Clinical symptoms of anxiety disorders as predictors of political attitudes: A prospective cohort study

Abstract

C onservative political ideologies have been suggested to correlate with elevated sensitivity to threat. However, it is unclear whether the associations between threat sensitivity and political attitudes can be observed with clinical measures of mental health. We examined how anxiety disorders predicted attitudes on several political issues. Participants were 7253 individuals from the 1958 British Birth Cohort study. Symptoms of generalised anxiety disorder, phobia and panic were assessed in a clinical interview at age 44, and opinions about political issues were self-reported by the participants 6 years later. Anxiety symptoms were associated with higher concerns about economic inequality, preservation of the environment, distrust in politics and lower work ethic. No associations were observed with racist or authoritarian attitudes, or support for traditional family values. We also assessed how political attitudes at ages 33 and 42 predicted anxiety disorder symptoms at age 44, revealing a possible bidirectional association between concern for economic inequality and anxiety disorder symptoms. These findings do not support an association between conservative political attitudes and elevated threat sensitivity. Rather, elevated anxiety may increase concerns about social inequality and the environment.

Is political anxiety different than general anxiety?

“…The latter studies, not surprisingly, have focused more on political traits, and consistently found political orientation, interest, and engagement to be positive correlates with political anxiety (e.g., Smith, 2022;Smith et al, 2023). The impact of such political variables on general anxiety is largely unknown, though rates of depression have been reported to be higher among liberals than conservatives (e.g., Gimbrone et al, 2022), and a study by Helminen et al (2022) found that in Great Britain those with left-leaning attitudes on several issues (e.g., inequality, concern for the environment) had higher anxiety scores than those with right-leaning attitudes.…”

“You are doomed!" Crisis-specific and Dynamic Use of Fear Speech in Protest and Extremist Radical Social Movements

“…Generally, it is assumed in political science that anxiety increases both the desire for information and the active search for it (Albertson and Gadarian, 2015). In sum, fear and anxiety are both emotions characterized by negative valence that arise in reaction to threat, yet they have a partially different neurobiological basis and may result in different responses to different threats 1 (Helminen et al, 2022). Although fear and anxiety represent distinct emotional experiences for the recipient, we use fear as an umbrella term for the current purpose.…”

The neurobiology of political ideology: Theories, findings, and future directions

“…It remains unclear in the extant literature the precise psychological, neurobiological, and contextual factors that differentiate social ideology from economic ideology, and future research would do well to interrogate these relationships. In particular, future research should aim to explain why perceiving negative stimuli as more salient is sometimes associated with social conservatism (e.g., Shook & Fazio, 2009) and other times economic liberalism (e.g., Helminen et al., 2022; Panish & Delton, 2023). This could be done, for example, by showing people a series of equally negatively‐valenced images while varying the specific content (e.g., poverty, military threats, natural disasters, etc.)…”

“…In accordance with this perspective, social conservatism predicts poorer performance on behavioral measures of cognitive updating (Costello et al., 2023), whereas conservatives outperform liberals in tasks requiring perseverance and consistency (Buechner et al., 2021). Meanwhile, there is growing evidence that the concern with suffering and injustice that characterizes economic liberalism is motivated, in part, by sensitivity to anxiety that increases anticipation of and aversion to harm (Bondü & Inerle, 2020; Helminen et al., 2022; Panish & Delton, 2023).…”