scholarly journals Rediscovering Tomkins’ Polarity Theory: Humanism, Normativism, and the Psychological Basis of Left-Right Ideological Conflict in the U.S. and Sweden

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Artur Nilsson ◽  
John Jost
Keyword(s):  
Social Dominance ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Resistance To Change ◽  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
Social Dominance Orientation ◽  
System Justification ◽  
Right Wing Authoritarianism ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
The Right ◽  
The U.S

According to Silvan Tomkins’ polarity theory, ideological thought is universally structured by a clash between two opposing worldviews. On the left, a humanistic worldview seeks to uphold the intrinsic value of the person; on the right, a normative worldview holds that human worth is contingent upon conformity to rules. In this article, we situate humanism and normativism within the context of contemporary models of political ideology as a function of motivated social cognition, beliefs about the social world, and personality traits. In four studies conducted in the U.S. and Sweden, normativism was robustly associated with rightist (or conservative) self-placement; conservative issue preferences; resistance to change and acceptance of inequality; right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation; system justification and its underlying epistemic and existential motives to reduce uncertainty and threat; and a lack of openness, emotionality, and honesty-humility. Humanism exhibited the opposite relations to most of these constructs, but it was largely unrelated to epistemic and existential needs. Humanism was strongly associated with preferences for equality, openness to change, and low levels of authoritarianism, social dominance, and general and economic system justification. We conclude that polarity theory possesses considerable potential to explain how conflicts between worldviews shape contemporary politics.

scholarly journals Experiments in political psychology

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle Fischer ◽  
Quentin Atkinson ◽  
Ananish Chaudhuri
Keyword(s):  
Social Dominance ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Ultimatum Game ◽  
Social Dominance Orientation ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Right Wing Authoritarianism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Orientation Scale ◽  
The Right ◽  
Social Conservatism

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.

Differentiating Between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Voters Using Facets of Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Social-Dominance Orientation

2017 ◽  
Vol 120 (3) ◽  
pp. 364-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard Michael Crowson ◽  
Joyce A. Brandes
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
Social Dominance ◽  
Discriminant Validity ◽  
Social Dominance Orientation ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Right Wing Authoritarianism ◽  
Political Outcome ◽  
The Right

Historically, much of the research on right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation has proceeded from the assumption that they are unidimensional. Recently, researchers have begun to seriously consider the possibility that they are multidimensional in nature and should be measured as such. Several studies have examined the unique relationships between right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation facets and social and political outcome measures of interest. However, there have been no efforts to include the full slate of right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation facets as predictors in the same model. This is problematic when investigating the discriminant validity of these facets, given the potential empirical overlap among the facets both within and across scales. We included facets of right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation as predictors of U.S. voters’ intentions to vote for Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election. Data were collected in September 2016. We found evidence for the discriminant validity of several of the right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation facets.

scholarly journals The ideological basis of antiscientific attitudes: Effects of authoritarianism, conservatism, religiosity, social dominance, and system justification

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 518-549
Author(s):  
Flávio Azevedo ◽  
John T. Jost
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Social Dominance ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Social Dominance Orientation ◽  
General System ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
System Justification ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Scientific Experts ◽  
Low Education

Serious concerns about public distrust of scientific experts and the spread of misinformation are growing in the US and elsewhere. To gauge ideological and psychological variability in attitudes toward science, we conducted an extensive analysis of public opinion data based on a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults ( N = 1,500) and a large replication sample ( N = 2,119). We estimated the unique effects of partisanship, symbolic and operational forms of political ideology, right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), social dominance orientation (SDO), and general system justification (GSJ), after adjusting for demographic factors. Multiverse analyses revealed that (a) conservatism and SDO were significant predictors of distrust of climate science in > 99.9% of model specifications, with conservatism accounting for 80% of the total variance; (b) conservatism, RWA, religiosity, (male) sex, (low) education, (low) income, and distrust of climate science were significant predictors of skepticism about science in general (vs. faith) in > 99.9% of model specifications; (c) conservatism, RWA, (low) education, and distrust of climate science were significant predictors of trust in ordinary people (over scientific experts) > 99.9% of the time; and (d) GSJ was a significant predictor of trust in scientific experts (over ordinary people) 81% of the time, after adjusting for all other demographic and ideological factors. Implications for the role of science in democratic society are discussed.

scholarly journals Don’t Tread on Me

2012 ◽  
Vol 38 (8) ◽  
pp. 1018-1029 ◽  
Author(s):  
Collin D. Barnes ◽  
Ryan P. Brown ◽  
Lindsey L. Osterman
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Social Dominance ◽  
Social Dominance Orientation ◽  
National Sample ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Right Wing Authoritarianism ◽  
The U.S

Using both college students and a national sample of adults, the authors report evidence linking the ideology of masculine honor in the U.S. with militant responses to terrorism. In Study 1, individuals’ honor ideology endorsement predicted, among other outcomes, open-ended hostile responses to a fictitious attack on the Statue of Liberty and support for the use of extreme counterterrorism measures (e.g., severe interrogations), controlling for right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and other covariates. In Study 2, the authors used a regional classification to distinguish honor state respondents from nonhonor state respondents, as has traditionally been done in the literature, and showed that students attending a southwestern university desired the death of the terrorists responsible for 9/11 more than did their northern counterparts. These studies are the first to show that masculine honor ideology in the U.S. has implications for the intergroup phenomenon of people’s responses to terrorism.

scholarly journals Right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation predict rejection of science and scientists

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 550-567
Author(s):  
John R. Kerr ◽  
Marc S. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Social Dominance ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Social Dominance Orientation ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Right Wing Authoritarianism ◽  
Scientific Issue ◽  
Ideological Attitudes ◽  
First Time ◽  
Conspiracy Thinking

Previous research has highlighted how ideological factors such as political self-identification, religiosity and conspiracy thinking influence our beliefs about scientific issues such as climate change and vaccination. Across three studies (combined N = 9,022) we expand on this line of inquiry to show for the first time that the ideological attitudes relating to authoritarianism and group-based dominance predict disagreement with the scientific consensus in several scientific domains. We show these effects are almost entirely mediated by varying combinations of ideological (political ideology, religiosity, free-market endorsement, conspiracy thinking) and science-specific (scientific knowledge, trust in scientists) constructs, depending on the scientific issue in question. Importantly, a general distrust of science and scientists emerges as the most consistent mediator across different scientific domains. We find that, consistent with previous research, the ideological roots of rejection of science vary across scientific issues. However, we also show that these roots may share a common origin in ideological attitudes regarding authority and equality.

Attitudes towards tall poppies: the role of Authoritarianism, Social Dominance Orientation, political ideologies, and self-esteem in New Zealand.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathew Marques ◽  
Norman T. Feather ◽  
Darren E. J. Austin ◽  
Chris G Sibley
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Social Dominance ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Social Dominance Orientation ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
High Status ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Right Wing Authoritarianism ◽  
Political Ideologies

Individuals occupying high-status positions are sometimes victims of the tall poppy syndrome where people want to see them cut down to size. These attitudes reflect a tension between achievement, authority, and equality. In a pre-registered study (Study 1: N = 47,951), and a replication (Study 2: N = 5,569), of two representative New Zealand samples we investigated how social dominance orientation, right-wing authoritarianism, political ideologies and self-esteem predicted favoring the fall of the tall poppy. Novel findings showed individuals high in social dominance orientation favored the fall of the tall poppy. In both studies, high authoritarian aggression and submission, and low conventionalism (in Study 1 only) were also associated with negative tall poppy attitudes. So too were individuals with lower self-esteem and who were less conservative in their political ideology. These findings advance our understanding of how group-based hierarchy and inequality relate to attitudes towards individuals in high status positions.

scholarly journals First Impressions of Faces of Refugees Are More Strongly Influenced by Target Cues and Perceiver Attitudes Than by Sheer Group Affiliation

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joscha Stecker ◽  
Paul C. Bürkner ◽  
Jens H. Hellmann ◽  
Steffen Nestler ◽  
Mitja D. Back
Keyword(s):  
Social Dominance ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Social Dominance Orientation ◽  
Interactive Effects ◽  
First Impressions ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Group Affiliation ◽  
Total N ◽  
Right Wing Authoritarianism

The importance of first impressions for various intrapersonal, social and societal outcomes is well established. First impressions towards refugees as individual members of one of the most heatedly discussed social groups in Western societies should play a key role in facilitating or impeding successful social integration. However, this issue is currently underexplored. To help understand first impressions towards refugee individuals, we conducted two studies, in which German perceivers (total N = 938) evaluated 60 (Study 1) or 48 (Study 2) male target photos of Western individuals (presented as Germans) and Middle Eastern individuals (presented as refugees). In Study 2, we included information about targets’ religious affiliations (Christian, Muslim) and religiousness (weakly religious, devout). Targets’ facial characteristics (physical attractiveness, smiling) were coded, and perceiver attitudes (right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, right-wing political ideology) were assessed. Results showed (a) no overall devaluation of refugees or Muslims, (b) strong effects of target attractiveness and smiling on evaluations across individuals of different group affiliations, (c) strong effects of perceiver attitudes towards refugees and Muslims, and (d) no interactive effects of perceiver attitudes and target cues on evaluations. It is important to note that these results should not be interpreted as any doubt about the profound experiences of discrimination and prejudices faced by minorities such as refugees. Instead, they underline the utility of an individual differences approach to better understand the circumstances under which devaluations of minoritized individuals suchs as refugees are amplified or reduced.

scholarly journals First Impressions of Refugees are More Strongly Influenced by Target Cues and Perceiver Attitudes Than by Sheer Group Affiliation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joscha Stecker ◽  
Paul - Christian Bürkner ◽  
Jens Hellmann ◽  
Steffen Nestler ◽  
Mitja Back
Keyword(s):  
Social Dominance ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Social Dominance Orientation ◽  
Interactive Effects ◽  
First Impressions ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Group Affiliation ◽  
Total N ◽  
Right Wing Authoritarianism

The importance of first impressions for various intrapersonal, social and societal outcomes is well established. Although, first impressions towards refugees as individual members one of the most heatedly discussed social groups in Western societies, should play a key role in facilitating or impeding successful social integration, this issue is currently underexplored. To help understanding first impressions towards refugee individuals, we conducted two studies, in which German perceivers (total N = 938) evaluated 60 (Study 1) and 48 (Study 2) male target photos of Western individuals (presented as Germans) and Middle Eastern individuals (presented as refugees). In Study 2, we included information about targets’ religious affilliations (Christian, Muslim) and religiousness (weakly religious, devout). Targets’ facial characteristics (physical attractiveness, smiling) were coded, and perceiver attitudes (right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, political ideology) were assessed. Results showed (a) no overall devaluation of refugees or Muslims, (b) strong effects of target attractiveness and smiling on evaluations across individuals of different group affiliations, (c) strong effects of perceiver attitudes towards refugees and Muslims, and (d) no interactive effects of perceiver attitudes and target cues on evaluations. Together, these findings underline the utility of an individual difference approach to better understand evaluations of refugees.

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