Analyzing political conservatism as motivated social cognition integrates theories of personality (authoritarianism, dogmatism-intolerance of ambiguity), epistemic and existential needs (for closure, regulatory focus, terror management), and ideological rationalization (social dominance, system justification). A meta-analysis (88 samples, 12 countries, 22,818 cases) confirms that several psychological variables predict political conservatism: death anxiety (weighted mean r ϭ .50); system instability (.47); dogmatism-intolerance of ambiguity (.34); openness to experience (-.32); uncertainty tolerance (-.27); needs for order, structure, and closure (.26); integrative complexity (-.20); fear of threat and loss (.18); and self-esteem (-.09). The core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change and justification of inequality and is motivated by needs that vary situationally and dispositionally to manage uncertainty and threat.Conservatism is a demanding mistress and is giving me a migraine.-George F. Will, BuntsFor more than half a century, psychologists have been tracking the hypothesis that different psychological motives and tendencies underlie ideological differences between the political left and the right. The practice of singling out political conservatives for special study began with Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford's (1950) landmark study of authoritarianism and the fascist potential in personality. An asymmetrical focus on right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) was criticized heavily on theoretical and methodological grounds (e.g., Christie, 1954;Eysenck, 1954;Rokeach, 1960;Shils, 1954), but it has withstood the relentless tests of time and empirical scrutiny (e.g., Altemeyer, 1981Altemeyer, , 1988Altemeyer, , 1996Altemeyer, , 1998Billig, 1984;Brown, 1965;Christie, 1991;Elms, 1969;Sidanius, 1985;W. F. Stone, 1980;W. F. Stone, Lederer, & Christie, 1993;Tetlock, 1984;Wilson, 1973c). A voluminous literature, which we review here, facilitates the comparison of cognitive styles and motivational needs of political conservatives with those of moderates, liberals, radicals, and left-wingers. In addition to classic and contemporary approaches to authoritarianism, we cover less obvious sources of theory and research on individual differences associated with dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity, uncertainty avoidance, need for cognitive closure, and social dominance orientation (SDO) insofar as each of these psychological variables contributes to a deeper and more nuanced understanding of political conservatism.The study of authoritarianism and other personality theories of political attitudes is often dismissed a priori as an illegitimate, value-laden attempt to correlate general psychological profiles with specific ideological beliefs (e.g., Durrheim, 1997; J. L. Martin, 2001;Ray, 1988). The psychological study of ideological conservatism is one that invites controversy (e.g., Redding, 2001;Sears, 1994;Sidanius, Pratto, & Bobo, 1996;Sniderman & Tetlock, 1986;Tetlock, 1994;Tetlock & Mitchell,...

No abstract

A meta-analysis by J. T. Jost, J. Glaser, A. W. Kruglanski, and F. J. Sulloway (2003) concluded that political conservatism is partially motivated by the management of uncertainty and threat. In this reply to J. Greenberg and E. Jonas (2003), conceptual issues are clarified, numerous political anomalies are explained, and alleged counterexamples are incorporated with a dynamic model that takes into account differences between "young" and "old" movements. Studies directly pitting the rigidity-of-the-right hypothesis against the ideological extremity hypothesis demonstrate strong support for the former. Medium to large effect sizes describe relations between political conservatism and dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity; lack of openness to experience; uncertainty avoidance; personal needs for order, structure, and closure; fear of death; and system threat.

Responses to information were facilitated by the rapid prior presentation of evaluatively congruent material. This fundamental discovery (R. H. Fazio, D. M. Sanbonmatsu, M. C. Powell, & F. R. Kardes, 1986) marked a breakthrough in research on automatic information processing by demonstrating that evaluative meaning is grasped without conscious control. Experiments employing a word naming task provided stringent tests of the automaticity of evaluation and found support for it. More strikingly, a previously unobserved reversal of these effects (i.e., slower responses to evaluatively matched rather than mismatched items) was found when primes were evaluatively extreme. Procedural variances across 6 experiments revealed that the reverse priming effect was highly robust. This discovery is analogous to demonstrations of contrast effects in controlled judgments. It is theorized that the reverse priming effect reflects an automatic correction for the biasing influence of the prime.

No abstract