The 12 Item Social and Economic Conservatism Scale (SECS)

Abstract

Recent years have seen a surge in psychological research on the relationship between political ideology (particularly conservatism) and cognition, affect, behaviour, and even biology. Despite this flurry of investigation, however, there is as yet no accepted, validated, and widely used multi-item scale of conservatism that is concise, that is modern in its conceptualisation, and that includes both social and economic conservatism subscales. In this paper the 12-Item Social and Economic Conservatism Scale (SECS) is proposed and validated to help fill this gap. The SECS is suggested to be an important and useful tool for researchers working in political psychology.

The Intensive Care Lifeboat: a survey of lay attitudes to rationing dilemmas in neonatal intensive care

“…In order to examine the influence of underlying personality traits and political views on resource allocation preferences, three validated scales were also included: the Need for Cognition scale (a measure of tendency to enjoy effortful cognitive endeavours) [27], Empathic Concern index (a quantitative measure of empathy) [28], and the Social and Economic Conservatism scale (a measure of political ideology) [29]. …”

“…For sample size, we calculated that a sample of 85 would have a power of 80 % to detect a 20 % shift from egalitarian to utilitarian views and minimal-to-no switch between other response categories ( p  = 0.05) [29]. We assumed a 20 % rate of incomplete responses, and hence aimed for a total sample of 100–110 participants.…”

The role of right‐wing authoritarianism and political sophistication in shaping attitudes toward redistribution

“…While several studies have shown that authoritarian individuals tend to support conservative economic policies (Bobbio, Canova, & Manganelli, 2010;Cornelis & Van Hiel, 2006;Everett, 2013;Jost, Blount, Pfeffer, & Hunyady, 2003;Napier & Jost, 2008;Van Hiel, Pandelaere, & Duriez, 2004), other studies have found that authoritarianism is associated with greater support for interventions related to the economy (Radkiewicz, 2017;Van Hiel & Kossowska, 2007), protectionism (Johnston, 2013), government redistribution in the general population (Calzada, G omez-Garrido, Moreno, & Moreno-Fuentes, 2014;Staerkl e, Likki, & Scheidegger, 2012), and government redistribution in favor of ethnic in-groups (Mewes & Mau, 2012). While several studies have shown that authoritarian individuals tend to support conservative economic policies (Bobbio, Canova, & Manganelli, 2010;Cornelis & Van Hiel, 2006;Everett, 2013;Jost, Blount, Pfeffer, & Hunyady, 2003;Napier & Jost, 2008;Van Hiel, Pandelaere, & Duriez, 2004), other studies have found that authoritarianism is associated with greater support for interventions related to the economy (Radkiewicz, 2017;Van Hiel & Kossowska, 2007), protectionism (Johnston, 2013), government redistribution in the general population (Calzada, G omez-Garrido, Moreno, & Moreno-Fuentes, 2014;Staerkl e, Likki, & Scheidegger, 2012), and government redistribution in favor of ethnic in-groups (Mewes & Mau, 2012).…”

Managing the terror of a dangerous world: Political attitudes as predictors of mental health stigma

“…Traditional measurements of political attitudes have relied on Likert scales and party affiliation to operationalize political ideology. However, there are potential limitations to these methods, and the consistency and reliability of such measures have been challenged (Everett, 2013). For example, political attitudes may be more complex than a given measure, and individuals may not be accurate political self-reporters (Zell & Bernstein, 2014).…”