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Political ideology predicts involvement in crime

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Abstract

Political ideology represents an imperfect yet important indicator of a host of personality traits and cognitive preferences. These preferences, in turn, seemingly propel liberals and conservatives towards divergent life-course experiences. Criminal behavior represents one particular domain of conduct where differences rooted in political ideology may exist. Using a national dataset, we test whether and to what extent political ideology is predictive of self-reported criminal behavior. Our results show that self-identified political ideology is mono-tonically related to criminal conduct cross-sectionally and prospectively and that liberals self-report more criminal conduct than do conservatives. We discuss potential causal mechanisms relating political ideology to individual conduct.

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This article reports results from the first twin study of adults in the United States that focuses exclusively and comprehensively on political traits. These data allow us to test whether a common set of genetic and environmental influences act upon a broad variety of values, personality traits, and political attitudes. In short, it allows us to empirically investigate whether there are a core set of predispositions that form the basis of our political orientations and, if so, whether these predispositions are shaped by the same environmental and innate forces. The key finding from our analysis is that there are core political predispositions that are rooted in common genetic and environmental influences and that these predispositions are empirically distinct from broader personality traits.
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We examined the relation between personality traits and crime in two studies. In New Zealand we studied 18-year-old males and females from an entire birth cohort. In Pittsburgh we studied an ethnically diverse group of 12- and 13-year-old boys. In both studies we gathered multiple and independent measures of personality and delinquent involvement. The personality correlates of delinquency were robust in different nations, in different age cohorts, across gender, and across race: greater delinquent participation was associated with a personality configuration characterized by high Negative Emotionality and weak Constraint. We suggest that when Negative Emotionality (the tendency to experience aversive affective states) is accompanied by weak Constraint (difficulty in impulse control), negative emotions may be translated more readily into antisocial acts. We review additional evidence about the developmental origins and consequences of this personality configuration and discuss its implications for theories about antisocial behavior.
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We trace the rise, fall, and resurgence of political ideology as a topic of research in social, personality, and political psychology. For over 200 years, political belief systems have been classified usefully according to a single left-right (or liberal-conservative) dimension that, we believe, possesses two core aspects: (a) advocating versus resisting social change and (b) rejecting versus accepting inequality. There have been many skeptics of the notion that most people are ideologically inclined, but recent psychological evidence suggests that left-right differences are pronounced in many life domains. Implicit as well as explicit preferences for tradition, conformity, order, stability, traditional values, and hierarchy-versus those for progress, rebelliousness, chaos, flexibility, feminism, and equality-are associated with conservatism and liberalism, respectively. Conservatives score consistently higher than liberals on measures of system justification. Furthermore, there are personality and lifestyle differences between liberals and conservatives as well as situational variables that induce either liberal or conservative shifts in political opinions. Our thesis is that ideological belief systems may be structured according to a left-right dimension for largely psychological reasons linked to variability in the needs to reduce uncertainty and threat. © 2008 Association for Psychological Science.
Article
The Psychopathy Checklist—Revised (PCL-R) has been well established as a predictor of recidivism in the literature. However, the research generally points to Factor 2 (antisocial behavior) as a stronger predictor of recidivism than Factor 1 (interpersonal/affective). Because recent research has examined the importance of cognition in offending, it was hypothesized that inclusion of a measure of criminal cognition would augment the PCL-R in predicting recidivism. The various factors, scales, total scores, and interaction terms were entered into a series of regression analyses to examine if recidivism prediction improved. Results provide preliminary support for the utilization of the Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles (PICTS) in conjunction with the PCL-R, as the proactive factor and the Superoptimism scale of the PICTS combined with Factor 2 of the PCL-R produced significant results.
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This paper examines the political consequences that arise due to multiple and simultaneous bases of social experience. Two alternative contexts—those of neighborhoods and churches—provide an empirical setting for the effort; and the analysis focuses on two different political attitudes—policy preferences regarding abortion and partisan self-identification. Several questions are addressed: In what manner are the alternative contexts of politics different and in what manner are they similar? To what extent are churches and neighborhoods reinforcing in the political messages they convey, and to what extent do they serve as independent bases of social experience? How do individual differences and individual discretion mediate and deflect the impact of these alternative sources of political influence?
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The authors argue that the concept of personality has much to offer the field of criminology. To this end, they used meta-analytic techniques to examine the relations between antisocial behavior defined relatively broadly and four structural models of personality: Eysenck's PEN model, Tellegen's three-factor model, Costa and McCrae's five-factor model (FFM), and Cloninger's seven-factor temperament and character model. A comprehensive review of the literature yielded 59 studies that provided relevant information. Eight of the dimensions bore moderate relations to antisocial behavior; the dimensions could all be understood as measures of either Agreeableness or Conscientiousness from the FFM. The implications of these findings for future research are considered.
Article
This paper presents the largest analysis to date on the influence of the “big five” personality traits on political ideology using a US representative sample (N=14,672). In line with research in political psychology, “openness to experience” is found to predict liberal ideology and “conscientiousness” predicts conservative ideology. The availability of sibling clusters in the data is leveraged to show that these results are also robust to the inclusion of family fixed effects. We also explore the way that personality might interact with environmental influences in the development of ideology. To this end, a variety of childhood experiences are studied that may have a differential effect on political ideology based on a respondent's personality profile. Childhood trauma is found to interact with “openness” in predicting ideology and this triangular relationship is further explored using mediation analysis. These findings provide new evidence for the idea that differences in political ideology are deeply intertwined with variation in the nature and nurture of individual personalities.
Article
One of the strongest regularities in the empirical political science literature is the well-known correlation in parent and child partisan behavior. Until recently this phenomenon was thought to result solely from parental socialization, but new evidence on genetic sources of behavior suggests it might also be due to heritability. In this article we hypothesize that genes contribute to variation in a general tendency toward strength of partisanship. Using data collected at the Twins Days Festival, we compare the similarity of partisan strength in identical twins who share all of their genes to the similarity of partisan strength in non-identical twins who share only half of their genes. The results show that heritability accounts for almost half of the variance in strength of partisan attachment, and they suggest that we should pay closer attention to the role of biology in the expression of important political behaviors.
Article
Ought implies can. This paper investigates whether the central moral directives of liberalism are ones citizens can - as matter of human cognition - be expected to honor. Liberalism obliges the state to disclaim a moral orthodoxy and instead premise legal obligation on secular grounds accessible to persons of diverse cultural persuasions. Studies of the phenomenon of cultural cognition, however, suggest that individuals naturally impute socially harmful consequences to behavior that defies their moral norms. As a result, they are impelled to suppress morally deviant behavior even when they honestly perceive themselves to be motivated only by the secular good of harm prevention. The paper identifies how this dynamic transforms seemingly instrumental debates over environmental regulation, public health, economic policy, and crime control into polarizing forms of illiberal status competition. It also proposes a counterintuitive remedy: rather than attempt to cleanse the law of culturally partisan meanings - the discourse strategy associated with the liberal norm of public reason - lawmakers should endeavor to infuse it with a surfeit of meanings capable of affirming a wide range of competing worldviews simultaneously.
Article
Although skeptics continue to doubt that most people are “ideological,” evidence suggests that meaningful left-right differences do exist and that they may be rooted in basic personality dispositions, that is, relatively stable individual differences in psychological needs, motives, and orientations toward the world. Seventy-five years of theory and research on personality and political orientation has produced a long list of dispositions, traits, and behaviors. Applying a theory of ideology as motivated social cognition and a “Big Five” framework, we find that two traits, Openness to New Experiences and Conscientiousness, parsimoniously capture many of the ways in which individual differences underlying political orientation have been conceptualized. In three studies we investigate the relationship between personality and political orientation using multiple domains and measurement techniques, including: self-reported personality assessment; nonverbal behavior in the context of social interaction; and personal possessions and the characteristics of living and working spaces. We obtained consistent and converging evidence that personality differences between liberals and conservatives are robust, replicable, and behaviorally significant, especially with respect to social (vs. economic) dimensions of ideology. In general, liberals are more open-minded, creative, curious, and novelty seeking, whereas conservatives are more orderly, conventional, and better organized.
Article
Researchers in moral psychology and social justice have agreed that morality is about matters of harm, rights, and justice. On this definition of morality, conservative opposition to social justice programs appears to be immoral, and has been explained as a product of various non-moral processes such as system justification or social dominance orientation. In this article we argue that, from an anthropological perspective, the moral domain is usually much broader, encompassing many more aspects of social life and valuing institutions as much or more than individuals. We present theoretical and empirical reasons for believing that there are five psychological systems that provide the foundations for the world’s many moralities. The five foundations are psychological preparations for detecting and reacting emotionally to issues related to harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. Political liberals have moral intuitions primarily based upon the first two foundations, and therefore misunderstand the moral motivations of political conservatives, who generally rely upon all five foundations.
Article
The so-called Dark Triad (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy) represent correlated subclinical personality traits capturing “dark personalities”. How might darker personalities contribute to prejudice? In the present study (n = 197), these dark personality variables correlated positively with outgroup threat perceptions and anti-immigrant prejudice. A proposed two-stage structural equation model, assuming indirect personality effects (Dark Personality, Big Five) on prejudice through ideology and group threat perceptions, fit the data well. Specifically, a latent Dark Personality factor predicted social dominance orientation, whereas (low) Openness to Experience predicted right-wing authoritarianism; these ideological variables each predicted prejudice directly and indirectly through heightened intergroup threat. The authors recommend that personality models of prejudice incorporate both normal-range and subclinical personality predictors, in addition to ideological and social psychological mediators.
Article
Social psychologists have often followed other scientists in treating religiosity primarily as a set of beliefs held by individuals. But, beliefs are only one facet of this complex and multidimensional construct. The authors argue that social psychology can best contribute to scholarship on religion by being relentlessly social. They begin with a social-functionalist approach in which beliefs, rituals, and other aspects of religious practice are best understood as means of creating a moral community. They discuss the ways that religion is intertwined with five moral foundations, in particular the group-focused "binding" foundations of Ingroup/loyalty, Authority/respect, Purity/sanctity. The authors use this theoretical perspective to address three mysteries about religiosity, including why religious people are happier, why they are more charitable, and why most people in the world are religious.
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In a longitudinal study of a birth cohort, the authors identified youth involved in each of 4 different health-risk behaviors at age 21: alcohol dependence, violent crime, unsafe sex, and dangerous driving habits. At age 18, the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ) was used to assess 10 distinct personality traits. At age 3, observational measures were used to classify children into distinct temperament groups. Results showed that a similar constellation of adolescent personality traits, with developmental origins in childhood, is linked to different health-risk behaviors at 21. Associations between the same personality traits and different health-risk behaviors were not an artifact of the same people engaging in different health-risk behaviors; rather, these associations implicated the same personality type in different but related behaviors. In planning campaigns, health professionals may need to design programs that appeal to the unique psychological makeup of persons most at risk for health-risk behaviors.
Article
The Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles (PICTS) is an 80-item self-report measure designed to assess crime-supporting cognitive patterns. Data from men (N = 450) and women (N = 227) offenders indicate that the PICTS thinking, validity, and content scales possess moderate to moderately high internal consistency and test-retest stability. Meta-analyses of studies in which the PICTS has been administered reveal that besides correlating with measures of past criminality, several of the PICTS thinking and content scales are capable of predicting future adjustment/release outcome at a low but statistically significant level, and two scales (En, CUR) are sensitive to program-assisted change beyond what control subjects achieve spontaneously. The factor structure of the PICTS is then examined with the aid of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, the results of which denote the presence of two major and two minor factors.
Article
Political scientists and psychologists have noted that, on average, conservatives show more structured and persistent cognitive styles, whereas liberals are more responsive to informational complexity, ambiguity and novelty. We tested the hypothesis that these profiles relate to differences in general neurocognitive functioning using event-related potentials, and found that greater liberalism was associated with stronger conflict-related anterior cingulate activity, suggesting greater neurocognitive sensitivity to cues for altering a habitual response pattern.
Article
Research on self-control and related constructs is central to individual-level explanations of antisocial behavior. However, less research attention has been paid to the psychopathological underpinnings of self-control. The current study explores relationships between self-control and psychiatric symptoms, head injury, trauma history, substance use, guiltlessness and narcissistic traits in a statewide population of juvenile offenders. Results support the importance of these variables, in particular narcissistic traits, in better explicating theories of self-control. Implications for research on the psychopathological underpinnings of self-control are highlighted.
Genetic and environmental transmission of political orientations The dark triad of personality: A 10 year review
  • C L Funk
  • K B Smith
  • J R Alford
  • M V Hibbing
  • N R Eaton
  • R F Krueger
  • J R Hibbing
Funk, C. L., Smith, K. B., Alford, J. R., Hibbing, M. V., Eaton, N. R., Krueger, R. F.,... Hibbing, J. R. (2013). Genetic and environmental transmission of political orientations. Political Psychology, 34(6), 805-819, http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2012.00915.x Furnham, A., Richards, S. C., & Paulhus, D. L. (2013). The dark triad of personality: A 10 year review. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 7(3), 199-216, http:// doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12018
Nursery school personality and political orientation two decades later
  • J R Alford
  • C L Funk
  • J R Hibbing
  • J H Fowler
  • L A Baker
  • C T Dawes
  • . . Bash
Alford, J. R., Funk, C. L., Hibbing, J. R., Fowler, J. H., Baker, L. a., Dawes, C. T.,... Bash, E. (2008). Nursery school personality and political orientation two decades later. The American Political Science Review, 102(2), 233-248, http://doi.org/10.1017/ CBO9781107415324.004
The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion
  • J Haidt
Haidt, J. (2012). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion. New York: Pantheon.