scholarly journals Personality factors, ideology, and sensitivity to change

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jahnavi R. Delmonico ◽  
Erin Michelle Buchanan

This study examined the potential for a predictive relationship between political conservatism and change detection. Research on the visual system has revealed a general tendency to overlook changes in a stationary scene when two versions of it are displayed alternately with a masking slide, known as the flicker paradigm. We examined whether political conservatism and various related measures predicted whether and how quickly changes were detected during a flicker paradigm task. Measures of interest were conservatism as measured by the Social and Economic Conservatism scale (Everett, 2013), openness as measured by the short form of the Big Five Inventory (John, Donahue & Kentle, 1991), authoritarianism as measured by the Right-Wing Authoritarianism scale (Altemeyer, 2006), political party, and a single bipolar conservatism scale. Despite predictions that greater conservatism and authoritarianism would shorten response latencies, authoritarianism appeared to lengthen the time it took to identify a change, while social conservatism shortened it. Openness and other forms of conservatism did not demonstrate significant predictive relationships. Implications of this pattern are discussed.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle Fischer ◽  
Quentin Atkinson ◽  
Ananish Chaudhuri

This chapter provides an overview of studies that use incentivised experiments to study political ideology. We look first at studies that conceptualise political ideology along a unidimensional liberal-conservative spectrum and explore whether there are behavioural differences between liberals and conservatives. While recent studies find that liberals display more pro-sociality, many other studies find that liberals and conservatives display similar levels of pro-social, ingroup-biased, normative, and punitive behaviour. We then turn to experiments that study two-dimensional political ideology as embodied in the concepts of economic conservatism/progressivism (often measured with the Social Dominance Orientation scale) and social conservatism/progressivism (usually measured with the Right-Wing Authoritarianism scale). In such experiments, economic conservatives display lower levels of pro-sociality and universalism and greater tolerance of inequality and tendencies to harm outgroups. Social conservatives tend to display “groupishness”, including distrusting anonymous strangers, cooperating with ingroup members, following rules, punishing in the ultimatum game, and sometimes harming outgroups.


2000 ◽  
Vol 86 (3) ◽  
pp. 738-744 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Evans

To explore the construct validity of the Attitudes About Reality Scale, a measure of personal epistemology grounded on a social constructionist to logical positivist continuum, 118 employees of a mental health center completed the Attitudes About Reality Scale, three subscales of the Interpersonal Reactivity Inventory as a measure of empathy, the Social Interest Inventory as a measure of the Adlerian social interest concept, the Multistimulus Types Ambiguity Tolerance–I as a measure of tolerance for ambiguity, the Right Wing Authoritarianism Scale, and the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale. Significant correlations were found between scores on the Attitudes About Reality Scale and both The Right Wing Authoritarianism Scale and Multiple Stimulus Types Ambiguity Tolerance–I as hypothesized. Those individuals holding master's and doctoral degrees scored significantly lower on the Attitudes About Reality Scale in the social constructionist direction than those with technical or trade school education, but no other differences on demographic measures were noted.


2006 ◽  
pp. 54-75
Author(s):  
Klaus Peter Friedrich

Facing the decisive struggle between Nazism and Soviet communism for dominance in Europe, in 1942/43 Polish communists sojourning in the USSR espoused anti-German concepts of the political right. Their aim was an ethnic Polish ‘national communism’. Meanwhile, the Polish Workers’ Party in the occupied country advocated a maximum intensification of civilian resistance and partisan struggle. In this context, commentaries on the Nazi judeocide were an important element in their endeavors to influence the prevailing mood in the country: The underground communist press often pointed to the fate of the murdered Jews as a warning in order to make it clear to the Polish population where a deficient lack of resistance could lead. However, an agreed, unconditional Polish and Jewish armed resistance did not come about. At the same time, the communist press constantly expanded its demagogic confrontation with Polish “reactionaries” and accused them of shared responsibility for the Nazi murder of the Jews, while the Polish government (in London) was attacked for its failure. This antagonism was intensified in the fierce dispute between the Polish and Soviet governments after the rift which followed revelations about the Katyn massacre. Now the communist propaganda image of the enemy came to the fore in respect to the government and its representatives in occupied Poland. It viewed the government-in-exile as being allied with the “reactionaries,” indifferent to the murder of the Jews, and thus acting ultimately on behalf of Nazi German policy. The communists denounced the real and supposed antisemitism of their adversaries more and more bluntly. In view of their political isolation, they coupled them together, in an undifferentiated manner, extending from the right-wing radical ONR to the social democrats and the other parties represented in the underground parliament loyal to the London based Polish government. Thereby communist propaganda tried to discredit their opponents and to justify the need for a new start in a post-war Poland whose fate should be shaped by the revolutionary left. They were thus paving the way for the ultimate communist takeover


2020 ◽  
Vol 102 ◽  
pp. 656-676
Author(s):  
Igor V. Omeliyanchuk

The article examines the main forms and methods of agitation and propagandistic activities of monarchic parties in Russia in the beginning of the 20th century. Among them the author singles out such ones as periodical press, publication of books, brochures and flyers, organization of manifestations, religious processions, public prayers and funeral services, sending deputations to the monarch, organization of public lectures and readings for the people, as well as various philanthropic events. Using various forms of propagandistic activities the monarchists aspired to embrace all social groups and classes of the population in order to organize all-class and all-estate political movement in support of the autocracy. While they gained certain success in promoting their ideology, the Rights, nevertheless, lost to their adversaries from the radical opposition camp, as the monarchists constrained by their conservative ideology, could not promise immediate social and political changes to the population, and that fact was excessively used by their opponents. Moreover, the ideological paradigm of the Right camp expressed in the “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality” formula no longer agreed with the social and economic realities of Russia due to modernization processes that were underway in the country from the middle of the 19th century.


2021 ◽  
pp. 194855062097802
Author(s):  
Todd K. Hartman ◽  
Thomas V. A. Stocks ◽  
Ryan McKay ◽  
Jilly Gibson-Miller ◽  
Liat Levita ◽  
...  

Research has demonstrated that situational factors such as perceived threats to the social order activate latent authoritarianism. The deadly COVID-19 pandemic presents a rare opportunity to test whether existential threat stemming from an indiscriminate virus moderates the relationship between authoritarianism and political attitudes toward the nation and out-groups. Using data from two large nationally representative samples of adults in the United Kingdom ( N = 2,025) and Republic of Ireland ( N = 1,041) collected during the initial phases of strict lockdown measures in both countries, we find that the associations between right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and (1) nationalism and (2) anti-immigrant attitudes are conditional on levels of perceived threat. As anxiety about the COVID-19 pandemic increases, so too does the effect of RWA on those political outcomes. Thus, it appears that existential threats to humanity from the COVID-19 pandemic moderate expressions of authoritarianism in society.


2012 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beth Holmgren

In the turbulent context of interwar Polish politics, a period bookended by the right-wing nationalists’ repression of an ethnically heterogeneous state, several popular high-quality cabarets persisted in Warsaw even as they provoked and defied the nationalists’ harsh criticism. In their best, most influential incarnation, Qui pro Quo (1919–1932) and its successors, these literary cabarets violated the right’s value system through their shows’ insistent metropolitan focus, their stars’ role-modeling of immoral behavior and parodic impersonation, and their companies’ explicitly Jewish–Gentile collaboration. In the community of the cabaret, which was even more bohemian and déclassé than that of the legitimate theater, the social and ethnic antagonisms of everyday Warsaw society mattered relatively little. Writers and players bonded with each other, above all, in furious pursuit of fun, fortune, celebrity, artistic kudos, and putting on a hit show. This analysis details how the contents and stars of Qui pro Quo challenged right-wing values. Its shows advertised the capital as a sumptuous metropolis as well as a home to an eccentric array of plebeian and underworld types, including variations on the cwaniak warszawski enacted by comedian Adolf Dymsza. Its chief female stars—Zula Pogorzelska, Mira Zimińska, and Hanna Ordonówna—incarnated big-city glamour and sexual emancipation. Its recurring Jewish characters—Józef Urstein’s Pikuś and Kazimierz Krukowski’s Lopek—functioned as modern-day Warsaw’s everymen, beleaguered and bedazzled as they assimilated to city life. Qui pro Quo’s popular defense against an exclusionary nationalism showcased collaborative artistry and diverse, charismatic stars.


2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 947-968 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua C Gordon

AbstractOver the past 25 years, Sweden has gone from having one of the most generous unemployment benefit systems among the rich democracies to one of the least. This article advances a multi-causal explanation for this unexpected outcome. It shows how the benefit system became a target of successive right-wing governments due to its role in fostering social democratic hegemony. Employer groups, radicalized by the turbulent 1970s more profoundly than elsewhere, sought to undermine the system, and their abandonment of corporatism in the early 1990s limited unions’ capacity to restrain right-wing governments in retrenchment initiatives. Two further developments help to explain the surprising political resilience of the cuts: the emergence of a private (supplementary) insurance regime and a realignment of working-class voters from the Social Democrats to parties of the right, especially the nativist Sweden Democrats, in the context of a liberal refugee/asylum policy.


2020 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia Russo ◽  
Michele Roccato ◽  
Ugo Merlone

Abstract Archival, correlational, and experimental studies converge showing strong links between societal threat and authoritarianism. However, inconsistent with the social cognitive studies showing that our perception of the reality is systematically biased, the literature on the threat-authoritarianism relations has largely ignored the connection between the actual societal threat and its perception. In this study, we analyzed the relation between objective societal threat and authoritarians’ perception of it, hypothesizing that authoritarians would tend to overestimate societal threat and that such overestimation would increase the endorsement of authoritarian attitudes and the preference for authoritarian political systems. Using an experimental approach, we studied the relations between right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), actual societal threat (manipulated as low vs. moderate), and perceived societal threat working with an Italian community sample (N = 209, Mage = 29.70, SD = 9.53, 64.1% women). Actual threat and RWA equally predicted participants’ threat perception, while their interaction did not. In turn, threat perception further increased RWA and support to authoritarian political system. We discussed the results in terms of a vicious circle whereby authoritarians overestimate societal threat and such overestimation reinforces authoritarian attitudes.


Author(s):  
Pradeep K. Chhibber ◽  
Rahul Verma

To the surprise of many, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) singlehandedly won a majority in the national elections of 2014. Since then the party which, once had two seats in parliament, has come to govern 21 states in India. How did the BJP become so successful? The BJP is now the principal carrier of conservatism in India. This was not the case at independence. The ideological roots of the BJP lie in the idea of Hindu majoritarianism. Over the years the BJP succeeded in accommodating conservative elements not only from the Congress but also from other right-wing parties. Its electoral success has been aided by the social and economic changes in India since the 1990s. These changes, however, have also generated contradictions within the ideological coalitions that brought about the rise of the BJP and pose a potential challenge to the party as it moves to consolidate its position.


2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Van Hiel ◽  
I. Cornelis ◽  
A. Roets

The present research investigates in a student (N = 183) and a voter sample (N = 276) whether the relationships between the Five‐Factor Model (FFM) personality dimensions and social attitudes (i.e. Right‐Wing Authoritarianism [RWA] and Social Dominance Orientation [SDO]) are mediated by social worldviews (i.e. dangerous and jungle worldviews). Two important results were obtained. First, the perception of the world as inherently dangerous and chaotic partially mediated the relationships of the personality dimensions Openness and Neuroticism and the social attitude RWA. Second, the jungle worldview completely mediated the relationships between Agreeableness and SDO, but considerable item overlap between the jungle worldview and SDO was also noted. It was further revealed that acquiescence response set and item overlap had an impact on social worldviews and attitudes, but that their relationships were hardly affected by these biases. The discussion focuses on the status of social worldviews to explain social attitudes. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


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