously form exhibit greater local rather than global cooperative networks when levels of infection are high. It is suggested that the OPTO model offers a first step toward understanding the specific mechanisms through which environmental conditions may influence cognition, ideology, personality, and social organization.

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Incidental Disgust Increases Adherence to Left-Wing Economic Attitudes

Cited by 11 publications

References 52 publications

The Contingent, Contextual Nature of the Relationship Between Needs for Security and Certainty and Political Preferences: Evidence and Implications

The Contingent, Contextual Nature of the Relationship Between Needs for Security and Certainty and Political Preferences: Evidence and Implications

Binding Moral Foundations and the Narrowing of Ideological Conflict to the Traditional Morality Domain

Personality, Parasites, Political Attitudes, and Cooperation: A Model of How Infection Prevalence Influences Openness and Social Group Formation

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