Abstract:Ideology has re-emerged as a vital topic of investigation in social psychology. This chapter proposes that political ideologies possess both a discursive (socially constructed) superstructure and a functional (or motivational) substructure and that ideologies serve social psychological functions that may not be entirely rational but help to explain why individuals are drawn to them. System justification, it argues, is the ‘glue’ that holds the two dimensions of left–right ideology (advocacy vs. resistance to c… Show more
“…Furthermore, my colleagues and I have proposed that system justification-which serves epistemic, existential, and relational needs-provides the "motivational glue" that holds the two dimensions of left-right ideology together (Jost, Federico, & Napier, 2013). To uphold traditional institutions and arrangements, conservatives are moved to defend extant inequalities as desirable, just, and necessary.…”
Section: Ideological Differences In Motivational Interests and Concernsmentioning
An abundance of research in political psychology demonstrates that leftists and rightists (or liberals and conservatives) diverge from one another in terms of: (a) personality characteristics; (b) cognitive processing styles; (c) motivational interests and concerns; (d) the prioritization of personal values; and (e) neurological structures and physiological functions. In this article, I summarize these findings and discuss some of their implications for persuasion, framing, and advertising; consumer choice, judgment, decision‐making, and behavior; and customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction and politically motivated boycotts. I conclude that the theory and practice of consumer psychology will be enriched by taking into account ideological asymmetries and the ways in which human behavior both reflects and gives rise to left–right divergence in political orientation—not only in terms of beliefs, opinions, and values but also in terms of underlying psychological processes.
“…Furthermore, my colleagues and I have proposed that system justification-which serves epistemic, existential, and relational needs-provides the "motivational glue" that holds the two dimensions of left-right ideology together (Jost, Federico, & Napier, 2013). To uphold traditional institutions and arrangements, conservatives are moved to defend extant inequalities as desirable, just, and necessary.…”
Section: Ideological Differences In Motivational Interests and Concernsmentioning
An abundance of research in political psychology demonstrates that leftists and rightists (or liberals and conservatives) diverge from one another in terms of: (a) personality characteristics; (b) cognitive processing styles; (c) motivational interests and concerns; (d) the prioritization of personal values; and (e) neurological structures and physiological functions. In this article, I summarize these findings and discuss some of their implications for persuasion, framing, and advertising; consumer choice, judgment, decision‐making, and behavior; and customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction and politically motivated boycotts. I conclude that the theory and practice of consumer psychology will be enriched by taking into account ideological asymmetries and the ways in which human behavior both reflects and gives rise to left–right divergence in political orientation—not only in terms of beliefs, opinions, and values but also in terms of underlying psychological processes.
“…For example, citizens identify more strongly with political parties to the extent that they perceive an alignment between their own values and those expressed by party elites (Wan, Tam, and Chiu 2010). More generally, left-right divergences in the use of language are important to the extent that one regards political ideologies as, at least in part, conceptual networks, rhetorical devices, discursive performances, social constructions, or collective representations (e.g., Billig 1991;Condor, Tileagă, and Billig 2013;Durrheim and Dixon 2005;Freeden 1998;Homer-Dixon et al 2013;Jost, Federico, and Napier 2013;Moscovici 1988;van Dijk 2006). In contemporary society, politicized discussions of morality often take place on social media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, as noted above.…”
Section: Psychological Differences Between Liberals and Conservativesmentioning
We analyzed Twitter language to explore hypotheses derived from moral foundations theory, which suggests that liberals and conservatives prioritize different values. In Study 1, we captured 11 million tweets from nearly 25,000 U.S. residents and observed that liberals expressed fairness concerns more often than conservatives, whereas conservatives were more likely to express concerns about group loyalty, authority, and purity. Increasing political sophistication exacerbated ideological differences in authority and group loyalty. At low levels of sophistication, liberals used more harm language, but at high levels of sophistication conservatives referenced harm more often. In Study 2, we analyzed 59,000 tweets from 388 members of the U.S. Congress. Liberal legislators used more fairnessand harm-related words, whereas conservative legislators used more authorityrelated words. Unexpectedly, liberal legislators used more language pertaining to group loyalty and purity. Follow-up analyses suggest that liberals and conservatives in Congress use similar words to emphasize different policy priorities.
“…Thus, Inglehart ()—like many others (e.g., Erikson, Luttbeg, & Tedin, ; Fuchs & Klingemann, ; Lipset, Lazarsfeld, Barton, & Linz, 1954/1962; McClosky & Zaller, )—boils it down to “whether one supports or opposes social change in an egalitarian direction” (p. 293). Jost, Federico, and Napier () have proposed that system justification , defined as the psychological tendency to defend, bolster, and justify aspects of the status quo, is:the motivational “glue” that holds the two dimensions of left‐right ideology together. To vindicate and uphold traditional institutions and arrangements, conservatives are bound to defend extant inequalities as just and necessary.…”
Section: The Nature Of Left‐right Differences In Political Orientationmentioning
The emergence of political neuroscience-an interdisciplinary venture involving political science, psychology, and cognitive neuroscience-has piqued the interests of scholars as well as the mass public. In this chapter, we review evidence pertaining to four areas of inquiry that have generated most of the research in political neuroscience to date: (1) racial prejudice and intergroup relations; (2) the existence of partisan bias and motivated political cognition; (3) the nature of left-right differences in political orientation; and (4) the dimensional structure of political attitudes. Although these topics are well-known to political psychologists, the application of models and methods from neuroscience has renewed interest in each of them and yielded novel insights. There is reason to believe that many other areas of political psychology await similarly promising renewals and that innovative methods will continue to advance our understanding of the physiological processes involved in political cognition, evaluation, judgment, and behavior. We address limitations, criticisms, and potential pitfalls of existing work-including the "chicken-and-egg problem"-and propose an ambitious agenda for the next generation of research in political neuroscience.KEY WORDS: political neuroscience, racial prejudice, partisanship, ideology "It is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal." -AristotleOne of the most trenchant social and political psychologists of the twentieth century, William J. McGuire (1993), observed that the "politics and psychology relationship has been lively and Advances in Political Psychology, Vol. 35, Suppl. 1, 2014 doi: 10.1111 long-lasting as interdisciplinary affairs go, its longevity fostered by frequent shiftings of its popular topics, methods, and theories" (p. 363; see also Jost & Hardin, 2011). As in all sustainable relationships, psychology and political science have, for the most part, changed together rather than grown apart (e.g., see Huddy, Sears, & Levy, 2013;McGuire, 1993; Sears, Huddy, & Jervis, 2003). Perhaps it was inevitable, then, that political scientists would come to share psychologists' enthusiasm for the models and methods of neuroscience, including the use of electroencephalography (EEG), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and other measures of the central and peripheral nervous system (e.g., Amodio, Jost, Master, & Yee, 2007;Carmen, 2007;Fowler & Schreiber, 2008;Schreiber et al., 2013;Smith, Oxley, Hibbing, Alford, & Hibbing, 2011b;Taber & Young, 2013;Theodoridis & Nelson, 2012). Political neuroscience is an interdisciplinary venture that tackles questions of mutual interest to political scientists and psychologists by drawing, at least in part, on the theories, methods, and assumptions of biology, especially neuroscience. The application of neuroscience to political topics offers a powerful set of research methods that promises to integrate multiple levels of analysis. As E. O. Wilson (1998) wrote in Consilience: The Unity of ...
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
