ArticlePDF AvailableLiterature Review

Political Ideology: Its Structure, Functions, and Elective Affinities

February 2009
Annual Review of Psychology 60(1):307-37

DOI:10.1146/annurev.psych.60.110707.163600

Source
PubMed

Authors:

John T Jost

New York University

Christopher Federico

University of Minnesota

Jaime Napier

New York University Abu Dhabi

Ideology has re-emerged as an important topic of inquiry among social, personality, and political psychologists. In this review, we examine recent theory and research concerning the structure, contents, and functions of ideological belief systems. We begin by defining the construct and placing it in historical and philosophical context. We then examine different perspectives on how many (and what types of) dimensions individuals use to organize their political opinions. We investigate (a) how and to what extent individuals acquire the discursive contents associated with various ideologies, and (b) the social-psychological functions that these ideologies serve for those who adopt them. Our review highlights "elective affinities" between situational and dispositional needs of individuals and groups and the structure and contents of specific ideologies. Finally, we consider the consequences of ideology, especially with respect to attitudes, evaluations, and processes of system justification.

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ANRV364-PS60-12 ARI 27 October 2008 16:17

Political Ideology:

Its Structure, Functions,

and Elective Afﬁnities

John T. Jost,1Christopher M. Federico,2

and Jaime L. Napier1

1Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York 10003;

2Departments of Psychology and Political Science, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis,

Minnesota 55455; email: john.jost@nyu.edu, federico@umn.edu, jnapier@nyu.edu

Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2009. 60:307–37

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Key Words

political orientation, motivated social cognition, system justiﬁcation,

authoritarianism

Abstract

Ideology has re-emerged as an important topic of inquiry among so-

cial, personality, and political psychologists. In this review, we examine

recent theory and research concerning the structure, contents, and func-

tions of ideological belief systems. We begin by deﬁning the construct

and placing it in historical and philosophical context. We then examine

different perspectives on how many (and what types of) dimensions in-

dividuals use to organize their political opinions. We investigate (a) how

and to what extent individuals acquire the discursive contents associ-

ated with various ideologies, and (b) the social-psychological functions

that these ideologies serve for those who adopt them. Our review high-

lights “elective afﬁnities” between situational and dispositional needs of

individuals and groups and the structure and contents of speciﬁc ideolo-

gies. Finally, we consider the consequences of ideology, especially with

respect to attitudes, evaluations, and processes of system justiﬁcation.

307

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Contents

INTRODUCTION .................. 308

WHAT IS AN IDEOLOGY? ......... 308

Basic Deﬁnitions ................... 309

Overcoming the Historical Tension

Between Critical and

Value-Neutral Approaches ...... 309

THE DIMENSIONAL

STRUCTURE OF POLITICAL

ATTITUDES ..................... 310

The Traditional Notion of a Single

Left-Right Dimension .......... 310

Multidimensional Models of

Ideology........................ 312

Reconciling Unidimensional and

Multidimensional Approaches . . . 313

CONTENTS OF IDEOLOGIES

AND THEIR SOCIAL

PSYCHOLOGICAL

FUNCTIONS .................... 315

From the Top Down: Elite

Construction and Dissemination

of the Discursive

Superstructure .................. 315

From the Bottom Up: Psychological

Origins of the Motivational

Substructure .................... 317

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL

CONSEQUENCES OF

IDEOLOGY ...................... 323

Effects on the Evaluations

of Issues, Parties, Candidates,

and Other Attitude Objects ...... 324

Effects on Implicit and Explicit

Intergroup Attitudes ............ 325

Ideology as a System-Justifying

Device ......................... 326

CONCLUDING REMARKS ......... 327

INTRODUCTION

Goethe’s (1809/1966) Enlightenment-era novel,

Elective Afﬁnities, invites the reader to con-

sider parallels between the law-governed man-

ner in which chemical elements combine and

separate and the forces of attraction and re-

pulsion in human social relationships. In an

early passage foreshadowing clandestine af-

fairs, one of the major characters, who has

been boning up on chemistry textbooks, ex-

plains his fascination with the chemical reaction

(pp. 39–44): “[I]t really looks as though one re-

lation had been deliberately chosen in prefer-

ence to another,” so much so that “we believe

these elements capable of exercising some sort

of willpower and selection, and feel perfectly

justiﬁed using the term ‘elective afﬁnities’!”

Sociologist Max Weber later picked Goethe’s

concept of elective afﬁnity (Wahlverwandtschaft)

to characterize the link between ideas (or be-

lief systems) and interests (or needs), that is,

the “selective process” by which “ideas and

their publics... ﬁnd their afﬁnities” (Gerth &

Mills 1948/1970, p. 63; see also Lewins 1989).

From this perspective, people can be said to

choose ideas, but there is also an important

and reciprocal sense in which ideas choose

people.

We think that the metaphor of elective

afﬁnities remains a promising one for con-

ceiving of the forces of mutual attraction that

exist between the structure and contents of

belief systems and the underlying needs and

motives of individuals and groups who sub-

scribe to them. These forces of attraction—

or, in the language of Tomkins (1963), “ideo-

affective resonances”—are the focus of our

review. In rendering a social psychological

analysis of this subject matter, we identify a

set of relational motives, epistemic motives,

and existential motives that help to explain

why certain people—once they are exposed to

certain political ideas—stick with those ideas

(and the ideas stick with them). In doing so,

we assume that ideological outcomes result

from a combination of top-down socializa-

tion processes and bottom-up psychological

predispositions.

WHAT IS AN IDEOLOGY?

Ideology has been dubbed “the most elu-

sive concept in the whole of social science”

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(McLellan 1986, p. 1). Its practitioners have

been accused, with more than a little justice, of

“semantic promiscuity” (Gerring 1997, p. 957;

see also Converse 1964, p. 207). Many scholars

address the deﬁnitional challenge by listing the

plethora of deﬁnitions that exist in the litera-

ture, in the hope that the target can be discerned

from the pattern of ﬁring (e.g., Gerring 1997,

pp. 958–959; Jost 2006, p. 653; Lane 1962,

pp. 13–14). Because space is precious, we es-

chew this strategy, tempting though it is.

Basic Deﬁnitions

We are inclined to begin instead with a simple,

general, and hopefully uncontroversial text-

book deﬁnition of political ideology, such as

that offered by Erikson & Tedin (2003), namely

a “set of beliefs about the proper order of soci-

ety and how it can be achieved” (p. 64; see also

Adorno et al. 1950, Campbell et al. 1960/1965,

Kerlinger 1984). Denzau & North (1994/2000)

suggest something similar, except that they also

highlight the role of social groups or collec-

tivities (see also Parsons 1951): “ideologies are

the shared framework of mental models that

groups of individuals possess that provide both

an interpretation of the environment and a pre-

scription as to how that environment should be

structured” (p. 24). If one accepts that ideology

is shared, that it helps to interpret the social

world, and that it normatively speciﬁes (or re-

quires) good and proper ways of addressing life’s

problems, then it is easy to see how ideology re-

ﬂects and reinforces what psychologists might

refer to as relational, epistemic, and existential

needs or motives ( Jost et al. 2008a). These are

the major sources of elective afﬁnities that we

focus on in this review.

Speciﬁc ideologies crystallize and commu-

nicate the widely (but not unanimously) shared

beliefs, opinions, and values of an identiﬁable

group, class, constituency, or society (Freeden

2001, Knight 2006). Ideologies also endeavor

to describe or interpret the world as it is—by

making assertions or assumptions about human

nature, historical events, present realities, and

future possibilities—and to envision the world

Elective afﬁnity:

force of mutual

attraction involving

the structure and

contents of belief

systems and the

motives of their

adherents

Relational motives:

the desire to afﬁliate

and establish

interpersonal

relationships; a need

for personal or social

identiﬁcation,

solidarity with others,

and shared reality

Epistemic motives:

the drive to reduce

uncertainty,

complexity, or

ambiguity; cognitive

preference for

certainty, structure,

order, and/or closure

Existential motives:

the drive to manage

threatening

circumstances; a

personal search for

security, self-esteem,

and meaning in life

System justiﬁcation:

motivation to defend,

bolster, and justify the

status quo; tendency to

view current social

arrangements as fair,

legitimate, and

desirable

as it should be, specifying acceptable means of

attaining social, economic, and political ideals.

To the extent that different ideologies represent

socially shared but competing philosophies of

life and how it should be lived (and how so-

ciety should be governed), it stands to reason

that different ideologies should both elicit and

express at least somewhat different social, cog-

nitive, and motivational styles or tendencies on

the part of their adherents (see also Jost 2006).

Overcoming the Historical Tension

Between Critical and Value-Neutral

Approaches

Philosophers and social scientists have long dis-

agreed about whether to embrace a critical,

even judgmental tone in describing and analyz-

ing ideologies or, alternatively, to adopt a more

value-neutral posture ( Jost et al. 2008b, Knight

2006). The former, more critical tradition de-

scends from the writings of Marx & Engels

(1846/1970), who regarded ideology (in con-

trast to science) as a potentially dangerous form

of illusion and mystiﬁcation that typically serves

to conceal and maintain exploitative social rela-

tions. Along these lines, Mannheim (1936) de-

picted certain ideologies as “more or less con-

scious disguises of the real nature of a situation”

(p. 55). Habermas (1989), too, treated ideology

as a form of “systematically distorted communi-

cation,” and this characterization remains com-

mon in certain circles of social theorists. The

pejorative cast of ideology survives to some ex-

tent in social psychological theories of social

dominance and system justiﬁcation ( Jost et al.

2004a, Sidanius & Pratto 1999).

However, most empirical research in sociol-

ogy, psychology, and political science reﬂects an

ostensibly value-neutral conception, according

to which “ideology” refers indiscriminately to

any belief system, that is, to any “conﬁguration

of ideas and attitudes in which the elements are

bound together by some form of constraint or

functional interdependence” (Converse 1964,

p. 206). In this tradition of scholarship, ide-

ology is treated as a “relatively benign orga-

nizing device” (Knight 2006, p. 622), and its

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cognitive function of structuring political

knowledge and expertise is emphasized. Re-

searchers tend to conclude that members of

the public are ideological only to the extent

that they hold attitudes that are stable, logi-

cal, coherent, consistent, and relatively sophis-

ticated or knowledgeable (e.g., Converse 2000;

Feldman 1988, 2003; Kinder 1998; but see

Gerring 1997 and Jost 2006, p. 657, for ac-

counts that put more conceptual space between

constructs of ideology and sophistication).

Insights that emerge from critical and value-

neutral inquiries have frequently been juxta-

posed and assumed to be incompatible with one

another, and scholars from the two traditions

seem rarely (if ever) to communicate with one

another. However, we propose that these two

approaches are not mutually exclusive insofar

as the same belief systems can simultaneously

serve multiple (i.e., epistemic, existential, and

relational) functions. That is, we propose that

a given ideology can reﬂect both genuine (and

even highly accurate) attempts to understand,

interpret, and organize information about the

political world as well as conscious or uncon-

scious tendencies to rationalize the way things

are or, alternatively, the desire for them to be

different (e.g., Jost et al. 2003b,c). In this review,

we summarize theory and research bearing on

a host of social psychological variables, some

of which would be expected to increase (or de-

crease) ideological coherence, stability, and so-

phistication, whereas others would be expected

to increase (or decrease) ideological distortion,

rationalization, and obfuscation.

THE DIMENSIONAL STRUCTURE

OF POLITICAL ATTITUDES

One of the perennial questions asked by social

and political psychologists concerns the struc-

ture of ideology, that is, the manner and ex-

tent to which political attitudes are cognitively

organized according to one or more dimen-

sions of preference or judgment (e.g., Converse

2006, Duckitt 2001, Eagly & Chaiken 1998,

Eysenck 1954/1999, Feldman 2003, Kerlinger

1984). Most researchers assume that ideology is

represented in memory as a kind of schema—

i.e., a learned knowledge structure consisting

of an interrelated network of beliefs, opinions,

and values (Fiske et al. 1990, Hamill et al. 1985,

Judd & Krosnick 1989, Lau & Redlawsk 2001;

see also Erikson & Tedin 2003, Kinder 1998).

However, disagreement persists concerning the

number of dimensions that are employed (or

required) to organize the contents of the ide-

ological schema of the ordinary citizen. In this

section of the review, we summarize the high-

lights of this debate.

The Traditional Notion of a Single

Left-Right Dimension

Since the time of the French Revolution, ideo-

logical opinions have been classiﬁed most often

in terms of a single left-right dimension. This

usage derives from the fact that late-eighteenth-

century supporters of the status quo sat on

the right side of the French Assembly hall and

its opponents sat on the left. In the United

States and elsewhere, it is becoming increas-

ingly common to substitute “liberal” and “con-

servative” for “left” and “right,” respectively,

and this equation expresses well the long-lasting

ideological divide concerning preferences for

change versus stability, which goes back at least

as far as 1789. Much of the ideological con-

ﬂict over change versus the status quo, there-

fore, pertains to age-old disputes concerning

the proper role of hierarchy, authority, and in-

equality (Bobbio 1996, Burke 1790/1987).

This formulation of the left-right distinc-

tion and many others contain two interrelated

aspects, namely (a) advocating versus resisting

social change (as opposed to tradition), and

(b) rejecting versus accepting inequality ( Jost

et al. 2003b,c). This bipartite deﬁnition

should be relatively noncontroversial (but see

Greenberg & Jonas 2003), and it accords with

numerous characterizations of the left and right

offered by political scientists (e.g., Erikson

& Tedin 2003, p. 65; Lipset & Raab 1978,

p. 19; McClosky & Zaller 1984, p. 189;

Rathbun 2007, pp. 382–383). Left-wing and

right-wing respondents alike in the United

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States, Germany, and the Netherlands asso-

ciated the right with such terms as “conser-

vative,” “system maintenance,” “order,” “in-

dividualism,” “capitalism,” “nationalism,” and

“fascism,” and they associated the left with

“progressive,” “system change,” “equality,”

“solidarity,” “protest,” “opposition,” “radi-

cal,” “socialism,” and “communism” (Fuchs &

Klingemann 1990, pp. 213–214). The two core

aspects of the left-right dimension (attitudes

concerning change versus stability and equality

versus inequality) are correlated for historical

reasons owing to the fact that over the past sev-

eral centuries, Western societies have become

more egalitarian in terms of human rights and

liberties, economic distribution, and the disper-

sion of political power. In some cases, social and

economic equality increased gradually, and in

other cases it occurred because of revolutionary

events, which were often resisted or opposed

by conservatives and those identiﬁed with the

right (e.g., Burke 1790/1987, Hirschman 1991,

Lipset & Raab 1978; see also Nosek et al. 2009).

Scholars typically agree on the historical and

philosophical signiﬁcance of the left-right dis-

tinction, and it is clear that “political elites” in

government, party and activist organizations,

the media, and academia make relatively easy

and frequent use of this dimension in political

discourse and decision-making (e.g., Jennings

1992, McCarty et al. 2006, McClosky & Zaller

1984, Poole & Rosenthal 1997). Nevertheless,

the work of Converse (1964) generated con-

siderable skepticism about whether ordinary

citizens actually use the speciﬁc ideological con-

tents associated with left and right to orga-

nize their political attitudes (e.g., Bishop 2005;

Converse 2000; Feldman 1988, 2003; Fiorina

2005; Kinder 1998). A related concern is

whether a single survey item that asks partici-

pants to place themselves on a left-right con-

tinuum is theoretically and methodologically

useful (Knight 1999). To address these peren-

nially tricky questions, Jost (2006) revisited the

strong claim that ordinary citizens are truly “in-

nocent of ideology” and found, among other

things, that ideological self-placement was an

extremely strong predictor of voting intentions

in the American National Election Studies be-

tween 1972 and 2004. This comports with other

evidence that ideology affects even modestly in-

formed citizens’ political attitudes (Abramowitz

& Saunders 2008, Barker & Tinnick 2006,

Erikson & Tedin 2003, Feldman 2003, Jacoby

1991, Knutsen 1995, Layman & Carsey 2002).

Although it is clear that people are far from

perfect in their use of abstract ideological con-

cepts, most citizens can and do use a subset of

core values or principles that, for all intents

and purposes, may be considered ideological

in the sense of being broad postures that ex-

plain and justify different states of social and

political affairs (e.g., Feldman 1988; Feldman &

Steenbergen 2001; Goren 2004; Jost et al.

2003b,c; Lavine et al. 1997; McCann 2008;

Pefﬂey & Hurwitz 1985; Rathbun 2007).

Jost et al. (2003b,c) proposed that these

two core aspects of the left-right ideological

dimension are rooted in a set of interrelated

epistemic, existential, and relational needs or

motives. That is, the dimensional structure

and attitudinal contents of liberalism and con-

servatism were theorized to stem, at least in

part, from basic social psychological orienta-

tions concerning uncertainty and threat (see

also Jost 2006, Jost et al. 2007). This argument

is derived from the work of Adorno et al. (1950),

Allport (1954), Rokeach (1960), Tomkins

(1963), Wilson (1973), and others. Consistent

with an integrated theoretical framework, a

meta-analytic review of 88 studies ( Jost et al.

2003b,c) conducted in 12 countries between

1958 and 2002 conﬁrmed that both situational

and dispositional variables associated with the

management of threat and uncertainty were

empirically related to political orientation.

Speciﬁcally, death anxiety, system instability,

fear of threat and loss, dogmatism, intolerance

of ambiguity, and personal needs for order,

structure, and closure were all positively as-

sociated with conservatism. Conversely, open-

ness to new experiences, cognitive complexity,

tolerance of uncertainty, and (to a small ex-

tent) self-esteem were all positively associated

with liberalism. Subsequent research has shown

that—at both implicit and explicit levels of

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SYMBOLIC AND OPERATIONAL ASPECTS OF

POLITICAL IDEOLOGY

Since the time of the pioneering work of Free & Cantril (1967),

scholars of public opinion have distinguished between symbolic

and operational aspects of political ideology (Page & Shapiro

1992, Stimson 2004). According to this terminology, “symbolic”

refers to general, abstract ideological labels, images, and cate-

gories, including acts of self-identiﬁcation with the left or right.

“Operational” ideology, by contrast, refers to more speciﬁc, con-

crete, issue-based opinions that may also be classiﬁed by ob-

servers as either left or right. Although this distinction may seem

purely academic, evidence suggests that symbolic and operational

forms of ideology do not coincide for many citizens of mass

democracies. For example, Free & Cantril (1967) observed that

many Americans were simultaneously “philosophical conserva-

tives” and “operational liberals,” opposing “big government” in

the abstract but supporting the individual programs comprising

the New Deal welfare and regulatory state. More recent studies

have obtained impressively similar results; Stimson (2004) found

that more than two-thirds of American respondents who identify

as symbolic conservatives are operational liberals with respect to

the issues (see also Page & Shapiro 1992, Zaller 1992). How-

ever, rather than demonstrating that ideological belief systems

are multidimensional in the sense of being irreducible to a single

left-right continuum, these results indicate that, in the United

States at least, leftist/liberal ideas are more popular when they

are manifested in speciﬁc, concrete policy solutions than when

they are offered as ideological abstractions. The notion that most

people like to think of themselves as conservative despite the fact

that they hold a number of liberal opinions on speciﬁc issues is

broadly consistent with system-justiﬁcation theory, which sug-

gests that most people are motivated to look favorably upon the

status quo in general and to reject major challenges to it ( Jost

et al. 2004a).

analysis—liberals do exhibit stronger prefer-

ences for social change and equality (as well as

progress and ﬂexibility over tradition and sta-

bility, respectively) when compared with con-

servatives (e.g., Anderson & Singer 2008; Jost

et al. 2004a, 2008b; Nosek et al. 2009). These

results and others are best interpreted in light

of elective afﬁnities: “The idea is that there is

an especially good ﬁt between needs to reduce

uncertainty and threat, on the one hand, and

resistance to change and acceptance of inequal-

ity, on the other, insofar as preserving the [ine-

galitarian] status quo allows one to maintain

what is familiar and known while rejecting the

risky, uncertain prospect of social change” (Jost

et al. 2007, p. 990; see also Jost et al. 2004b,

pp. 271–272).

Multidimensional Models of Ideology

The left-right model of ideological structure

has parsimony on its side and has fared sur-

prisingly well in terms of theoretical utility

and empirical validity (Benoit & Laver 2006,

Bobbio 1996, Campbell et al. 1960/1965,

Carney et al. 2008, Fuchs & Klingemann 1990,

Jacoby 1991, Jost 2006, Knight 1999, Knutsen

1995, Tomkins 1963). Nevertheless, a number

of authors have argued that more than one di-

mension is needed to illuminate the structure of

most citizens’ political attitudes (e.g., Conover

& Feldman 1981, Kerlinger 1984, Kinder 1998,

Pefﬂey & Hurwitz 1985; see also sidebar Sym-

bolic and Operational Aspects of Political Ide-

ology). We review some of the most inﬂuential

multidimensional models here.

Are liberalism and conservatism orthogo-

nal dimensions? A prominent challenge to

the unidimensional approach comes from those

who argue that left and right represent two

independent, unipolar dimensions rather than

opposite ends of a single bipolar dimension

(e.g., Conover & Feldman 1981, Kerlinger

1984). Exploratory and conﬁrmatory factor

analyses suggest that evaluations of “liberal”

and “conservative” attitude objects often load

onto different latent variables and that these

variables are at least somewhat independent

of one another. However, it should be noted

that measures of liberalism and conservatism

are seldom if ever truly uncorrelated. For in-

stance, after many years of attempting to de-

velop scales that would measure liberalism

and conservatism as orthogonal dimensions,

Kerlinger (1984, pp. 224–226) found that re-

spondents’ scores on his liberalism scale (which

combined a motley set of items concerning civil

rights, racial equality,socialized medicine, labor

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unions, equality of women, birth control, love,

and human warmth) remained stubbornly cor-

related at –0.20 with scores on his conservatism

scale (which combined sundry items pertain-

ing to religion, church, business, proﬁts, au-

thority, law and order, moral standards, and

manners). Even more decisively, subsequent

factor-analytic studies revealed that latent vari-

ables corresponding to evaluations of liberals

and conservatives do indeed exhibit a strong

negative relationship after accounting for non-

random measurement error attributable to re-

sponse format (Federico 2007, Green 1988,

Sidanius & Duffy 1988).

Social and economic dimensions of politi-

cal ideology. A number of studies suggest that

attitudes concerning social or cultural issues

are factorially distinct from attitudes concern-

ing economic issues (Duckitt et al. 2002, Evans

et al. 1996, Layman & Carsey 2002, Lipset

1960, Saucier 2000, Shafer & Claggett 1995,

Stenner 2005). Some researchers have gone

further and suggested that these “social” and

“economic” dimensions are basically orthogo-

nal. For instance, it is possible for people to be

socially liberal and economically conservative

(i.e., “libertarian”) or to be socially conserva-

tive and economically liberal (i.e., “populist”),

although neither of these groups are large (e.g.,

Zaller 1992, p. 27). Recent work by Napier &

Jost (2008b) on “working class authoritarian-

ism” suggests that people who are low in so-

cioeconomic status are more likely to be drawn

to right-wing ideology because of largely so-

cial or cultural issues, whereas people who are

high in socioeconomic status are more likely

to be drawn to right-wing ideology because

of economic reasons (see also Lipset 1960).

Nonetheless, both social and economic forms of

conservatism were positively associated with

right-wing orientation in the 19 countries in-

vestigated. Benoit & Laver (2006, pp. 134–135),

too, found that social and economic dimensions

of ideology were positively intercorrelated in

41 of the 44 nations they examined. Thus, al-

though the social and economic dimensions of

political ideology may be distinct in conceptual

Authoritarianism:

personality

characteristics

indicating latent

antidemocratic

tendencies, including

xenophobia, racism,

and ethnocentrism;

such tendencies are

exacerbated under

threat

and factor-analytic terms, it is rare for them to

be completely orthogonal.

Drawing in part on the distinction between

social and economic dimensions of ideology,

Duckitt et al. (2002) articulated a dual-process

model of ideology that posits two different mo-

tivational foundations. Speciﬁcally, they argued

that an individual’s social dominance orienta-

tion (SDO; Sidanius & Pratto 1999) is con-

nected to a view of the world as a ruthless

competitive jungle in which power struggles

are endemic, whereas an individual’s degree of

right-wing authoritarianism (RWA; Altemeyer

1998) reﬂects a view of the world as danger-

ous and threatening and therefore necessitat-

ing a sense of security and social order in

society (see also Schwartz & Boehnke 2004).

Consistent with Duckitt’s formulation, research

indicates that SDO scores tend to predict eco-

nomic conservatism better than social conser-

vatism, whereas RWA scores tend to predict

social conservatism better than economic con-

servatism (Duckitt 2006, Duriez et al. 2005,

Sibley et al. 2007). Nevertheless, it is impor-

tant to bear in mind that SDO and RWA scores

are positively correlated, even if they are not

so highly intercorrelated as to be redundant

variables (Altemeyer 1998, Jost et al. 2003b,

Sidanius & Pratto 1999, Weber & Federico

2007, Whitley 1999).

Reconciling Unidimensional and

Multidimensional Approaches

At this point in our review, we would do well

to ask why evaluations of liberalism and con-

servatism are in fact negatively intercorrelated

and why social and economic forms of politi-

cal ideology are positively intercorrelated (see

also sidebar Is “Tough-Mindedness” Orthog-

onal to Political Orientation?). The answers,

clearly, pertain to the structure of left-right ide-

ology, that is, its role in organizing a wide range

of individual attitudes and opinions (Converse

1964, 2000, 2006; Federico & Schneider 2007).

But where does ideological structure come from

(when it comes)? The disciplines differ, at least

in terms of emphasis, in how they approach this

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IS “TOUGH-MINDEDNESS” ORTHOGONAL

TO POLITICAL ORIENTATION?

Based on historical observations that left-wing and right-wing

extremists have at times adopted equivalently intolerant meth-

ods and orientations in attempting to realize their political goals,

some scholars have proposed that in addition to the left-right

dimension of ideological content there exists a second, content-

free dimension of psychological style (e.g., Greenberg & Jonas

2003, Shils 1954). For example, Eysenck (1954/1999) argued for

a tough-mindedness versus tender-mindedness dimension that

was allegedly independent of the left-right dimension. Rokeach

(1960, 1973) similarly suggested that dogmatism, which he linked

to the devaluation of freedom, was in principle distinguishable

from the left-right dimension, which was yoked to the value of

equality. However, both of these efforts failed to produce con-

vincing evidence that the two proposed dimensions were orthog-

onal. That is, scales of tough-mindedness and dogmatism may be

distinguishable from left-right measures in factor analyses, but

scores on the psychological variables are nonetheless correlated

with political attitudes, so that those on the right are indeed more

tough-minded and dogmatic than those on the left, at least in

Western nations ( Jost et al. 2003b,c; Stone & Smith 1993). For

example, Jost (2006, p. 664) reported a correlation of 0.27 be-

tween political liberalism and scores on the tender-mindedness

facet of the agreeableness subscale of the Big Five personality

instrument. Similarly, a meta-analysis by Jost et al. (2003b,c) re-

vealed that the correlation between liberalism-conservatism and

measures of dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity was sub-

stantial (weighted mean r=0.34).

Top-down processes:

acquisition of political

attitudes through

exposure to ideological

bundles that are

socially constructed by

political elites

Bottom-up

processes: underlying

psychological needs

and motives that

inﬂuence an

individual’s

receptiveness to

speciﬁc ideological

positions

issue. Political scientists generally focus on top-

down processes such as political leadership and

party politics (Fiorina 2005, Poole & Rosenthal

1997, Sniderman & Bullock 2004, Zaller 1992),

that is, the ways in which attitudes are “or-

ganized into coherent structures by political

elites for consumption by the public” (Feldman

1988, p. 417). Psychologists, by contrast, are

more likely to consider bottom-up cognitive

and motivational processes that lead citizens to

develop ideological belief systems that possess

at least some degree of dimensional structure

(Adorno et al. 1950, Jost 2006, Judd & Krosnick

1989, Lavine et al. 1997, Tomkins 1963). We

propose that by integrating complementary

insights concerning these top-down and

bottom-up processes, it may be possible to rec-

oncile seemingly contradictory positions and

ﬁndings concerning the dimensionality of po-

litical ideology.

Given the assumed interaction between top-

down and bottom-up processes, it seems rea-

sonable to suggest that speciﬁc elements (or di-

mensions) of political ideology are more likely

to be collapsed into a single left-right dimension

for those who are most highly engaged in polit-

ical activity, that is, those who are high in both

ability and motivation. This is consistent with

formal theories of electoral competition and

decision-making, which imply that an uncon-

strained issue space—one in which positions on

different issues and value priorities are not or-

ganized or bundled together—imposes exces-

sive informational demands on voters (Federico

2007, Hinich & Munger 1994, Lau & Redlawsk

2001). That is, relying on left-right ideological

cues should make it easier for those political

actors who are sufﬁciently motivated and cog-

nitively sophisticated to deduce candidates’ po-

sitions on various issues, to simplify the process

of matching their own preferences up with op-

timal candidates (by reducing the number of

dimensions on which matching must occur),

and to increase conﬁdence about how candi-

dates will behave once elected (e.g., see Lavine

& Gschwend 2006).

Consistent with this argument, research

shows that symbolic and operational forms of

ideology are more likely to be congruent for

those who are highly informed about and/or en-

gaged in politics (Bennett 2006, Converse 1964,

McClosky & Zaller 1984, Sniderman et al.

1991, Zaller 1992). Similarly, evaluations of lib-

eral and conservative attitude objects are more

likely to reﬂect unidimensionality for those who

are high in education and political expertise

(Sidanius & Duffy 1988) and the motivation to

evaluate political objects (Federico & Schneider

2007). Furthermore, attitudes on both social

and economic issues are more stable, inter-

correlated, and dimensionally structured for

elected ofﬁcials in comparison with ordinary

citizens ( Jennings 1992, Poole & Rosenthal

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ANRV364-PS60-12 ARI 27 October 2008 16:17

1997) and for those members of the public who

are high in political knowledge and involvement

(Converse 2000, 2006; Erikson & Tedin 2003;

Federico & Schneider 2007; Layman & Carsey

2002).

There is also evidence that heightened polit-

ical competition increases the pressure to struc-

ture political attitudes according to a single left-

right dimension. For example, cross-national

comparisons reveal that the basic motivational

dimensions linked by Duckitt and colleagues

(2002) to SDO and RWA are more strongly

correlated in countries with established systems

of political competition between left-wing and

right-wing parties (Duriez et al. 2005). Simi-

larly, periods of elevated partisan conﬂict seem

to produce more tightly constrained issue agen-

das (Bennett 2006, Fiorina 2005, Hethering-

ton 2001, McCarty et al. 2006), and over time,

cross-cutting ideological agendas are assimi-

lated to the single left-right dimension (Layman

& Carsey 2002, Stimson 2004). Thus, while it

may be possible to distinguish multiple ideo-

logical dimensions, there are social, cognitive,

and motivational needs to effectively coordi-

nate party activities, reduce informational de-

mands on citizens, and tap into basic differences

in value orientations; all of these factors would

be expected to pull for a simpler, more parsi-

monious dimensional structure, especially for

those who are both knowledgeable about and

engaged in political matters. In other words, by

incorporating both top-down and bottom-up

processes, it is possible to understand why ide-

ological attitudes are at least sometimes struc-

tured according to a left-right dimension as well

as when (and why) they are not.

CONTENTS OF IDEOLOGIES

AND THEIR SOCIAL

PSYCHOLOGICAL FUNCTIONS

Treating ideology as an interrelated set of atti-

tudes, values, and beliefs with cognitive, affec-

tive, and motivational properties implies that

ideologies can (and should) be analyzed both

in terms of their contents and their functions

(Abelson 1988; Adorno et al. 1950; Ball &

Dagger 1991; Campbell et al. 1960/1965; Jost

2006; Jost et al. 2003b,c; Lewins 1989). That

is, ideology can be thought of as having both

a discursive (socially constructed) superstruc-

ture and a functional (or motivational) substruc-

ture. The discursive superstructure refers to

the network of socially constructed attitudes,

values, and beliefs bound up with a particu-

lar ideological position at a particular time and

place ( Jost et al. 2003c). Deﬁned in this way,

the discursive superstructure can be thought of

as a “social representation” (Moscovici 1988)

that guides political judgment in a top-down

schematic fashion and is typically transmit-

ted from political elites to the public at large

(Zaller 1992). The functional substructure

refers to the ensemble of social and psycho-

logical needs, goals, and motives that drive the

political interests of ordinary citizens in a

bottom-up fashion and are served by the dis-

cursive contents of ideology ( Jost 2006, Jost

et al. 2003b). We propose that the nature of the

relationship between top-down and bottom-

up processes is characterized by elective afﬁni-

ties: “Ideas, selected and reinterpreted from the

original doctrine, do gain an afﬁnity with the

interests of certain members of special strata; if

they do not gain such an afﬁnity, they are aban-

doned” (Gerth & Mills 1948/1970, p. 63).

From the Top Down: Elite

Construction and Dissemination

of the Discursive Superstructure

Just as political elites such as elected ofﬁcials,

party leaders, and media representatives can

help to impose structure by simplifying the

political environment, they can also strongly

inﬂuence the speciﬁc contents of a political

ideology, that is, its discursive superstructure

(e.g., Converse 2000, Layman & Carsey 2002,

McClosky & Zaller 1984, Sniderman et al.

1991). Prominent examples include the leader-

ship role of Lyndon Johnson and his successors

in urging supporters of the Democratic party

to embrace liberal civil rights legislation to as-

sist racial and ethnic minorities (e.g., Sears et al.

2000) as well as the relatively strong inﬂuences

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that politicians, journalists, and other intellec-

tuals have over the public’s degree of acceptance

of their nation’s involvement in war (Berinsky

2007, Zaller 1992). In these cases and others,

Zaller (1992) concludes that “exposure to elite

discourse appears to promote support for the

ideas carried in it” (p. 11).

The communication process. The socially

shared content of a discursive superstructure,

that is, its speciﬁc bundling of attitudes, val-

ues, and beliefs, presumably results from both

communicative and strategic forms of interac-

tion between partisan elites and their follow-

ers (Graber 2004, Habermas 1989, Hinich &

Munger 1994, Zaller 1992). This is the sense

in which, as Sniderman & Bullock (2004) put

it, “political institutions do the heavy lifting”

(p. 351). Most likely, this allows a relatively

small and unrepresentative group of polit-

ical operatives to wield a disproportionate

amount of inﬂuence, as commentators both

within and without the Marxist tradition have

long noted (e.g., Eagleton 1991, Habermas

1989, Mannheim 1936, McLellan 1986, Weber

1922/1946, Zaller 1992, Zelditch 2001). The

worry persists, in other words, that the “ideas

of the ruling class are in every epoch the rul-

ing ideas” (Marx & Engels 1846/1970). As we

shall see below, a number of contemporary so-

cial psychological approaches have updated and

expanded this focus on the system-justifying na-

ture of ideological content, taking into account

bottom-up as well as top-down processes (e.g.,

Jost & Hunyady 2002, Sidanius & Pratto 1999).

However, in most contemporary societies,

there are political elites on the left as well as

the right, and they, too, are capable of shap-

ing the discursive superstructure (e.g., Hinich

& Munger 1994). That is, the ideological bun-

dles or packages that are socially constructed

by political elites can be seen as “anchoring”

both ends of the left-right spectrum, thereby

arraying the options on an ideological “menu”

from which members of the mass public select

their voting and other preferences (Sniderman

& Bullock 2004). More speciﬁcally, the con-

tent associated with different ideological posi-

tions is absorbed by members of the mass pub-

lic who take cues from those elites who share

their basic partisan or ideological orientations

(Converse 1964, 2000, 2006; Sniderman et al.

1991; Sniderman & Bullock 2004; Zaller 1992).

This raises the question of how successful elites

are in spreading their ideological messages to

the public at large.

The moderating role of citizens’ cognitive

abilities and motivation. Following Camp-

bell et al. (1960/1965) and Converse (1964),

evidence suggests that some citizens are more

able and/or willing than others to learn the

contents of the discursive superstructure as de-

ﬁned by political elites (e.g., Bennett 2006, Delli

Carpini & Keeter 1996, Federico & Schnei-

der 2007, Federico & Sidanius 2002, Judd &

Krosnick 1989, Sniderman et al. 1991, Zaller

1992). Decades of research suggest that the

majority of the population exhibits a relatively

low level of knowledge about the speciﬁc dis-

cursive contents of liberal and conservative

ideologies, a relative inability and/or unwilling-

ness to understand political conﬂict in strictly

liberal-conservative terms, and a relatively low

level of ideological consistency (or constraint)

in their attitudes toward many different issues

(e.g., Converse 2000, Dalton 2003, Stimson

2004). Even at the level of broad moral pos-

tures, value conﬂict seems to be more common

than a high degree of consistency among poten-

tially competing values (Feldman 2003, Jacoby

2006, Kuklinski et al. 2001, Tetlock 1986).

These ﬁndings suggest that most citizens

do not learn the contents of various ideolo-

gies in all their glorious detail, but the ﬁnd-

ings should not be taken as a sign that people

in general are utterly devoid of ideological com-

mitment or understanding (e.g., Billig 2003,

Gamson 1992, Lane 1962). As Lane (1962)

put it, “the common man has a set of emo-

tionally charged political beliefs” that “embrace

central values and institutions” and are “ra-

tionalizations of interests (sometimes not his

own)” that “serve as moral justiﬁcations for

daily acts and beliefs” (pp. 15–16). In this sense,

most people possess “latent” if not “forensic”

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ideologies (see also Jost 2006). More specif-

ically, even those who are relatively uninter-

ested or uninformed about politics do exhibit

at least some understanding of the core aspects

of liberal-conservative differences (Federico

& Schneider 2007; Feldman 1988, 2003; Goren

2001; Knutsen 1995; Pefﬂey & Hurwitz 1985).

Evidence of ideological reasoning—or per-

haps a better word is commitment—is sub-

stantially clearer concerning core attitudes per-

taining to social change and egalitarianism

as compared with more peripheral attitudes

(Anderson & Singer 2008, Carmines & Layman

1997, Conover & Feldman 1981, Eagly et al.

2004, Goren 2004, Jost 2006, Jost et al.

2008b, McClosky & Zaller 1984, Rathbun

2007).1Moreover, familiarity with the discur-

sive superstructure is easier to detect in the

general public once survey-based measurement

error is taken into account (e.g., Achen 1975,

Zaller 1992; but see Converse 2000, 2006).

The main factor governing the mass ac-

quisition of ideological content seems to be

attention to and comprehension of informa-

tion ﬂowing from political elites (Bennett 2006;

Converse 2000, 2006; Kuklinski et al. 2001; Lau

& Redlawsk 2001; Lupia et al. 2000). Highly en-

gaged political experts—those possessing rel-

atively well-developed political schemas that

can be used to assimilate new information—are

most likely to receive, process, and use such in-

formation (e.g., Erikson & Tedin 2003, Fiske

et al. 1990, Hamill et al. 1985, Lavine et al.

1997, Luskin 1990, Zaller 1992). There is ev-

idence that motivation matters in addition to

cognitive abilities. Studies show that individu-

als with a high need to evaluate, that is, a chronic

tendency to form opinions and judge things as

either good or bad (Bizer et al. 2004), are also

more likely to acquire and use discursive ideo-

logical content (Federico 2004, 2007; Federico

& Schneider 2007). This last line of work sug-

gests that researchers would do well to consider

1Rathbun (2007, p. 397), for instance, reported extraordi-

narily high correlations between support for hierarchy and

right-wing orientation (0.70) and between support for com-

munity and left-wing orientation (0.61).

a wider range of motives that affect citizens’ re-

ceptiveness to ideological messages.

From the Bottom Up:

Psychological Origins

of the Motivational Substructure

Political scientists tend to acknowledge that dis-

positional characteristics of ordinary citizens

should affect their ability and motivation to ab-

sorb ideological messages conveyed by politi-

cal elites, but the focus, as discussed above, is

generally on variables such as political involve-

ment, sophistication, and expertise (e.g., Zaller

1992). Psychologists have proposed a wider va-

riety of personality and individual difference

variables that should affect not only one’s de-

gree of exposure to mass media but also one’s

ideological proclivities (see Jost et al. 2003b).

Thus, Adorno et al. (1950) pointed out that an

individual’s belief system “reﬂects his person-

ality and is not merely an aggregate of opin-

ions picked up helter-skelter from the ideolog-

ical environment” (p. 176; see also McClosky

1958, Tomkins 1963, Wilson 1973). Although

research on personality and political orienta-

tion fell out of favor for many years, there are

clear indications that interest has revived in

bottom-up psychological processes contribut-

ing to ideological outcomes (e.g., Barker &

Tinnick 2006, Block & Block 2006, Caprara

2007, Carney et al. 2008, Jost et al. 2008b,

Kemmelmeier 2007, Leone & Chirumbolo

2008, Ozer & Benet-Martinez 2006, Sidanius

& Pratto 1999, Stenner 2005, Thornhill &

Fincher 2007, Van Hiel & Mervielde 2004,

Weber & Federico 2007). Ultimately, a psy-

chological perspective is needed to address the

pesky question raised by Sniderman & Bullock

(2004, p. 353), namely “why are some disposed

to a liberal or broadly left political outlook while

others are disposed to a conservative or broadly

right orientation?”

A growing body of evidence suggests that

left-right ideological stances reﬂect, among

other things, the inﬂuences of heredity, child-

hood temperament or personality, and both sit-

uational and dispositional variability in social,

cognitive, and motivational needs to reduce

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uncertainty and threat. For instance, Alford and

colleagues (2005) compared samples of identi-

cal and fraternal twins in the United States and

Australia and estimated that as much as 40% to

50% of the statistical variability in ideological

opinions (but not political partisanship) was at-

tributable to genetic factors (see also Bouchard

et al. 2003, Carmen 2007). Jost (2006) pro-

posed that the heritability of a set of basic cogni-

tive, motivational, and personality orientations

could account for the heritability of political

attitudes (see Olson et al. 2001 for evidence

of this kind). Alford & Hibbing (2007) down-

played this possibility on the basis of a study that

turned up relatively weak correlations between

Big Five measures of personality and political

attitudes (but see Carney et al. 2008).

A longitudinal study by Block & Block

(2006) is noteworthy because it suggests that

childhood personality characteristics predict

political attitudes 20 years later. Speciﬁcally,

these researchers found that preschool children

who were rated independently by their teach-

ers as more self-reliant, energetic, resilient, rel-

atively undercontrolled and dominating, and

more likely to develop close relationships were

more liberal than their peers at age 23. By con-

trast, preschool children who were character-

ized as feeling easily victimized and offended,

indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, vulnerable,

and relatively overcontrolled were more con-

servative at age 23. Although it is not possible

to rule out certain confounding factors associ-

ated with the location of the study (Berkeley,

California), these results should not be dis-

missed, in part because they are very consis-

tent with the results of a meta-analytic review

that summarized data from 12 countries over a

44-year period ( Jost et al. 2003b,c). The ﬁnd-

ings from that review and from subsequent re-

search suggest that at least three major classes

of psychological variables comprise the motiva-

tional substructure of political ideology: epis-

temic, existential, and relational motives (see

Figure 1).

Epistemic motives: ideology offers cer-

tainty. It has been suggested that ideology

“serves as a guide and compass through the

thicket of political life,” that is, it addresses

a number of epistemic needs, such as expla-

nation, evaluation, and orientation (Ball &

Dagger 1991, pp. 1–2). We should not be sur-

prised to learn, then, that psychological vari-

ables pertaining to the management of un-

certainty predict both reliance on ideology in

general and endorsement of speciﬁc policy po-

sitions, such as support for the Iraq War (e.g.,

Federico et al. 2005; Golec & Federico 2004;

Jost et al. 2003b,c, 2007). For example, stud-

ies conducted in several countries demonstrate

consistently that individuals who score higher

on the Need for Cognitive Closure scale, which

measures the motivation to “seize and freeze”

on beliefs that offer simplicity, certainty, and

clarity, are signiﬁcantly more likely to hold con-

servative or right-wing attitudes ( Jost et al.

2003b, pp. 358–359; see also Chirumbolo et al.

2004, Leone & Chirumbolo 2008, Van Hiel

et al. 2004). Moreover, some evidence suggests

that people who score high on the need to

evaluate (i.e., to render a good/bad judgment)

are more likely to gravitate toward conserva-

tive ideology (Bizer et al. 2004), whereas those

who score high on the Need for Cognition

scale, which measures enjoyment of thinking,

are more likely to gravitate toward liberal ide-

ology (Sargent 2004). These ﬁndings and oth-

ers support the notion that an elective afﬁnity

exists between epistemic motives to reduce un-

certainty and political conservatism ( Jost et al.

2007).

Consistent with the idea that some peo-

ple are more aware of the discursively con-

structed menu of political options than oth-

ers and that such awareness allows people to

select the ideology that is right for them, the

relationship between epistemic motives (e.g.,

need for cognitive closure) and ideological self-

placement is stronger among political experts

and those who are more interested in politics

(e.g., Federico & Goren 2009, Kemmelmeier

2007). The fact that ideologies exhibit, at

least for some citizens, properties of cogni-

tive schemata—such as hierarchical organi-

zation and spreading activation of construct

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Figure 1

The motivational substructure, discursive superstructure, and downstream consequences of political

ideology.

accessibility—provides yet another kind of ev-

idence that they are serving epistemic func-

tions associated with comprehension, explana-

tion, and prediction (Fiske et al. 1990, Hamill

et al. 1985).

Given that nearly everyone wants to achieve

at least some degree of certainty, is it possible

that conservatism possesses a natural psycho-

logical advantage over liberalism? Although

answering this question is obviously fraught

with challenges, several lines of research

suggest that this might be the case. First, a

series of experiments by Skitka et al. (2002)

demonstrated that “the default attributional

position is a conservative response,” insofar

as both liberals and conservatives are quick to

draw individualistic (rather than system-level)

conclusions about the causes of poverty,

unemployment, disease, and other negative

outcomes, but only liberals correct their initial

response, taking into account extenuating cir-

cumstances. When a distraction (or cognitive

load) is introduced, making it difﬁcult for

liberals to engage in correction processes, they

tend to blame individuals for their fate to the

same degree that conservatives do. Skitka et al.

(2002) therefore concluded, “It is much easier

to get a liberal to behave like a conservative

than it is to get a conservative to behave like a

liberal” (p. 484; see also Kluegel & Smith 1986,

Skitka 1999). Research by Crandall & Eidel-

man (2007) takes this general line of reasoning

even further, showing that a host of everyday

variables associated with increased cognitive

load and/or increased need for cognitive

closure, such as drinking alcohol, lead people

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to become more politically conservative.

Both of these lines of research are consistent

with the notion that conservative styles and

opinions are generally simpler, more internally

consistent, and less subject to ambiguity, in

comparison with liberal styles and opinions

(e.g., Jost et al. 2003b,c; Rokeach 1960; Tetlock

1983, 2007). A third reason to suggest that

conservatism enjoys a psychological advantage

over liberalism comes from research on system

justiﬁcation, which suggests that most people

(including liberals) are motivated to adapt

to and even rationalize aspects of the status

quo, that is, to develop and maintain relatively

favorable opinions about existing institutions

and authorities and to dismiss or reject the

possibility of change, especially in its more

radical forms ( Jost et al. 2004a). Studies

show that justifying the status quo serves the

palliative function of increasing positive affect,

decreasing negative affect, and making people

happier in general, but it also undermines sup-

port for social change and the redistribution

of resources ( Jost & Hunyady 2002, Napier &

Jost 2008a, Wakslak et al. 2007).

Nevertheless, some people are motivated by

sensation-seeking, novelty, curiosity, and open-

ness to new experiences, and they are signiﬁ-

cantly more likely than others to embrace po-

litically liberal and leftist opinions and causes

(for a review, see Jost et al. 2003b, pp. 356–357;

see also Jost et al. 2007). Of the Big Five per-

sonality dimensions, openness is most strongly

predictive of political orientation, with liberals

scoring consistently higher than conservatives

(Carney et al. 2008, Jost 2006, Stenner 2005).

The only other Big Five dimension that consis-

tently correlates with political orientation (in

U.S. and other samples) seems to be conscien-

tiousness. Conservatives generally score higher

than others do on conscientiousness-related

motives and themes, especially needs for or-

der, structure, and discipline. These personality

differences emerge even in nonpolitical con-

texts. For instance, the bedrooms and ofﬁces

of conservatives contain more items relating to

conscientiousness, such as postage stamps and

cleaning supplies, whereas liberals’ rooms con-

tain more items relating to openness, such as

travel books, music, and art supplies (Carney

et al. 2008).

Work summarized by Caprara & Zimbardo

(2004) focuses on the importance of perceived

similarities between the personality character-

istics of voters and would-be political leaders

(see also McCaul et al. 1995). For instance,

they ﬁnd that Italian citizens are more likely

to support politicians and parties whose images

are consistent with citizens’ own self-images,

so that center-right voters prefer candidates

who are seen as conscientious and energetic,

whereas center-left voters prefer candidates

who are seen as open and friendly (Caprara &

Zimbardo 2004, p. 586). Although more re-

search is needed to investigate interactions be-

tween psychological and other characteristics

of leaders and followers, insights derived from

the “congruency model” suggest new ways of

identifying the occurrence of elective afﬁnities

in the area of political psychology.

Existential motives: ideology offers secu-

rity. According to terror management the-

ory (TMT), ideologies—or “cultural world-

views,” in the argot of TMT—serve the

existential function of allowing people to sym-

bolically transcend the threat induced by the

uniquely human awareness of one’s own mor-

tality (Greenberg et al. 1997, Pyszczynski

et al. 1999, Solomon et al. 2004). That is, polit-

ical and other belief systems are seen as assist-

ing people in the motivated belief that they are

persons of value in a meaningful universe that

transcends the ﬁnite self, thereby providing a

sense of existential security.Consistent with this

claim, a vast experimental literature demon-

strates that making research participants aware

of their own mortality leads them to hew more

closely to established belief systems and identi-

ties. For example, mortality salience appears to

produce greater patriotism and hostility toward

critics of one’s nation, a stronger endorsement

of the unique validity of one’s own religion,

stronger support for traditional gender norms,

greater attention to established norms of proce-

dural fairness, increased levels of stereotyping,

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and a generally stronger preference for aggres-

sive responses to individuals and groups who are

perceived as threatening to the cultural world-

view (for a review, see Pyszczynski et al. 1999;

see also Arndt et al. 2002, Schimel et al. 1999,

van den Bos et al. 2005).

Jost et al. (2004b) proposed that an elec-

tive afﬁnity exists between psychological needs

to minimize threat—including threat arising

from death anxiety—and conservative ideology.

Accordingly, they found that priming liberals,

moderates, and conservatives with thoughts of

death produced an across-the-board increase

in issue-based conservatism. Such a result is

consistent with the meta-analysis of Jost et al.

(2003b), which showed that fear of death,

system threat, and perceptions of a danger-

ous world were all positively associated with

the holding of conservative attitudes (see also

Weber & Federico 2007; but see Greenberg &

Jonas 2003 for a different position). Jost et al.

(2007) replicated an earlier ﬁnding that conser-

vatives score higher than liberals do on a dispo-

sitional measure of death anxiety; in three stud-

ies they also ruled out the possibility that needs

to manage uncertainty and threat are associ-

ated with ideological extremity in general rather

than with political conservatism in particular.

In fact, a barrage of recent studies sug-

gests that existential motives to cope with

anxiety and threat lead disproportionately to

conservative outcomes. Experimental studies

conducted shortly before the 2004 presidential

election revealed that although college students

favored Democratic challenger John Kerry in

the control condition, they showed a prefer-

ence reversal following exposure to mortality

salience primes, supporting Republican Pres-

ident George W. Bush instead (Cohen et al.

2005, Landau et al. 2004). Ullrich & Cohrs

(2007) showed in several experiments that in-

creasing the salience of terrorism led partic-

ipants to score more highly on a measure of

system justiﬁcation, further strengthening the

case that conservatism serves system-justifying

ends (see also Jost et al. 2008b). Finally, a study

of high-exposure survivors of the September

11, 2001 terrorist attacks found that Democrats

as well as Republicans reported “conservative

shifts” in the 18 months following the attacks

(Bonanno & Jost 2006).

Consistent with all of these ﬁndings, the re-

search literature on right-wing authoritarian-

ism shows that highly threatening situations

are frequently (but not always) associated with

ideological shifts to the right. For example,

archival research suggests that the appeal of

conservative and right-wing leaders and poli-

cies is enhanced during periods of high social,

economic, or political threat (Davis & Silver

2004, Doty et al. 1991, McCann 2008, Willer

2004). Presumably, this is because threat en-

courages people to embrace social and polit-

ical attitudes that offer “relatively simple yet

cognitively rigid solutions” to questions of se-

curity (Bonanno & Jost 2006, p. 311), and

these types of solutions are more likely to res-

onate with the cognitive and rhetorical styles

of those on the political right than the left

( Jost et al. 2003b,c; Tetlock 2007; see also

sidebar Mortality Salience, Authoritarianism,

and Selective Exposure to Political Informa-

tion). Along these lines, a doctoral dissertation

by Thorisdottir (2007) demonstrated in several

experiments that threatening stimuli (such as

frightening movie clips) elicit a temporary in-

crease in closed-mindedness (measured as one

facet of the Need for Cognitive Closure scale)

and that increased closed-mindedness was as-

sociated with an afﬁnity for conservative (and

certainty-oriented) policies and opinions.

Another psychological variable suggesting

that existential concerns about safety, security,

and threat management underlie left-right ide-

ological differences is that of emotional dis-

gust.2Recent studies show, for instance, that

conservatives score higher than do liberals on

dispositional measures of disgust sensitivity and

2To date, more research has been conducted on cogni-

tive differences between liberals and conservatives (e.g., Jost

et al. 2003b,c; Skitka et al. 2002; Tetlock 1983, 2007) than

on emotional differences, but it seems likely that emotional

differences also exist (e.g., Tomkins 1963). A recent study by

Leone & Chirumbolo (2008) suggests, for instance, that left-

ists are more likely to exhibit emotional approach, whereas

rightists are more likely to exhibit emotional avoidance.

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MORTALITY SALIENCE,

AUTHORITARIANISM, AND SELECTIVE

EXPOSURE TO POLITICAL INFORMATION

An experiment by Lavine et al. (2005) revealed that a mortality

salience manipulation led high (but not low) authoritarians to se-

lectively expose themselves to information in a manner that was

consistent with their position on capital punishment. This ﬁnd-

ing suggests that not everyone responds to threatening stimuli in

the same manner (see also Davis & Silver 2004, Stenner 2005).

It is important to point out, however, that low authoritarians did

not show greater open-mindedness (or a decrease in selective ex-

posure) following mortality salience priming (Lavine et al. 2005,

p. 232). Lavine et al. (2005) concluded their article by emphasiz-

ing elective afﬁnities, that is, “interactions between dispositional

motivational needs and cognitive styles on one hand, and ex-

igencies of the social and political environment on the other”

(p. 240). Speciﬁcally, they suggested that those who tune into

“the now ubiquitous format of one-sided (generally right-wing)

talk radio (e.g., Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage,

Bill O’Reilly)” are motivated not merely by chronic anger and

resentment but that “viewers’ preferences for one-sided vs ‘fair

and balanced’ formats are at least partly a function of perceived

environmental threat” (p. 240).

that disgust sensitivity predicts speciﬁc policy

opinions on issues such as abortion as well

as prejudicial intergroup attitudes (Hodson &

Costello 2007, Inbar et al. 2008). Given the

apparent link between disgust and moral judg-

ment (Haidt 2001), these differences could help

to explain why conservatives tend to value pu-

rity and to be more moralistic than liberals

in sexual and other cultural domains (Haidt

& Graham 2007, Jarudi et al. 2008, Skitka

et al. 2002). If this reasoning is correct, polit-

ical and other messages that elicit disgust re-

actions should beneﬁt conservatives dispropor-

tionately, much as threat-related messages seem

to help conservatives and hurt liberals.

Relational motives: ideology offers solidar-

ity. A vast research literature on political so-

cialization, reviewed by Sears & Levy (2003),

indicates that ideological beliefs are likely to be

transmitted from parents to children, especially

if both parents have similar beliefs and discuss

politics frequently ( Jennings & Niemi 1981)

and if bonds within the family are close (Davies

1965). Similarly, peer and reference groups also

exert a reasonably strong inﬂuence on left-right

self-placement (Alwin et al. 1991; see Jost et al.

2008a for a brief review). These relational in-

ﬂuences on ideological outcomes are strongest

in late adolescence and early adulthood, that is,

while personal identity is still in the process of

development (Alwin 1993, Sears & Levy 2003).

Moreover, consistent with other work on social

inﬂuence, the resulting identiﬁcations tend to

persist as long as one’s relational context does

not change markedly (e.g., Alwin et al. 1991).

It seems likely that some passive forms of

learning and social inﬂuence are involved in

the transmission of social and political attitudes

from parents to offspring and from peer to peer,

but the possibility also arises that more active

forms of inﬂuence occur, and these are likely to

involve relational motives for social identiﬁca-

tion, afﬁliation, and/or the attainment of shared

reality (e.g., Baumeister & Leary 1995, Fiske

2004, Hardin & Higgins 1996, Tajfel & Turner

1986). For instance, Jost et al. (2008a) found

that students whose parents were ideologically

divergent scored higher on a measure of system

justiﬁcation after writing about either a positive

or a negative interaction with their more con-

servative parent, suggesting that an implicitly

activated desire to bond with close others can

have ideological consequences. Thus, loyalty,

friendship, social comparison, and perceived

social support are central to developing and

sustaining political conviction (Abelson 1988,

p. 269). Furthermore, Gerber et al. (2008)

found that exerting social pressure (by inform-

ing registered voters that their neighbors would

know whether or not they voted) increased

turnout substantially.

The study of relational motives has the

capacity to shed light on the factors that

affect whether or not the discursive super-

structure developed by partisan elites becomes

a shared social representation (or stereo-

type) that penetrates public consciousness (e.g.,

Billig 2003, Denzau & North 1994/2000,

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Hardin & Higgins 1996, Marx & Engels

1846/1970, Moscovici 1988, Parsons 1951). At

present, very little solid research exists in this

area. However, we do know that important ref-

erence groups—including those based on race,

ethnicity, gender, social class, political party,

and religious afﬁliation—are used as cues for

political judgment and behavior by citizens at

nearly every level of political sophistication

(e.g., Bartels 2000, Campbell et al. 1960/1965,

Conover & Feldman 1981, Eagly et al. 2004,

Hamill et al. 1985, Lau & Redlawsk 2001, Rahn

1993, Sniderman et al. 1991). A number of

studies suggest that party leaders are capable

of instigating political polarization and bring-

ing about “conﬂict extension” in the electorate

(Hetherington 2001, Layman & Carsey 2002).

Cohen (2003) demonstrated that people are

more likely to endorse a given policy position

when they believe that it was proposed by their

own political party than when the same policy

was seen as part of the opposing party’s agenda.

There is also some evidence that ideologi-

cal afﬁnities ﬂow from group identiﬁcation and

realistic group interest (Bobo 1999, Campbell

et al. 1960/1965, Sniderman et al. 2004). In gen-

eral, the perception of collective self-interest

does inﬂuence ideological preferences when

group identiﬁcation is relatively salient, with

members of low-status and low-power groups

tacking slightly to the left, especially on eco-

nomic issues (Bobo 1999, Kluegel & Smith

1986, Lipset 1960, Napier & Jost 2008b).3

However, this effect is not a simple or reﬂexive

one: Not everyone adopts group-interested (or

group-justifying) ideological positions. In fact,

for some members of disadvantaged groups, re-

lational needs to express solidarity with one’s

own kind may be countered (or trumped) by

system-justifying tendencies that serve epis-

temic or existential needs—or perhaps rela-

tional needs tied to other social relationships

(e.g., see Henry & Saul 2006, Jost et al. 2003d,

3Eagly et al. (2004) found that women, in comparison with

men, are generally more liberal with respect to one core value,

namely egalitarianism, but they are more conservative when

it comes to issues bearing on moral traditions.

Lane 1962). Thus, the effect of group interest,

while present, is rarely total (see also Sears &

Funk 1991).

Although it is abundantly clear that pro-

cesses associated with social identiﬁcation, par-

tisanship, and group interest can exert political

inﬂuence in both liberal and conservative direc-

tions (e.g., Bartels 2000, Cohen 2003, Green

et al. 2002), Jost et al. (2008a) speculated

that—as with epistemic and existential

motives—some relational motives could favor

conservative outcomes in general. This is

broadly consistent with the commonly held

notion that conservatives are especially likely

to value tradition, conformity, social order,

and consensual adherence to rules, norms, and

conventions (e.g., Altemeyer 1998, Conover

& Feldman 1981, Feldman 2003, Haidt &

Graham 2007, Jost 2006). It is also consistent

with the assumption that it is generally easier to

establish common ground with respect to the

status quo than with respect to its many possi-

ble alternatives and to communicate effectively

by transmitting messages that are relatively

simple and unambiguous rather than reﬂecting

the kind of complex, nuanced, and perhaps

ambivalent cognitive and rhetorical styles that

seem to be more common on the political

left than the right (see Jost et al. 2008a). On

the other hand, Caprara & Zimbardo (2004)

observed that leftists were more concerned

about friendliness and agreeableness than were

rightists in Italy, and Carney et al. (2008)

found in a study of nonverbal interaction

styles that liberals were more expressive and

smiled more frequently than did conservatives,

suggesting that under these circumstances

liberals possessed a higher degree of relational

motivation.

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL

CONSEQUENCES OF IDEOLOGY

Thus far, our review has focused on the dimen-

sional structure and discursive contents of left-

right ideology as well as its motivational an-

tecedents or functional substructure. However,

much evidence suggests that acquisition of the

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discursive superstructure—which requires both

exposure to the ideological menu communi-

cated by institutional elites as well as the abil-

ity and motivation to absorb the messages—has

important downstream social and political con-

sequences (see Figure 1). We review some of

these below.

Effects on the Evaluations

of Issues, Parties, Candidates,

and Other Attitude Objects

Perhaps the most obvious consequence of ide-

ological orientation is its inﬂuence on polit-

ical attitudes and behaviors such as voting.

Many studies have shown that those who iden-

tify as liberal tend to adopt issue positions

that are conventionally recognized as left-of-

center, evaluate liberal political ﬁgures more

favorably, and vote for candidates of the left,

whereas those who identify as conservative tend

to adopt positions that are right-of-center, eval-

uate conservative political ﬁgures more favor-

ably, and vote for candidates on the right (e.g.,

Conover & Feldman 1981, Evans et al. 1996,

Federico & Schneider 2007, Jacoby 1991,

Kerlinger 1984, Knutsen 1995, Lavine &

Gschwend 2006, Zaller 1992). In fact, ideol-

ogy and partisanship (which typically has an

ideological thrust) are among the strongest and

most consistent predictors of political prefer-

ences (e.g., see Erikson & Tedin 2003, Jacoby

1991, Jost 2006).

Moreover, left-right differences in evalua-

tive preferences emerge in many areas outside

the realm of formal politics. For instance, Jost

et al. (2008b) found that self-identiﬁed liber-

als were signiﬁcantly more favorable concern-

ing foreign ﬁlms, big cities, poetry, tattoos, and

foreign travel, whereas conservatives were more

favorable concerning fraternities and sorori-

ties, sport utility vehicles, drinking alcohol, and

watching television (see also Carney et al. 2008,

Jost 2006). Findings such as these strengthen

the case that ideological divides are, among

other things, personality divides, but the di-

rection of causality is still unknown. We sus-

pect that ideological identiﬁcations both reﬂect

and reinforce social and personal preferences,

styles, and activities, but this is speculative and

requires empirical confrontation using experi-

mental and longitudinal research designs.

At a higher level of abstraction, ideology

also predicts citizens’ general value orienta-

tions, with leftists exhibiting greater egalitar-

ianism and openness to change than right-

ists (Evans et al. 1996; Federico & Sidanius

2002; Feldman 1988, 2003; Jost 2006; Kerlinger

1984; Pefﬂey & Hurwitz 1985; Rokeach 1973;

Sidanius & Pratto 1999). Interestingly, many of

these patterns are observable at the level of au-

tomatic or implicit attitudes as well. For exam-

ple, in studies employing the Implicit Associa-

tion Test, liberals on average displayed implicit

(as well as explicit) preferences for words such as

“ﬂexible,” “progress,” and “feminism,” whereas

conservatives preferred their opposites, namely

“stable,” “tradition,” and “traditional values”

( Jost et al. 2008b). Ideological self-placement

also has important effects on justice judgments

and attributions for social stratiﬁcation, with

conservatives emphasizing principles of equity,

ability, effort, and meritocracy as well as adopt-

ing a more punitive stance and being more

likely to make internal attributions for oth-

ers’ outcomes in life in comparison with lib-

erals (e.g., Altemeyer 1998, Kluegel & Smith

1986, Skitka 1999, Skitka et al. 2002, Sniderman

et al. 1991). Haidt & Graham (2007) have sug-

gested that the values of liberals and conserva-

tives are rooted in distinct moral foundations,

such that conservatives are more likely to in-

corporate ingroup, authority, and purity con-

cerns in rendering moral (or perhaps moralistic)

judgments.

Thus, heterogeneous research programs

yield the common conclusion that ideologi-

cal commitments are robust predictors of a

wide range of attitudes, preferences, judg-

ments, and behaviors. Nevertheless, it should

be noted that—as with respect to the struc-

ture and contents of ideological beliefs—the

downstream consequences of ideology are not

readily observable at all levels of political

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sophistication (e.g., Converse 2000, 2006).

Once again, factors concerning the ability and

motivation to use the discursive contents of ide-

ology moderate its effects on other social and

political outcomes (e.g., Erikson & Tedin 2003,

Kemmelmeier 2007, Kinder 1998, Zaller 1992).

At the same time, one tenet of the psychologi-

cal perspective on ideology that we take in this

review is that people may behave in ideologi-

cally meaningful ways (or be affected by their

own ideological proclivities) without necessar-

ily being consciously or fully aware of the role of

ideology in their lives, much as native speakers

are generally capable of following grammatical

or syntactical rules without being able to fully

articulate them (see Jost 2006).

Effects on Implicit and Explicit

Intergroup Attitudes

Ideological self-placement is strongly predic-

tive of intergroup attitudes. More speciﬁcally,

conservative and right-wing orientations are

generally associated with stereotyping, preju-

dice, intolerance, and hostility toward a wide

variety of outgroups, especially low-status or

stigmatized outgroups (e.g., Altemeyer 1998,

Duckitt et al. 2002, Federico & Sidanius 2002,

Lambert & Chasteen 1997, Napier & Jost

2008b, Sidanius & Pratto 1999, Sidanius et al.

1996, Whitley 1999, Wilson 1973). The fact

that conservatives express less-favorable atti-

tudes than liberals express toward disadvan-

taged or stigmatized groups is not seriously dis-

puted in social science research, although there

is some debate about whether the differences

are motivated by intergroup bias or a differ-

ential degree of commitment to individualism,

traditionalism, meritocracy, and other conser-

vative values (e.g., Sears et al. 1997, Sidanius

et al. 1996, Sniderman et al. 2000).

It is important to note that differences be-

tween liberals and conservatives with respect to

intergroup attitudes emerge even on implicit

or nonconscious measures, suggesting that they

are not attributable to differences in socially

desirable responding (e.g., Cunningham et al.

2004; Jost et al. 2004a; Nosek et al. 2007, 2009).

Some research suggests that conservatives are

more likely to endorse traditional forms of

racism, whereas liberals are more likely to show

signs of subtle or aversive racism, indicating the

presence of conﬂict between egalitarian ide-

als and biased impulses (Feldman & Huddy

2005, Nail et al. 2003). It is also worth noting

that such afﬁnities have likely been surmised

already by political elites who are responsi-

ble for the contents of political advertisements.

Research on political communication suggests

that (a) conservative campaigns are more likely

than liberal campaigns to play the “race card”

(Mendelberg 2001), and (b) subtle (but ne-

farious) racial primes that visually or verbally

link African Americans to crime or welfare

tend to beneﬁt conservative candidates and hurt

liberal candidates (Valentino 1999, Valentino

et al. 2002).

It is seldom pointed out explicitly that the

effects of political orientation on ingroup-

outgroup evaluations depend upon the status

of the participant’s own group. That is, con-

servatism is typically correlated with ingroup

favoritism for members of high-status groups,

but it is frequently correlated with outgroup

favoritism for members of low-status groups

(e.g., Jost et al. 2004a, Levin et al. 2002). Thus,

increasing political conservatism is associated

with a stronger prostraight/antigay preference

on implicit and explicit measures for heterosex-

uals and homosexuals alike ( Jost et al. 2004a).

These ﬁndings suggest again that conservatism

is a system-justifying ideology, insofar as it leads

even members of disadvantaged groups to per-

petuate the unequal status quo at the level of

both implicit and explicit intergroup attitudes

( Jost et al. 2008b).

The differences between liberals and con-

servatives with respect to intergroup attitudes

are readily interpretable in light of our anal-

ysis of the functional substructure of ideology

(i.e., in terms of epistemic, existential, and re-

lational motives). For instance, research in so-

cial cognition demonstrates that people adopt

stereotypes at least in part to conserve mental

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resources and to impose order and struc-

ture on the social world (e.g., Macrae et al.

1996, Moskowitz 2005). We know that con-

servatives exhibit heightened needs to avoid

ambiguity, novelty, uncertainty, and complex-

ity and to achieve order, structure, and closure

( Jost et al. 2003b,c), and this (in conjunction

with a relative acceptance of inequality) may

help to explain why stereotypes and prejudicial

attitudes are more appealing to them than they

are to liberals. The connection between rigid

or dogmatic thinking styles and prejudice has

long been noted (e.g., Rokeach 1960), as has the

connection between intolerance of ambiguity

and prejudice (e.g., Adorno et al. 1950, Allport

1954). The personal need for structure has also

been associated with right-wing authoritarian-

ism (Altemeyer 1998), negative attitudes toward

gays and lesbians (Smith & Gordon 1998), and

the formation of erroneous system-justifying

stereotypes (Schaller et al. 1995). Similarly, the

need for cognitive closure predicts stereotyp-

ing, prejudice, and right-wing authoritarian-

ism (Kruglanski 2004), conservatism ( Jost et al.

2003b), and racism (Van Hiel et al. 2004). Al-

though it is impossible to establish directions of

causality among these variables based upon the

existing research literature, it seems clear that

they are empirically linked.

Existential motives to avoid threat may also

play a part in the relatively higher levels of prej-

udice and intergroup hostility observed among

conservatives, as evidenced by terror manage-

ment research showing that mortality salience

increases stereotyping and prejudice (Schimel

at al. 1999). Some studies suggest that mor-

tality salience increases prejudice, but only in

people who are already predisposed toward

the holding of prejudicial attitudes (Greenberg

et al. 1992). There is also evidence that threats

to self-esteem increase stereotyping and prej-

udice (Allport 1954, Fein & Spencer 1997)

and may be linked to political orientation (see

Jost et al. 2003b for a review). Furthermore,

the emotion of disgust is predictive of inter-

group hostility and prejudice as well as political

conservatism (Hodson & Costello 2007, Inbar

et al. 2008, Talaska et al. 2008). Finally, it is rel-

atively easy to see how relational needs to main-

tain solidarity with one’s ingroup could facilitate

prejudice and discrimination against outgroup

members (Tajfel & Turner 1986) as well as the

sharing of ideologies that justify unequal treat-

ment ( Jost et al. 2008a).

Ideology as a System-Justifying Device

It should be clear by now that we regard ide-

ology as not merely an organizing device or a

shortcut for making heuristic judgments about

various political objects; it is also a device for ex-

plaining and even rationalizing the way things

are or, alternatively, how things should be dif-

ferent than they are. Thus, political ideolo-

gies typically make at least tacit reference to

some social system, either as an afﬁrmation

or a rejection of it (Anderson & Singer 2008,

Ball & Dagger 1991, Freeden 2001, Jost 2006,

Knight 2006, Lipset & Raab 1978, Marx &

Engels 1846/1970, Parsons 1951). As we have

mentioned above, research on system justiﬁ-

cation theory suggests that most people—to

varying degrees depending on epistemic, exis-

tential, and relational needs—engage in both

conscious and nonconscious rationalization of

the status quo through the use of sponta-

neous social judgments (e.g., stereotypes) and

by latching onto pre-existing ideologies such

as conservatism ( Jost et al. 2004a, Lane 1962).

These and other system-justifying mechanisms

imbue social, economic, and political arrange-

ments with fairness and legitimacy ( Jost et al.

2003a,d; Kay et al. 2007; Major et al. 2002;

Sidanius & Pratto 1999). From the point of view

of political elites, system justiﬁcation is beneﬁ-

cial insofar as it contributes to the stability of

the social system and increases voluntary def-

erence on the part of ordinary citizens (Tyler

2006).

The power of ideology to explain and justify

discrepancies between the current social order

and some alternative not only maintains sup-

port for the status quo, but also serves for its

adherents the palliative function of alleviating

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dissonance or discomfort associated with the

awareness of systemic injustice or inequality

(e.g., Jost & Hunyady 2002, Napier & Jost

2008a). The endorsement of system-justifying

beliefs is associated with increased positive

affect, decreased negative affect, and high

personal satisfaction or contentment ( Jost et al.

2003d, Kluegel & Smith 1986, Lerner 1980,

Wakslak et al. 2007). In attempting to un-

derstand why conservatives report being hap-

pier than liberals, Napier & Jost (2008a) found

that the association between political ideol-

ogy and subjective well-being was explained

to a signiﬁcant degree by respondents’ differ-

ential tendencies to rationalize economic in-

equality in society. Furthermore, the happiness

gap between conservatives and liberals in the

United States was tied to the nation’s level of

income inequality, so that as inequality has in-

creased over the last 30 years, the subjective

well-being of liberals has dropped more precip-

itously than has that of conservatives. Thus, it

appears that system-justifying ideologies such

as conservatism can “provide a kind of ideo-

logical buffer against the negative hedonic con-

sequences of social and economic inequality”

(Napier & Jost 2008a; see also Anderson &

Singer 2008).

In sum, ideology can play an important role

as a system-serving bundle of attitudes, values,

and beliefs. However, as with respect to the or-

ganizing role of ideology, it is best to conclude

with a few caveats about the reach of ideol-

ogy as a system-justiﬁcation device. Although

system-justifying attitudes, values, and beliefs

are widespread, they rarely diffuse or “work”

completely, especially in large, highly complex

societies and among those who are suspicious

of and/or geographically distant from centers

of power (e.g., Abercrombie et al. 1980; see

also Sidanius & Pratto 1999). This opens the

door to at least some degree of change and

ﬂux in social relations. Nevertheless, we think

that it would be a mistake to underestimate

the ideological signiﬁcance of the human ten-

dency to make a “virtue of necessity” by accept-

ing and even celebrating features of the status

quo; from this perspective, system-justiﬁcation

motivation appears to give conservatism a psy-

chological head start over its more critical

rivals.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Our purpose in this article has been to re-

view recent scholarship on political ideol-

ogy as a social psychological phenomenon.

We have endeavored to integrate insights de-

rived from a variety of research programs ad-

dressing different levels of analysis and there-

fore distinctive facets of political ideology

(see Figure 1). Given the resurgence of ide-

ologically inspired conﬂict and polarization in

the current era (e.g., Abramowitz & Saunders

2008, Jost 2006, Layman & Carsey 2002,

Stimson 2004), it is our hope that this sum-

mary of existing research will not only help

us to better understand the present but also

point the way to a more constructive future. To

succeed, we will need the continued engage-

ment of the social scientiﬁc research commu-

nity as a whole. For our own part, we have

taken seriously the possibility ﬁrst suggested by

Adorno et al. (1950) that a “structural unity”

exists between underlying psychological needs

and ideological manifestations of those needs.

Although contemporary researchers are much

closer than were the members of the Frankfurt

School to understanding the connections be-

tween the discursive superstructure of ideology

and its motivational substructure, it is plain to

see that we still do not know as much about

these elective afﬁnities as one would like. We

take some solace in the possibility, however

uncertain, that this review will inspire other

researchers to join in the challenging task of

identifying sound scientiﬁc principles that ex-

plain why certain individuals and groups choose

particular constellations of ideas or, similarly,

why some ideologies ﬁnd deep resonance in

the minds of some political actors but not oth-

ers. Psychologically oriented investigations of

ideological phenomena carry with them an in-

escapable limitation but also take on what many

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would regard as a societal obligation of the

highest order. As the authors of The Authori-

tarian Personality pointed out many years ago,

“Knowledge of the psychological determinants

of ideology cannot tell us what is the truest ide-

ology; it can only remove some of the barriers

in the way of its pursuit” (Adorno et al. 1950,

p. 11). If there is a nobler or more difﬁcult task

than this for a political psychologist, we know

not what it is.

FUTURE ISSUES

1. It is commonly assumed that political elites are the architects of ideology, but little

research has examined the motivational processes involved in elite construction of the

discursive superstructure. The range of epistemic, existential, and relational motives we

have examined in this chapter are assumed to affect elites as well as mass publics, but

existing research has been limited to purely strategic motives (e.g., the assembly of a

winning party coalition; see Hinich & Munger 1994). Future research would do well to

investigate the role of substructural motives (or functions) in the elite context, where

actors are not only consumers of ideology but are also capable of bundling or packaging

its contents in the ﬁrst place (see Tetlock 1983 for an example).

2. Political scientists have generally assumed that the assembly of ideological packages

by elites is at least somewhat arbitrary, so that ideologies are socially constructed by

the repeated bundling of certain contents in order to gain electoral advantage (e.g.,

Sniderman & Bullock 2004). Our analysis in terms of elective afﬁnities suggests that

there are clear social psychological constraints on the types of attitudes, values, and

beliefs that can be bundled together. This possibility was raised in early discussions of

mass belief systems (e.g., Converse 1964, Rokeach 1960), but it has been largely ignored

since then in favor of perspectives that focus almost exclusively on the role of elites

in establishing conventional (but essentially arbitrary) discursive superstructures (e.g.,

Zaller 1992). Future work should address motivational (as well as cognitive) sources of

constraint to explain how and why speciﬁc constellations of attitudes, values, and beliefs

coalesce into relatively coherent (and sometimes incoherent, at least with respect to

logical sophistication) ideological packages.

3. We have suggested that the metaphor of elective afﬁnities, which is taken from the

writings of Goethe (1809/1966), Weber (1922/1946), and Gerth & Mills (1948/1970),

is an especially useful one because it aptly characterizes the forces of mutual attrac-

tion that bring people and ideas together. In other words, it highlights the fact that

every ideological outcome arises from an interaction between top-down processes of so-

cialization (or exposure) and bottom-up processes of need fulﬁllment. However, the

concept is openly agnostic about (and therefore willfully imprecise concerning) di-

rections of causality between top-down and bottom-up factors. We, like many oth-

ers (e.g., Adorno et al. 1950, Alford et al. 2005, Lane 1962, Sniderman & Bul-

lock 2004, Zaller 1992), assume that the contents of the discursive superstructure

and the motives driving the functional substructure of ideology meet somewhere in

the middle, but how this occurs has yet to be clearly and carefully documented. It

would be particularly useful to identify interactions between top-down and bottom-up

processes.

328 Jost ·Federico ·Napier

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4. The metaphor of ideological menu dependence is consistent with our analysis of elective

afﬁnities, insofar as people must be exposed to a more-or-less complete range of options

in order to be able to select an ideology that matches their psychological and other

dispositions. This could also explain why the effects of personality on political orientation

in the general population would be stronger in Western democratic nations (that offer

at least some variability in the ideological menu) than in authoritarian and totalitarian

regimes that restrict ideological alternatives (see Greenberg & Jonas 2003, Jost et al.

2003b). A related issue is whether there are important differences between Eastern and

Western nations in the psychological underpinnings of political orientation (e.g., see

Thorisdottir et al. 2007). In this review, we have taken a largely Western perspective, but

it would be illuminating to conduct parallel investigations in Asian, African, and other

cultural contexts.

5. We have said relatively little about rational choice models of political preferences, ex-

cept to note that some (albeit modest) evidence supports the notion that individual and

collective self-interest does inﬂuence ideological outcomes. It would be useful in future

work to determine whether the kinds of epistemic, existential, and relational motives

we have identiﬁed in this chapter are compatible or incompatible with rational actor

models. For instance, to what extent is it rational (or congruent with self-interest) for

people to embrace certain ideologies because they appear to satisfy their personal needs

for cognition, evaluation, structure, or closure?

6. In this review and elsewhere, we have generally assumed that system justiﬁcation moti-

vation increases one’s afﬁnity for conservative (versus liberal) ideology. This may be con-

tingent upon one’s societal context, however. It is unclear whether system-justiﬁcation

motivation in Scandinavia, for instance, would be associated with increased or decreased

support for high rates of taxation, universal health care coverage, state-sponsored child-

care, tuition, and so on. Furthermore, it is at least conceivable that the two core aspects

of left-right ideology (resistance to change and acceptance of inequality) are decoupled

or even negatively correlated in socialist or communist regimes and that this could be

due to the marshaling of system justiﬁcation tendencies in support of egalitarian rather

than hierarchical ideals.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

The authors are not aware of any biases that might be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this

review.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The writing of this chapter was supported in part by research awards to the ﬁrst author by the New

York University Center for Catastrophe Preparedness and Response (CCPR) and the National

Science Foundation (Grant #BCS-0617558). We are grateful to Cara Jolly and Briehan Truesdell

for administrative and other assistance with respect to this project as well as to the members of

the Jost Lab at NYU for their input and inspiration. Finally, we thank Susan T. Fiske, Gy¨

orgy

Hunyady, Lawrence J. Jost, Howard Lavine, and Tom R. Tyler for helpful suggestions and advice

concerning prior drafts.

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Annual Review of

Psychology

Volume 60, 2009

Contents

Prefatory

Emotion Theory and Research: Highlights, Unanswered Questions,

and Emerging Issues

Carroll E. Izard pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp1

Concepts and Categories

Concepts and Categories: A Cognitive Neuropsychological Perspective

Bradford Z. Mahon and Alfonso Caramazza pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp27

Judgment and Decision Making

Mindful Judgment and Decision Making

Elke U. Weber and Eric J. Johnson pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp53

Comparative Psychology

Comparative Social Cognition

Nathan J. Emery and Nicola S. Clayton ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp87

Development: Learning, Cognition, and Perception

Learning from Others: Children’s Construction of Concepts

Susan A. Gelman pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp115

Early and Middle Childhood

Social Withdrawal in Childhood

Kenneth H. Rubin, Robert J. Coplan, and Julie C. Bowker ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp141

Adulthood and Aging

The Adaptive Brain: Aging and Neurocognitive Scaffolding

Denise C. Park and Patricia Reuter-Lorenz ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp173

Substance Abuse Disorders

A Tale of Two Systems: Co-Occurring Mental Health and Substance

Abuse Disorders Treatment for Adolescents

Elizabeth H. Hawkins ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp197

vii

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Therapy for Speciﬁc Problems

Therapy for Speciﬁc Problems: Youth Tobacco Cessation

Susan J. Curry, Robin J. Mermelstein, and Amy K. Sporer pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp229

Adult Clinical Neuropsychology

Neuropsychological Assessment of Dementia

David P. Salmon and Mark W. Bondi ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp257

Child Clinical Neuropsychology

Relations Among Speech, Language, and Reading Disorders

Bruce F. Pennington and Dorothy V.M. Bishop pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp283

Attitude Structure

Political Ideology: Its Structure, Functions, and Elective Afﬁnities

John T. Jost, Christopher M. Federico, and Jaime L. Napier ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp307

Intergroup relations, stigma, stereotyping, prejudice, discrimination

Prejudice Reduction: What Works? A Review and Assessment

of Research and Practice

Elizabeth Levy Paluck and Donald P. Green ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp339

Cultural Inﬂuences

Personality: The Universal and the Culturally Speciﬁc

Steven J. Heine and Emma E. Buchtel pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp369

Community Psychology

Community Psychology: Individuals and Interventions in Community

Context

Edison J. Trickett pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp395

Leadership

Leadership: Current Theories, Research, and Future Directions

Bruce J. Avolio, Fred O. Walumbwa, and Todd J. Weber ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp421

Training and Development

Beneﬁts of Training and Development for Individuals and Teams,

Organizations, and Society

Herman Aguinis and Kurt Kraiger pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp451

Marketing and Consumer Behavior

Conceptual Consumption

Dan Ariely and Michael I. Norton ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp475

viii Contents

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Psychobiological Mechanisms

Health Psychology: Developing Biologically Plausible Models Linking

the Social World and Physical Health

Gregory E. Miller, Edith Chen, and Steve Cole ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp501

Health and Social Systems

The Case for Cultural Competency in Psychotherapeutic Interventions

Stanley Sue, Nolan Zane, Gordon C. Nagayama Hall, and Lauren K. Berger pppppppppp525

Research Methodology

Missing Data Analysis: Making It Work in the Real World

John W. Graham pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp549

Psychometrics: Analysis of Latent Variables and Hypothetical Constructs

Latent Variable Modeling of Differences and Changes with

Longitudinal Data

John J. McArdle ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp577

Evaluation

The Renaissance of Field Experimentation in Evaluating Interventions

William R. Shadish and Thomas D. Cook ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp607

Timely Topics

Adolescent Romantic Relationships

W. Andrew Collins, Deborah P. Welsh, and Wyndol Furman pppppppppppppppppppppppppppp631

Imitation, Empathy, and Mirror Neurons

Marco Iacoboni ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp653

Predicting Workplace Aggression and Violence

Julian Barling, Kathryne E. Dupr´e, and E. Kevin Kelloway ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp671

The Social Brain: Neural Basis of Social Knowledge

Ralph Adolphs pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp693

Workplace Victimization: Aggression from the Target’s Perspective

Karl Aquino and Stefan Thau pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp717

Indexes

Cumulative Index of Contributing Authors, Volumes 50–60 ppppppppppppppppppppppppppp743

Cumulative Index of Chapter Titles, Volumes 50–60 pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp748

Errata

An online log of corrections to Annual Review of Psychology articles may be found at

http://psych.annualreviews.org/errata.shtml

Contents ix

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Asymmetric Polarization: The Perception That Republicans Pose Harm to Disadvantaged Groups Drives Democrats’ Greater Dislike of Republicans in Social Contexts

Article

Full-text available

May 2025

Given growing political polarization in recent years, partisan dislike—defined as the negativity that individuals display at the prospect of having close social relations with supporters of the other party—has received increasing attention. While traditional work in social and political psychology has held that conservatives display greater outgroup hostility than liberals, the worldview conflict perspective suggests that both groups similarly express hostility toward value incongruent outgroups. Contradicting both established perspectives, we present evidence across five preregistered studies (and two additional studies reported in the Supplemental Materials) conducted between 2022 and 2023—two social media field experiments (N = 10,000) examining actual behavior and five survey-based studies (N = 2,443) operationalizing partisan dislike in various ways (e.g., blocking on social media, rating the likability of various targets, and evaluating hiring suitability)—that Democrats (i.e., liberals) dislike Republicans (i.e., conservatives) more than vice versa. We provide a potential explanation for this phenomenon by extending the worldview conflict perspective to account for asymmetries in how moralized specific values are among two conflicting groups at a given point in time. Specifically, we theorize that in light of recent social trends in the modern-day United States, the moralized belief that counter-partisans pose harm to disadvantaged groups, particularly racial/ethnic minorities, has become an asymmetric contributor to partisan dislike among Democrats. We found support for our theory across both measurement-of-mediation and experimental-mediation approaches and in both field experimental and survey data. Overall, this work advances research on ideology and outgroup hostility and extends the worldview conflict perspective to better explain partisan dislike.

The Uniquely Powerful Impact of Explicit, Blatant Dehumanization on Support for Intergroup Violence

Article

Full-text available

May 2025

To effectively address support for intergroup violence, we must understand the psychology promoting it. Dehumanization—the explicit and blatant denial of an outgroup’s humanity—is widely considered one such promoter, which has informed extensive research and practice on support for intergroup violence. Nonetheless, dehumanization is often intertwined with intense dislike, raising concerns that dehumanization’s explanatory power is much more restricted than widely assumed. In the extreme, “dehumanization” is merely another way to express dislike. If so, then theories of dehumanization distort our understanding of the psychology promoting support for intergroup violence. Here, we test dehumanization’s reality and explanatory power through three studies that span diverse methods and samples. First, we meta-analyze existing studies on dehumanization and dislike to establish their independent effects on support for violence (k = 120; N = 128,022). We then test the generalizability of these effects across four violent conflicts in the United States, Russia and Ukraine, Israel and the Palestinian diaspora, and India (NTotal = 3,773). In these studies, we also test whether individuals’ dehumanizing responses are merely metaphor or whether they are intended literally. Finally, we experimentally isolate dehumanization’s role in support for violence in another U.S. sample (N = 753). Our results converge to demonstrate that dehumanization (a) is distinct from dislike and often literal, (b) has a unique—and particularly strong—relationship with support for violence, and (c) can promote such support. This clarifies our understanding of the psychology promoting support for intergroup violence and can inform efforts to address it.

Polarization in the Canadian Public: A Myth?

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2025
J Can Stud

Cary Wu

Polarization has important democratic implications. In this study, the author challenges the claim that Canadians have not become more ideologically polarized. The author recognizes polarization as both a static condition and a dynamic process. A critical analysis of Canadian Election Study data from 2004 to 2021 reveals key patterns indicating that while the Canadian public may have not yet reached the polarized condition, they have been on a path toward increasing ideological polarization.

Large Language Models are often politically extreme, usually ideologically inconsistent, and persuasive even in informational contexts

Preprint

Full-text available

May 2025

Large Language Models (LLMs) are a transformational technology, fundamentally changing how people obtain information and interact with the world. As people become increasingly reliant on them for an enormous variety of tasks, a body of academic research has developed to examine these models for inherent biases, especially political biases, often finding them small. We challenge this prevailing wisdom. First, by comparing 31 LLMs to legislators, judges, and a nationally representative sample of U.S. voters, we show that LLMs' apparently small overall partisan preference is the net result of offsetting extreme views on specific topics, much like moderate voters. Second, in a randomized experiment, we show that LLMs can promulgate their preferences into political persuasiveness even in information-seeking contexts: voters randomized to discuss political issues with an LLM chatbot are as much as 5 percentage points more likely to express the same preferences as that chatbot. Contrary to expectations, these persuasive effects are not moderated by familiarity with LLMs, news consumption, or interest in politics. LLMs, especially those controlled by private companies or governments, may become a powerful and targeted vector for political influence.

Ni justo ni legítimo: The role of social status and neoliberal context on perceived social justice in Latin America and its political consequences

Article

Full-text available

Apr 2025
BRIT J SOC PSYCHOL

We study the role of social status and neoliberal contexts on perceptions of social justice and their consequences for political behaviour in Latin America. While most literature measures these perceptions through personal assessments of income distribution fairness, we resort to a wider understanding including perceptions of fairness on access to fundamental rights. Using data from the Latinobarómetro 2020 survey (N ≈ 20,204), we find that perceived social justice involves assessments of income inequality and access to education, health and justice. Based on self-interest theory, we expect higher-status individuals to perceive the world as more just, as this perception aligns with their interests. We also argue that neoliberal contexts moderate this relationship by narrowing justice perception gaps across status groups, as these contexts advance ideologies emphasizing individual responsibility and meritocracy. Regression models suggest that social status, measured through three indicators (social class, socioeconomic status, and subjective income) is positively related to perceived social justice. Interaction models suggest that, in more neoliberal societies, differences in perceived social justice among social status groups tend to narrow. Finally, we find that perceived social justice is associated with satisfaction with life, democracy and economic system, and reduced intention to participate in protests.

Employee “Free” Speech vs. Organizational Censorship on Social Media: Balancing the Tension Between Free Expression and Safeguards to Foster Psychological Safety

Article

May 2025
ORGAN SCI

Free speech is a core principle in most democratic societies. However, the proliferation of prejudiced speech on social media has prompted intense debates about censorship. As a corollary in the workplace, and against the backdrop of online boundary blurring, we recruited a U.S. nationally representative sample to document that coworkers’ prejudiced social media posts concern Democrats whereas employer censorship of such posts concerns Republicans. To investigate this tension, we integrated boundary research into the psychological safety literature to theorize that organizational censorship on social media differentially affects liberals’ and conservatives’ individual-level psychological safety at work. We also theorized that psychological safety may be fostered—for all employees—by exploiting the tension between safeguards and free expression in organizational social media policies. Taking a multimethod approach, we first explored reactions to organizational censorship of prejudiced speech using open-ended responses (Study 1). Next, we demonstrated in preregistered observational and experimental surveys that such censorship increases Democrats’ psychological safety but decreases Republicans’ psychological safety (Studies 2–3). Finally, in a preregistered, conjoint survey experiment (Study 4), we examined moderators that could help manage this tension. We found that alignment between organizational values and censorship practices, as well as censorship of anti-Black speech, threatening speech, and references to one’s organization, can improve psychological safety for Democrats without undermining psychological safety for Republicans. As political polarization permeates societies worldwide, maintaining the social-relational fabric of organizations will require policies that balance ideological demands. We conclude by discussing implications for psychological safety, “free” speech, and organizational censorship. Funding: This project was funded by the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business and Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2024.19506 .

A Meta-Analytical Review of the Saying-is-Believing Phenomenon: The Role of Social Identity and Communication Topics

Preprint

Full-text available

May 2025
EUR J SOC PSYCHOL

The saying-is-believing (SIB) effect suggests that communicators’ messages align with the audience's attitude, leading to memory bias in subsequent recall. This meta-analysis examines how variations in the audience's social identity and communication topics influence the strength and occurrence of the SIB effect. The meta-analysis included 27 studies from 13 articles (1990–2021), yielding 55 effect sizes for message tuning and 59 for memory bias (Cohen's d). The random-effects meta-analysis and subgroup comparisons revealed a robust effect of audience attitude on message tuning. However, its impact on memory bias diminished when communicators interacted with an outgroup audience or discussed topics that threatened social identity. Heterogeneity ranged from low to very high (I2 = 21.23%–88.47%). Despite indications of publication bias, the findings remained robust. This study clarifies how social factors in communication contribute to the creation of a shared reality.

Left and Right as a Narrative of the Global

Article

May 2025

The left–right narrative is the most universal macro‐story to make sense of global politics. Although the political opposition between the left and the right originated in the West, it has now spread to all continents. Nation‐states remain the primary locus of the politics of left and right, but the distinction has become a global divide that permeates foreign policies, transnational relations, and global governance debates. Building on the concept of the “narrative of the global,” this article combines insights from political sociology, political psychology, public opinion research, comparative politics, and international relations to unpack the global meaning of the left–right division. It shows how, across the world, the language of left and right helps social actors communicate about politics. Our contribution sheds new light on competing discourses of global policy and governance, and will hopefully stimulate a much‐needed conversation between scholars and practitioners about the political foundations of global debates.

Lifestyle Polarization on a College Campus: Do Liberals and Conservatives Behave Differently in Everyday Life?

Article

Full-text available

May 2025

Socializing, moving, working, and leisure form the foundation of human experience. We examined whether these foundational, ostensibly nonpolitical behaviors are nevertheless bifurcated along political fault lines, revealing “lifestyle polarization.” Study 1 quantified the association between political identity and 61 social, movement, work, and leisure behaviors collected from smartphone sensors and logs (i.e., GPS, microphone, calls, texs, unlocks, activity recognition) and ecological momentary assessments (i.e., querying activity level, activity type, interaction partners, locations) at multiple temporal levels (i.e., daily, mornings, afternoon, evenings, nights, weekends, weekdays) in a sample of up to 1,229 students on a college campus. We found that liberals and conservatives behave differently in everyday life; the behavioral differences were small but robust, not accounted for by other plausible factors (e.g., demographics), and most pronounced in the leisure domain. Study 2 showed that the behavioral differences between liberals and conservatives were not accurately discerned by other students, who overestimated the extent of lifestyle polarization present on their campus. Together, these studies suggest that political identity has penetrated some of the most foundational aspects of everyday life, but not to the degree that people think. We discuss how communities may feel divided not only because of deep ideological disagreements across partisan lines but also because such disagreements are accompanied by distinct lifestyles—both real and (mis)perceived—that may prevent liberals and conservatives from engaging in cross-partisan contact and developing mutual understanding.

Mobilizing against the disadvantaged: Unraveling the dynamics of anti-minority collective action

Article

Apr 2025
EUR REV SOC PSYCHOL

The Psychological Bases of Ideology and Prejudice: Testing a Dual Process Model

Article

Full-text available

Jul 2002

The issue of personality and prejudice has been largely investigated in terms of authontananism and social dominance orientation. However, these seem more appropriately conceptualized as ideological attitudes than as personality dimensions. The authors describe a causal model linking dual dimensions of personality social world view, ideological attitudes, and intergroup attitudes. Structural equation modeling with data from American and White Afrikaner students supported the model, suggesting that social conformity and belief in a dangerous world influence authoritarian attitudes, whereas toughmindedness and belief in a competitive jungle world influence social dominance attitudes, and these two ideological attitude dimensions influence intergroup attitudes. The model implies that dual motivational and cognitive processes, which may be activated by different kinds of situational and intergroup dynamics, may underlie 2 distinct dimensions of prejudice.

The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2001

Jonathan Haidt

Research on moral judgment has been dominated by rationalist models, in which moral judgment is thought to be caused by moral reasoning. The author gives 4 reasons for considering the hypothesis that moral reasoning does not cause moral judgment; rather, moral reasoning is usually a post hoc construction, generated after a judgment has been reached. The social intuitionist model is presented as an alternative to rationalist models. The model is a social model in that it deemphasizes the private reasoning done by individuals and emphasizes instead the importance of social and cultural influences. The model is an intuitionist model in that it states that moral judgment is generally the result of quick, automatic evaluations (intuitions). The model is more consistent than rationalist models with recent findings in social, cultural, evolutionary, and biological psychology, as well as in anthropology and primatology.

The Two Majorities

Book

Jan 1995

Byron Shafer

Ideology and the Theory of Political Choice

Book

Jan 1994

Generations and Politics: A Panel Study of Young Adults and Their Parents

Book

Dec 1981

Beyond Rationality: Reason and the Study of Politics

Chapter

Oct 2000

Many social scientists want to explain why people do what they do. A barrier to constructing such explanations used to be a lack of information on the relationship between cognition and choice. Now, recent advances in cognitive science, economics, political science, and psychology have clarified this relationship. In Elements of Reason, eighteen scholars from across the social sciences use these advances to uncover the cognitive foundations of social decision making. They answer tough questions about how people see and process information and provide new explanations of how basic human needs, the environment, and past experiences combine to affect human choices. Elements of Reason is written for a broad audience and should be read by anyone for whom 'Why do people do what they do?' is an important question. It is the rare book that transforms abstract debates about rationality and reason into empirically relevant explanations of how people choose.

The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion

Book

Aug 1992

John R. Zaller

Reasoning and Choice: Explorations in Political Psychology

Book

Aug 1991

Drawing on a multitude of data sets and building on analyses carried out over more than a decade, this book offers a major new theoretical explanation of how ordinary citizens figure out what they favour and oppose politically. Reacting against the conventional wisdom, which stresses how little attention the general public pays to political issues and the lack of consistency in their opinions, the studies presented in this book redirect attention to the processes of reasoning that can be discerned when people are confronted with choices about political issues. These studies demonstrate that ordinary people are in fact capable of reasoning dependably about political issues by the use of judgmental heuristics, even if they have only a limited knowledge of politics and of specific issues.

The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy

Book

Mar 1991

ALBERT O. HIRSCHMAN

CHAPTER 12: A Consistency Theory of Public Opinion and Political Choice: The Hypothesis of Menu Dependence

Chapter

Dec 2004

Political Ideology: Its Structure, Functions, and Elective Affinities

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