The marketplace of ideology: “Elective affinities” in political psychology and their implications for consumer behavior

Abstract

An abundance of research in political psychology demonstrates that leftists and rightists (or liberals and conservatives) diverge from one another in terms of: (a) personality characteristics; (b) cognitive processing styles; (c) motivational interests and concerns; (d) the prioritization of personal values; and (e) neurological structures and physiological functions. In this article, I summarize these findings and discuss some of their implications for persuasion, framing, and advertising; consumer choice, judgment, decision‐making, and behavior; and customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction and politically motivated boycotts. I conclude that the theory and practice of consumer psychology will be enriched by taking into account ideological asymmetries and the ways in which human behavior both reflects and gives rise to left–right divergence in political orientation—not only in terms of beliefs, opinions, and values but also in terms of underlying psychological processes.

Red, blue and purple states of mind: Segmenting the political marketplace

“…The principal concept underpinning Jost's framework is a concept that is central to marketing theory, that of segmentation . Specifically, Jost (2017) argues that there are “…tremendous opportunities for ideological market segmentation ” (p. yy, emphasis added), implicitly relying on the thesis that there are two groups of people who are homogenous within and heterogeneous between. In other words, most or all progressives are likely to be alike, and the segment is relatively stable; and most or all conservatives are likely to be alike, and the segment is relatively stable.…”

“…The target article that is the topic of this commentary (Jost, 2017) is remarkable in at least three respects. First , it covers an enormous amount of intellectual ground to surface important differences between people on the right or “conservatives” and people on the left or “progressives”, a term I prefer to “liberal” because liberalism has acquired a pejorative patina, in large part due to the efforts of right‐of‐center media and commentators.…”

“…It is this last element of Jost's essay that will serve as a point of departure for my commentary. I will take Jost up on the implicit invitation in his concluding sentence: “…it is only a matter of time until work in consumer psychology begins to shape, in reciprocal fashion, theoretical and empirical developments in political psychology” (Jost, 2017, p. xx). I will focus on marketing and consumer psychology based approaches that political candidates and campaigns may employ to realize their goals.…”

A focus on partisanship: How it impacts voting behaviors and political attitudes

“…Similarly, Tim Kaine, the 2016 Democratic vice presidential candidate, repeatedly defined himself in terms of his political ideology, with one of his earlier Senate campaign ads titled “Conservative”. As John Jost explains in his target article (2017 – this issue), political ideology (liberal/conservative; left/right) refers to a set of beliefs, opinions, and values that shape how people interpret their environment and how they think it should be structured. The target article convincingly shows that conservative (vs. liberal) ideology is strongly associated with an array of personality characteristics (e.g.…”

“…The target article (Jost, 2017 – this issue) will inspire and enable consumer psychologists to do more work in the political domain. To facilitate this goal further, we complement the target article by focusing on partisanship and its role in political judgments and decisions.…”