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Evidence from three studies reveals a critical difference in self-control as a function of political ideology. Specifically, greater endorsement of political conservatism (versus liberalism) was associated with greater attention regulation and task persistence. Moreover, this relationship is shown to stem from varying beliefs in freewill; specifically, the association between political ideology and selfcontrol is mediated by differences in the extent to which belief in freewill is endorsed, is independent of task performance or motivation, and is reversed when freewill is perceived to impede (rather than enhance) self-control. Collectively, these findings offer insight into the self-control consequences of political ideology by detailing conditions under which conservatives and liberals are better suited to engage in self-control and outlining the role of freewill beliefs in determining these conditions. freewill beliefs | self-control | political ideology | individual differences P olitical ideologies loosely represent a shared set of beliefs that define both a specific social order and the means to attain it (1). These ideologies are often categorized into two broad groups-those who endorse traditional values and the status quo (conservatives) and those who endorse egalitarian ideals and progressive change (liberals) (2). Although research demonstrates the various consequences of these distinct ideologies (3), of primary interest to the present research is the unexplored possibility for selfcontrol differences between conservatives and liberals. In particular, we hypothesize that conservatives will demonstrate greater selfcontrol than liberals.This proposition-although untested-is not without indirect support. Kemmelmeier et al. (4) demonstrate that conservative students earn higher grades in college than liberals (controlling for general intellect). The authors interpret this finding as a function of social dominance, arguing that doing well in these disciplines promotes the existing social hierarchy that conservatives seek to maintain. However, a complementary position is that conservatives more strongly embrace the belief that they are responsible for their actions (i.e., freewill beliefs) (5-8). For instance, it could be that conservatives believe they have greater control over their performance and thus expend greater selfcontrol in their academic pursuits.The possibility that conservatives and liberals differ in their freewill beliefs would be consistent with the attributional proclivities of conservatives and liberals. Specifically, conservatives tend to attribute causality to internal or dispositional factors (e.g., personal effort and control), whereas liberals tend to attribute causality to external factors (e.g., systemic or sociocultural forces) (9-13). Given that conservatives are more likely than liberals to make internal attributions for their actions, it follows that conservatives should also more strongly endorse the belief in freewill than should liberals. Indeed, believing outcomes are dete...

We all too often have to make decisions-from the mundane (e.g., what to eat for breakfast) to the complex (e.g., what to buy a loved one)-and yet there exists a multitude of strategies that allows us to make a decision. This work focuses on a subset of decision strategies that allows individuals to make decisions by bypassing the decision-making process-a phenomenon we term decision sidestepping. Critical to the present manuscript, however, we contend that decision sidestepping stems from the motivation to achieve closure. We link this proposition back to the fundamental nature of closure and how those seeking closure are highly bothered by decision making. As such, we argue that the motivation to achieve closure prompts a reliance on sidestepping strategies (e.g., default bias, choice delegation, status quo bias, inaction inertia, option fixation) to reduce the bothersome nature of decision making. In support of this framework, five experiments demonstrate that (a) those seeking closure are more likely to engage in decision sidestepping, (b) the effect of closure on sidestepping stems from the bothersome nature of decision making, and (c) the reliance on sidestepping results in downstream consequences for subsequent choice. Taken together, these findings offer unique insight into the cognitive motivations stimulating a reliance on decision sidestepping and thus a novel framework by which to understand how individuals make decisions while bypassing the decision-making process. (PsycINFO Database Record

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Although models of political ideology traditionally focus on the motivations that separate conservatives and liberals, a growing body of research is directly exploring the cognitive factors that vary due to political ideology. Consistent with this emerging literature, the present research proposes that conservatives and liberals excel at tasks of distinct working memory processes (i.e., inhibition and updating, respectively). Consistent with this hypothesis, three studies demonstrate that conservatives are more likely to succeed at response inhibition and liberals are more likely to succeed at response updating. Moreover, this effect is rooted in different levels of cognitive flexibility and independent of respondents’ demographics, intelligence, religiosity, and motivation. Collectively, these findings offer an important perspective on the cognitive factors that delineate conservatism and liberalism, the role of cognitive flexibility in specific working memory processes, and the impact of political ideology on a multitude of behaviors linked to inhibition and updating (e.g., creativity, problem-solving, self-control).