Three Dimensions of American Conservative Political Orientation Differentially Predict Negativity Bias and Satisfaction With Life

2022 ◽  
pp. 194855062110579
Author(s):  
Xiaowen Xu ◽  
Caitlin M. Burton ◽  
Jason E. Plaks
Keyword(s):  
Satisfaction With Life ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Negativity Bias ◽  
Positive Adjustment ◽  
American Conservatism ◽  
Political Conservatism

Numerous studies have linked political conservatism with negativity bias, whereas others have linked conservatism with indicators of positive adjustment. This research sought to reconcile this seeming contradiction by examining whether distinct dimensions of conservatism differentially predicted measures of negativity bias and positive adjustment. In two studies, we used an empirically derived and validated Attitude-Based Political Conservatism (ABPC) Scale that captures three correlated but distinct factors of American conservatism: Libertarian Independence, Moral Traditionalism, and Ethnic Separateness. In both studies ( N = 1,756), Libertarian Independence was linked with indicators of positive adjustment, whereas Moral Traditionalism and Ethnic Separateness were linked with indices of negativity bias. By identifying which dimensions of conservatism predict negativity bias and positive adjustment, this work illuminates the unique psychological foundations of distinct strands of conservatism in America.

How encompassing is the effect of negativity bias on political conservatism?

2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 320-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ariel Malka ◽  
Christopher J. Soto
Keyword(s):  
Political Engagement ◽  
Social Attitudes ◽  
Negativity Bias ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Political Effects ◽  
Political Conservatism ◽  
Ideological Conflict

AbstractWe argue that the political effects of negativity bias are narrower than Hibbing et al. suggest. Negativity bias reliably predicts social, but not economic, conservatism, and its political effects often vary across levels of political engagement. Thus the role of negativity bias in broad ideological conflict depends on the strategic packaging of economic and social attitudes by political elites.

scholarly journals Burnout among Portuguese healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivone Duarte ◽  
Andreia Teixeira ◽  
Luísa Castro ◽  
Sílvia Marina ◽  
Carla Ribeiro ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Healthcare Workers ◽  
Satisfaction With Life ◽  
Cross Sectional Study ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Professional Organizations ◽  
Online Questionnaire ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Infected People ◽  
Work Related ◽  
High Workload

Abstract Background During COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare workers (HCWs) have had high workload and have been exposed to multiple psychosocial stressors. The aim of this study was to evaluate HCWs in terms of the relative contributions of socio-demographic and mental health variables on three burnout dimensions: personal, work-related, and client-related burnout. Methods A cross-sectional study was performed using an online questionnaire spread via social networks. A snowball technique supported by health care institutions and professional organizations was applied. Results A total of 2008 subjects completed the survey. Gender, parental status, marriage status, and salary reduction were found to be significant factors for personal burnout. Health problems and direct contact with infected people were significantly associated with more susceptibility to high personal and work-related burnout. Frontline working positions were associated with all three dimensions. Higher levels of stress and depression in HCWs were significantly associated with increased levels of all burnout dimensions. Higher levels of satisfaction with life and resilience were significantly associated with lower levels of all burnout dimensions. Conclusions All three burnout dimensions were associated with a specific set of covariates. Consideration of these three dimensions is important when designing future burnout prevention programs for HCWs.

scholarly journals The dimensions of public opinion on climate change: belief, issue salience and support for government action

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Crawley
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
The Political ◽  
Issue Salience ◽  
Apparent Lack ◽  
Government Action ◽  
Political Response

<p>Climate change is a problem that requires urgent attention. In most countries, large sections of the population accept that climate change is happening and that it is a serious problem. Despite this, the political response in many developed nations has so far been inadequate, and emissions continue to climb globally. Some authors have used this apparent lack of policy responsiveness to public preferences as evidence that vested interests have excessive influence over climate change policy. But this perspective does not fully account for the complexity of climate change opinion. For instance, many people who are highly concerned about climate change rank it as a low priority issue compared with issues such as the economy, healthcare and education. Moreover, some people who believe that climate change is happening and is a serious problem do not support government action to address it. </p> <p>I therefore investigate public opinion on climate change in terms of three dimensions: belief, issue salience and support for government action. Focussing on developed countries, I rely on survey data from Eurobarometer, the New Zealand Election Study and data collected as part of this research project. I investigate the nature of opinions with respect to these three dimensions and examine how opinions vary between individuals and across countries. Furthermore, I investigate the forces that shape climate opinion on these three dimensions, including external influence (such as messages from interest groups), individual characteristics (such as social and political attitudes) and country-level factors (such as country wealth). </p> <p>I find that belief is high in most developed countries, as is support for government action. However, salience is low in most countries, particularly in the less wealthy developed countries. Political orientation and other social attitudes relate positively to belief, issue salience and support for government action, although the relationships tend to be stronger for salience. By investigating the factors that shape climate opinion in different dimensions, this study contributes to knowledge of why people hold particular climate views. Moreover, my examination of the complexity of public opinion on climate change in terms of belief, issue salience and support for government action sheds light on why the political response to climate change has been ineffective in many countries.</p>

scholarly journals The Partisan Mask: Political Orientation, Collectivism, and Religiosity Predict Mask Use During COVID-19

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hohjin Im ◽  
Peiyi Wang ◽  
Chuansheng Chen
Keyword(s):  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Third Party ◽  
The Us ◽  
Political Conservatism ◽  
Strong Correlate ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Socioeconomic And Demographic Factors

In the United States, the COVID-19 pandemic became an unconventional vehicle to advance partisan rhetoric and antagonism. Using data available at the individual- (Study 1; N = 4,220), county- (Study 2; n = 3,046), and state-level (n = 49), we found that partisanship and political orientation was a robust and strong correlate of mask use. Political conservatism and Republican partisanship were related to downplaying the severity of COVID-19 and perceiving masks as being ineffective that, in turn, were related to lower mask use. In contrast, we found that counties with majority Democrat partisanship reported greater mask use, controlling for various socioeconomic and demographic factors. Lastly, states with strong cultural collectivism reported greater mask use while those with strong religiosity reported the opposite. States with greater Democrat partisanship and strong cultural collectivism subsequently reported lower COVID-19 deaths, mediated by greater mask use and lower COVID-19 cases, in the five months following the second wave of COVID-19 in the US during the Summer of 2020. Nonetheless, more than the majority for Democrats (91.58%), Republicans (77.52%), and third-party members (82.48%) reported using masks. Implications for findings are discussed.

scholarly journals Political Orientation as Psychological Defense or Basic Disposition? A Social Neuroscience Examination

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle Nash ◽  
Josh Leota
Keyword(s):  
Mean Amplitude ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Negativity Bias ◽  
Oddball Paradigm ◽  
Psychological Defense ◽  
Auditory Oddball ◽  
Conservative Beliefs ◽  
P3 Component ◽  
Negative Stimuli

AbstractPsychological views on political orientation generally agree that conservatism is associated with negativity bias but disagree on the form of that association. Some view conservatism as a psychological defense that insulates from negative stimuli and events. Others view conservatism as a consequence of increased dispositional sensitivity to negative stimuli and events. Further complicating matters, research shows that conservatives are sometimes more and sometimes less sensitive to negative stimuli and events. The current research integrates these opposing views and results. We reasoned that conservatives should typically be less sensitive to negative stimuli if conservative beliefs act as a psychological defense. However, when core components of conservative beliefs are threatened, the psychological defense may fall, and conservatives may show heightened sensitivity to negative stimuli. In two ERP studies, participants were randomly assigned to either an ostensibly real economic threat or a nonthreatening control condition. To measure reactivity to negative stimuli, we indexed the P3 component to aversive white noise bursts in an auditory oddball paradigm. In both studies, the relationship between increased conservatism and P3 mean amplitude was negative in the control condition but positive in threat condition (this relationship was stronger in Study 2). In Study 2, source localization of the P3 component revealed that, after threat, conservatism was associated with increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, regions associated with conflict-related processes. These results demonstrate that the link between conservatism and negativity bias is context-dependent, i.e., dependent on threat experiences.

Battle of Wits

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Holbrook ◽  
Lucía López-Rodríguez ◽  
Ángel Gómez
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Violent Conflict ◽  
Intergroup Bias ◽  
State Anger ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Cross Cultural Study ◽  
Political Conservatism ◽  
Biased Perception

Political conservatism and threat salience have been consistently associated with intergroup bias. However, prior research has not examined potential effects of conservatism and/or threat on the attribution of relative in-group/out-group intelligence. In a cross-cultural study conducted in Spain and the United Kingdom, priming violent conflict with ISIS led participants to view an in-group ally as relatively more intelligent than an out-group adversary, in an effect mediated by feelings of anger (but not fear or general arousal). Conservatism similarly predicted biased perception of the ally’s relative intellect, a tendency that was driven by militaristic (not social/fiscal) political attitudes but was not explained by associated increases in state anger following conflict cues. This overall pattern indicates that conflict cues and militaristic political orientation heighten assessments of relative intergroup intellect during warfare via distinct affective and attitudinal pathways.

scholarly journals Political Orientation Predicts Credulity Regarding Putative Hazards

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 651-660 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel M. T. Fessler ◽  
Anne C. Pisor ◽  
Colin Holbrook
Keyword(s):  
Optimal Level ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Negativity Bias ◽  
Accurate Information ◽  
Threat Sensitivity ◽  
The World

To benefit from information provided by other people, people must be somewhat credulous. However, credulity entails risks. The optimal level of credulity depends on the relative costs of believing misinformation and failing to attend to accurate information. When information concerns hazards, erroneous incredulity is often more costly than erroneous credulity, given that disregarding accurate warnings is more harmful than adopting unnecessary precautions. Because no equivalent asymmetry exists for information concerning benefits, people should generally be more credulous of hazard information than of benefit information. This adaptive negatively biased credulity is linked to negativity bias in general and is more prominent among people who believe the world to be more dangerous. Because both threat sensitivity and beliefs about the dangerousness of the world differ between conservatives and liberals, we predicted that conservatism would positively correlate with negatively biased credulity. Two online studies of Americans supported this prediction, potentially illuminating how politicians’ alarmist claims affect different portions of the electorate.

American Conservatism and the Democratic Tradition

1951 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert G. McCloskey
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
New Era ◽  
American Conservatism ◽  
Democratic Tradition ◽  
Majority Judgment ◽  
Political Conservatism ◽  
American Tradition ◽  
New Generation

In 1873, an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court filed a memorable dissenting opinion. His brethren had upheld a state-granted monopoly against the charge that it violated the new Fourteenth Amendment. The substance of that majority judgment has never been reversed, and it stands today as one of the great milestones in our constitutional law. But the dissent of Mr. Justice Field, though unproductive as to the specific constitutional doctrine he there espoused, is, from another viewpoint, even more noteworthy. For it marks — or we can conveniently take it as marking — the point in our intellectual history at which the democratic strain in the American tradition begins its subservience to political conservatism.The choice of a date is indeed somewhat arbitrary. A profound change in the national consciousness does not occur overnight, and the revision of the American ideology diat Field's dissent proclaimed was not yet complete in 1873. But Field was a child of his times, and he spoke with the voice of the new generation. His rambling discourse, with its moral overtones, is evidence that a new era in American political thinking had dawned.

scholarly journals Psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the Temporal Satisfaction with Life Scale (TSLS): A study on elderly attending to university programs

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-344
Author(s):  
Laura Galiana ◽  
Melchor Gutiérrez ◽  
Patricia Sancho ◽  
Amparo Oliver ◽  
José M. Tomás
Keyword(s):  
Life Satisfaction ◽  
External Validity ◽  
Satisfaction With Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Spanish Version ◽  
Satisfaction With Life Scale ◽  
Three Dimension ◽  
University Programs ◽  
Life Scale

Several measures have been developed for the operalization of well-being, standing out the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS). To cope with some of its problems the Temporal Satisfaction with Life Scale (TSLS) was developed. The aim of this study is to present and validate the Spanish version of the TSLS, in a sample elderly attending to University programs. The sample was composed of 737 elderly. Together with the TSLS, an indicator of general life satisfaction and the SF-8 Health Scale were used. Analyses included the study of factorial validity, estimations of reliability and external validity. Results of the confirmatory factor analysis were adequate: χ2(87)=454.593 (p<.001), CFI=.973; RMSEA=.085, showing appropriate fit for the three-dimension model posed. Internal consistency of the three dimensions was high: alpha values of .83 for past, .81 for present, and .86 for future life satisfaction. Additionally, results of external validity were as expected. The TSLS addresses the temporal axis in the measurement of life satisfaction, with psychometric guarantees. Its utilities are explained in the discussion.

scholarly journals Why Do Conservatives Report Being Happier Than Liberals? The Contribution of Neuroticism

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caitlin M. Burton ◽  
Jason E. Plaks ◽  
Jordan B. Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Big Five ◽  
Satisfaction With Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Demographic Variables ◽  
System Justification ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Big Five Traits ◽  
Group Memberships ◽  
Socioeconomic Status Group

Previous studies suggest that conservatives in the United States are happier than liberals. This difference has been attributed to factors including differences in socioeconomic status, group memberships, and system-justifying beliefs. We suggest that differences between liberals and conservatives in personality traits may provide an additional account for the "happiness gap". Specifically, we investigated the role of neuroticism (or conversely, emotional stability) in explaining the conservative-liberal happiness gap. In Study 1 (N = 619), we assessed the correlation between political orientation (PO) and satisfaction with life (SWL), controlling for the Big Five traits, religiosity, income, and demographic variables. Neuroticism, conscientiousness, and religiosity each accounted for the PO-SWL correlation. In Study 2 (N = 700), neuroticism, system justification beliefs, conscientiousness, and income each accounted for PO-SWL correlation. In both studies, neuroticism negatively correlated with conservatism. We suggest that individual differences in neuroticism represent a previously under-examined contributor to the SWL disparity between conservatives and liberals.

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