The Divergent Foundations of Social and Economic Political Ideology Restricted; Files Only

Costello, Thomas (Summer 2022)

Permanent URL: https://etd.library.emory.edu/concern/etds/sx61dn66h?locale=es
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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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