The Divergent Foundations of Social and Economic Political Ideology Restricted; Files Only
Costello, Thomas (Summer 2022)
Published
Abstract
Although political psychology has historically been concerned with identifying asymmetries between “liberals” and “conservatives,” many people identify as “socially liberal and economically conservative” (or vice versa). Using meta-analysis, tests of mutual statistical suppression, and tests of curvilinearity, I show that social conservatism (i.e., cultural and moral issues) and economic conservatism (i.e., redistributive and market-related issues) have unique, and often opposing, psychological foundations. In Chapter 1, I demonstrate, via meta-analysis (N > 180,000), that broad-based psychological rigidity––which is thought to be a key feature that distinguishes liberals from conservatives––is associated with social, but not economic, conservatism. Still, in most (but not all) nations where these relations have been investigated, social and economic conservatism share environmental pressures, potentially obscuring meta-analytic estimates for their psychological differences. In Chapter 2, I distill the unique statistical variance associated with social and economic conservatism, showing that their predictive power for a series of psychological variables mutually increases after removing what is common across them. This effect replicated in three samples (total N = 1,487); specifically, with this approach, I revealed a plethora of negative relations between economic conservatism and rigidity-related psychological variables after controlling for social conservatism, while social conservatism’s positive relations increased dramatically after controlling for economic conservatism. One prediction that naturally follows from Chapter 1 and 2 is that economically left-wing and socially conservative political extremists will be especially rigid. In Chapter 3 (total N = 2889), I show that (1) ideological extremists on the left and right are, indeed, highly rigid and dogmatic and that (2) extreme social conservatism and extreme economic leftism, specifically, appear to drive these effects—highlighting another axis of divergence within the traditional left vs. right spectrum (e.g., economic conservatives and social liberals did not significantly differ in political certainty). Given these findings, I conclude that emphasizing psychological differences between so-called “liberals” and “conservatives” obscures more than it illuminates, and that mapping the political mind requires that we “think outside the ballot box”.
Table of Contents
GENERAL INTRODUCTION 1
THE MULTIDIMENSIONALITY OF POLITICAL IDEOLOGY 3
THE PRESENT STUDIES: DISENTANGLING THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CORRELATES OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC IDEOLOGY 6
CHAPTER 1: ARE CONSERVATIVES MORE RIGID THAN LIBERALS? A META-ANALYTIC TEST OF THE RIGIDITY-OF-THE-RIGHT HYPOTHESIS 10
ABSTRACT 10
THE RIGIDITY-OF-THE-RIGHT HYPOTHESIS 13
WHAT IS “THE RIGHT”? 14
WHAT IS “RIGIDITY”? 17
Rigid Thinking Styles 18
Motivational Rigidity 19
Cognitive Inflexibility 20
Ideological Rigidity (i.e., Dogmatism) 20
Excluded Rigidity Variables 23
CIRCULAR MEASUREMENT: SOME MEASURES OF CONSERVATISM DIRECTLY MEASURE RIGIDITY 23
META-SCIENTIFIC CONCERNS: HETEROGENEITY, THE “CRUD FACTOR,” AND POLITICAL BIAS 25
THE PRESENT REVIEW 27
METHOD 28
Data Coding 30
Statistical Analyses 34
RESULTS 39
Model 1: Global Result 42
Model 2: The Multidimensionality of Political Ideology 42
Model 3: Rigidity Domains 43
The Full Model 45
Moderators 48
Publication Bias 56
DISCUSSION 58
Major Findings: A Birds-eye View 59
Social, But Not Economic, Conservatism 60
Symmetrical Cognitive Architecture, Asymmetrical Motivations 61
National- and Sample-level Differences in Rigidity-Conservatism 66
How Biased is the RRH Literature? 68
Limitations and Future Directions 71
Conclusion 74
REFERENCES 76
CHAPTER 2: SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC POLITICAL IDEOLOGY CONSISTENTLY OPERATE AS MUTUAL SUPPRESSORS: IMPLICATIONS FOR PERSONALITY, SOCIAL, AND POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 116
THE PRESENT INVESTIGATION 121
METHOD 122
Participants 122
Measures 123
MUTUAL SUPPRESSION ANALYSES 126
RESULTS 131
Sample 1 131
Sample 2 132
Sample 3 133
DISCUSSION 134
REFERENCES 139
CHAPTER 3: ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY AND POLITICAL IDEOLOGY: A SYSTEMATIC TEST OF CURVILINEARITY 147
ABSTRACT 147
METHOD 151
Participants and Procedure 151
Measures 152
DATA ANALYTIC APPROACH 155
RESULTS 156
Certainty 156
Absolute Political Certainty 159
Dogmatism 161
DISCUSSION 167
Conclusion 169
REFERENCES 171
GENERAL DISCUSSION 177
OVERVIEW OF FINDINGS 177
CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE FUTURE OF POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY 182
A Classic Social-Psychological Approach to Rigidity-Ideology Relations 182
Beyond Social and Economic: Accounting for The Many Faces of Political Ideology 183
A Hierarchical Taxonomy of Ideological Constructs? 187
CONCLUSION 190
REFERENCES (GENERAL INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL DISCUSSION) 191
APPENDICES 200
APPENDIX A. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIALS FOR CHAPTER 1 200
APPENDIX B. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIALS FOR CHAPTER 2 203
APPENDIX C. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIALS FOR CHAPTER 3 207
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File download under embargo until 19 August 2028 | 2022-06-16 12:04:45 -0400 | File download under embargo until 19 August 2028 |
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