The political left rolls with the good and the political right confronts the bad: connecting physiology and cognition to preferences

Dodd, Michael D.; Balzer, Amanda; Jacobs, Carly; Gruszczynski, Mike; Smith, Kevin B.; Hibbing, John R.

doi:10.1098/rstb.2011.0268

Cited by 162 publications

(222 citation statements)

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“…Libert/Unaff ---------------------------------------------.77 -.31 1.84 .16 Dodd et al, 2012), summarized by first principal component; see SOM for details.…”

Section: Categorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Political Orientation Predicts Credulity Regarding Putative Hazards

2017

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23 24 25 26 The instruments described in this paper are included in the Supplementary Online Materials, and 27 are also archived at osf.io/qqq82. The complete datasets, lists of variables, and analytic code are 28 archived at osf.io/qqq82 and http://escholarship.org/uc/item/82j5p9r3 29 Accepted for publication in Psychological Science 1 Abstract 30To benefit from information provided by others, people must be somewhat credulous. However, 31 credulity entails risks. The optimal level of credulity depends on the relative costs of believing 32 misinformation versus failing to attend to accurate information. When information concerns 33 hazards, erroneous incredulity is often more costly than erroneous credulity, as disregarding 34 accurate warnings is more harmful than adopting unnecessary precautions. Because no 35 equivalent asymmetry characterizes information concerning benefits, people should generally be 36 more credulous of hazard information than of benefit information. This adaptive negatively-37 biased credulity is linked to negativity bias in general, and is more prominent among those who 38 believe the world to be dangerous. Because both threat sensitivity and dangerous-world beliefs 39 differ between conservatives and liberals, we predicted that conservatism would positively 40 correlate with negatively-biased credulity. Two online studies of Americans support this 41 prediction, potentially illuminating the impact of politicians' alarmist claims on different 42 portions of the electorate. 43 44 Keywords: threat sensitivity; negativity bias; negatively-biased credulity; political orientation 45 2 In 2012, a liberal professor wrote that the Obama Administration was stockpiling 46 ammunition, preparing for totalitarian rule. This idea was ignored by liberals. In 2015, 47 conservative bloggers asserted that a military exercise aimed to occupy Texas and impose 48 martial law. Conservatives became so concerned that the Texas Governor ordered the State 49Guard to monitor the exercise. 50The different fates of these two conspiracy theories might simply reflect their historical 51 particulars. Whereas in 2012 liberal Americans largely approved of the Obama Administration, 52 in 2015 most conservative Americans did not. Perhaps the first theory died while the second 53 prospered simply because the latter resonated with the views of a substantial audience while the 54 former did not. However, two bodies of research suggest that psychological differences related 55 to political orientation may also have been at work. First, a sizeable literature documents that, in 56 the U.S., responsiveness to negative stimuli correlates with political orientation, with 57 conservatives displaying more responsiveness, and liberals displaying less. Second, recent 58 studies indicate that people are more credulous of information concerning hazards than of 59 information concerning benefits -and individuals differ in this regard. Here, we combine these 60 approaches, testing the hypothesis that political orientation is corre...

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“…Libert/Unaff ---------------------------------------------.77 -.31 1.84 .16 Dodd et al, 2012), summarized by first principal component; see SOM for details.…”

Section: Categorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Political Orientation Predicts Credulity Regarding Putative Hazards

2017

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“…But differences amongst us arise as to whether it is most important to seek the good or avoid the bad-leading to political differences causing conflicts both within and between cultures-. The definition of politics refers to governing institutions and policies and it is argued that ever since the French Revolution it is common to divide secular political camps into "left" and "right" (Dodd et al 2012). And new physiological evidence, it is argued, shows that there is a biological explanation for this division as they have found two contrasting types of politically relevant variation in cognitive and social dispositions.…”

Section: Concluding Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…I wonder how-if at allBorrelli, Nomura, and Mandela would have changed their intervention strategies if they had known these research findings. Dodd et al (2012) have not referenced any analysis of specific cultural, political, economic, and social facts of the past, present or the future and considered how these facts might have influenced the mentality of differing categories of people in these contexts or any other context. Their findings seem to be at the level of the "cosmic will", to use Nomura's concept and rooted in the unchangeable part of our sub-conscious.…”

Section: Concluding Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In case popular participation contributes towards self-reliance, self-development, and also community development, it may be wise to listen to those who argue that the failure of government strategies towards development "lies in the lack of participation of the communities concerned in mapping out their own development" (Mda, 2009: 34). Such development ideology might be counter-productive in that it is not emphasized that rights to service delivery have to be combined with responsibility meaning dignity and respect for the other and one's surroundings-even in situations of poverty (Tutu, 2009)-. Dodd et al (2012 demonstrate ignorance about the contributions to embryonic transdisciplinarity developed outside the academy discussed in the three examples of peace education analysis originating in the 60s, and in this light I find that their findings are of little utility as a guide in the design of peace education initiatives in spite of the fact that the study purports to be important for understanding conflict behaviour.…”

Section: Concluding Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Three Roots of Transdisciplinary Analysis in Peace Education

Haavelslrud¹

2015

PRTS

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<p dir="ltr"><span>¿Cómo se entiende la mentalidad en relación con las condiciones contextuales y qué significado tiene para la participación en la transformación de esas condiciones? Las respuestas a esta pregunta son decisivas tanto para la selección de los contenidos como para la forma de comunicarse en educación para la paz. La complejidad de esta cuestión es evidente si aceptamos que la mentalidad es tanto un producto de las condiciones contextuales como una posible causa de su transformación. La agencia humana o la participación en la transformación está incrustada en esas condiciones. Como las condiciones contextuales no se limitan al presente y al pasado, sino que también incluyen las condiciones contextuales potenciales o futuras, la mentalidad tiene que ser entendida también como producto desí misma, ya que puede trascender el statu quo. La educación para la paz puede ser una herramienta no sólo para la comprensión de las condiciones contextuales del pasado y del presente sino también para imaginar posibles realidades de futuros deseados y no deseados. La participación en las transformaciones del “es” al “deber ser” —incluyendo estrategias para la forma de actuar en el presente para evitar o lograr futuras condiciones contextuales específicas— depende en cierta medida de la ayuda educativa en tal conocimiento. La socialización en una familia y una comunidad (educación informal y no formal) está influenciada por esas condiciones, mientras que la educación formal refleja las preferencias educativas del Estado. Como no es raro que los aprendizajes en la educación informal, no formal y formal son diferentes, y a veces contradictorios, la decisión de centrarse en la educación para la paz en una o dos de estas enseñanzas —o las tres— tendría que ser entendida como parte de la comprensión de la relación entre la mentalidad y las condiciones contextuales. Esta tarea es una invitación a las disciplinas académicas para ayudar a satisfacer la necesidad de la cooperación transdisciplinaria en el análisis de esta complejidad. La historia de la educación para la paz ha contribuido a la gestación de la transdisciplinariedad en el análisis de esta complejidad, evidente en tres contribuciones que son discutidas y comparadas en este trabajo.</span></p><div><span><br /></span></div>

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“…In another study 10 , Hibbing showed subjects a series of emotionally charged images, including a spider on a man's face, a maggot-infested wound, a cute rabbit and a happy child. People who described themselves as conservatives tended to respond more strongly when looking at the negative images than at the positive images, whereas liberals reacted more to the positive pictures.…”

Section: Visceral Reactionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biology and ideology: The anatomy of politics

Buchen

2012

Nature

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The political left rolls with the good and the political right confronts the bad: connecting physiology and cognition to preferences

Cited by 162 publications

References 49 publications

Political Orientation Predicts Credulity Regarding Putative Hazards

Political Orientation Predicts Credulity Regarding Putative Hazards

Three Roots of Transdisciplinary Analysis in Peace Education

Biology and ideology: The anatomy of politics

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