When Self-Censorship Norms Backfire: The Manufacturing of Positive Communication and Its Ironic Consequences for the Perceptions of Groups

McFarland

Costello

et al. 2021

J Theo Social Psycho

Self Cite

Left-Wing Authoritarianism (LWA) has a controversial history in psychology. Some researchers have expressed skepticism about the existence of LWA, whereas others have argued that LWA is a valid construct. In the present article, we offer a framework to reconcile these two perspectives by proposing that ideologically-based authoritarian norms are sometimes in conflict with the processes that create authoritarian individuals.In Western political contexts, authoritarian norms are more likely to occur on the conservative side of the political spectrum; but authoritarian persons can occur in both conservatives and liberals. In our model, left-wing authoritarians thus often occupy the space where forces influencing authoritarianism are in conflict. We review existing evidence related to the model, derive four hypotheses from the model, and discuss criteria for falsifying the model. We conclude by considering the model's place in current research on the complexities of ideology.

Section: When Authoritarian Persons and Anti‐authoritarian Norms Collidementioning

confidence: 99%

The curious case of left‐wing authoritarianism: When authoritarian persons meet anti‐authoritarian norms

McFarland

Costello

et al. 2021

J Theo Social Psycho

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“…Theories answering this question can roughly be grouped into two macrolevel categories. Some theories focus on bottom-up processes, describing how communication between persons shapes the fate of cultural or political development (e.g., Conway et al, 2009; Conway & Schaller, 2005, 2007; Conway et al, 2006). Other theories focus on top-down processes, describing how preexisting ecological conditions might shape cultural or political milieus in systematic ways (e.g., Kitayama, Conway, Pietromonaco, Park, & Plaut, 2010; Kitayama, Ishii, Imada, Takemura, & Ramaswamy, 2006; Schaller & Murray, 2008; Van de Vliert, 2013a; Welzel, 2013).…”

Section: Ecological Precursors Of Governmental Restrictionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological Origins of Freedom: Pathogens, Heat Stress, and Frontier Topography Predict More Vertical but Less Horizontal Governmental Restriction

Bongard

Plaut

et al. 2017

Pers Soc Psychol Bull

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What kinds of physical environments make for free societies? The present research investigates the effect of three different types of ecological stressors (climate stress, pathogen stress, and frontier topography) on two measurements of governmental restriction: Vertical restriction involves select persons imposing asymmetrical laws on others, while horizontal restriction involves laws that restrict most members of a society equally. Investigation 1 validates our measurements of vertical and horizontal restriction. Investigation 2 demonstrates that, across both U.S. states and a sample of nations, ecological stressors tend to cause more vertically restrictive societies but less horizontally restrictive societies. Investigation 3 demonstrates that assortative sociality partially mediates ecological stress→restriction relationships across nations, but not in U.S. states. Although some stressor-specific effects emerged (most notably, cold stress consistently showed effects in the opposite direction), these results in the main suggest that ecological stress simultaneously creates opposing pressures that push freedom in two different directions.

“…We also evaluated if participants' Abstract Views of Torture moderated the effect of Personal Closeness on support for torture in the scenario. To do this, we used Aiken and West's (1991) highly-cited method for testing interactions between variables via regression (for exemplars, see Conway & Schaller, 2005;Conway et al, 2009;Conway, Dodds, Hands Towgood, McClure, & Olson, 2011). Specifically, we (a) converted the Personal Closeness and Abstract Views of Torture to z-scores; (b) created an interaction term by computing their product; and then (c) entered Closeness, Abstract Views, and the interaction term as predictors in a regression for each of the two DVs separately.…”

Section: Secondary Analyses Abstract Torture Questionnairementioning

confidence: 99%

What People Think About Torture: Torture Is Inherently Bad … Unless It Can Save Someone I Love

Houck

Journal of Applied Security Research

2013

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Prior research suggests people's abstract views of torture are often negative. We suspected, however, that those views might not fully represent torture perceptions in a scenario where they felt closeness to the potential victims. To test this idea, participants read a scenario about a crisis situation and completed measurements of their support for torture usage in the scenario. Scenarios varied in their degree of personal closeness to the victim. Results from 2 studies suggest that people were considerably more likely to support torture in applied, personally relevant scenarios compared to at-a-distant scenarios involving unknown victims. These studies can inform both our understanding of torture perceptions and the current cultural debate between deontologists and consequentialists about this topic.