Hostname: page-component-89b8bd64d-b5k59 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-08T21:39:25.045Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Liberals and conservatives can show similarities in negativity bias

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2014

Mark J. Brandt ,
Geoffrey Wetherell  and
Christine Reyna
Mark J. Brandt
Affiliation:
Department of Social Psychology, Tilburg University, Tilburg 5000 LE, Netherlands. m.j.brandt@tilburguniversity.edu https://sites.google.com/site/brandtmj/
Geoffrey Wetherell
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, DePaul University, Chicago, IL 60614-3504. gwethere@depaul.edu http://www.geoffreywetherell.com/ creyna@depaul.edu http://socialpsychologydepaul.wordpress.com/
Christine Reyna
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, DePaul University, Chicago, IL 60614-3504. gwethere@depaul.edu http://www.geoffreywetherell.com/ creyna@depaul.edu http://socialpsychologydepaul.wordpress.com/
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Negativity bias may underlie the development of political ideologies, but liberals and conservatives are likely to respond to threats similarly. We review evidence from research on intolerance, motivated reasoning, and basic psychological threats that suggest liberals and conservatives are more similar than different when confronting threatening groups, situations, and information.

Information

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , June 2014 , pp. 307 - 308
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Brandt, M. J. & Reyna, C. (2010) The role of prejudice and the need for closure in religious fundamentalism. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 36:715–25.Google Scholar
Castano, E., Leidner, B., Bonacossa, A., Nikkah, J., Perrull, R., Spencer, B. & Humphrey, N. (2011) Ideology, fear of death, and death anxiety. Political Psychology 32:601–21.Google Scholar
Chambers, J. R., Schlenker, B. R., Collisson, B. (2013) Ideology and prejudice: The role of value conflicts. Psychological Science 24:140–49.Google Scholar
Crawford, J. T. (2012) The ideologically objectionable premise model: Predicting biased political judgments on the left and right. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48:138–51e.Google Scholar
Crawford, J. T., Jussim, L., Cain, T. R. & Cohen, F. (2013) Right wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation differentially predict biased evaluations of media reports. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 43:163–74.Google Scholar
Crawford, J. T. & Pilanski, J. M. (in press) Political intolerance, right and left. Political Psychology.Google Scholar
Cunningham, W. A., Nezlek, J. B. & Banaji, M. R. (2004) Implicit and explicit ethnocentrism: Revisiting ideologies of prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 30:1332–46.Google Scholar
Duckitt, J. & Fisher, K. (2003) The impact of social threat on worldview and ideological attitudes. Political Psychology 24:199–222.Google Scholar
Fraley, R. C., Griffin, B. N., Belsky, J. & Roisman, G. I. (2012) Developmental antecedents of political ideology: A longitudinal investigation from birth to age 18 years. Psychological Science 23:1425–31.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fritsche, I., Jonas, E. & Frankhanel, T. (2008) The role of control motivation in mortality salience effects on ingroup support and defense. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 95:524–41.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Greenberg, J., Simon, L., Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S. & Chatel, D. (1992) Terror management and tolerance: Does mortality salience always intensify negative reactions to others who threaten one's worldview? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 63(2): 212–20.Google Scholar
Jost, J. T., Glaser, J., Kruglanski, A. W. & Sulloway, F. J. (2003) Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological Bulletin 129(3):339–75.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kosloff, S., Greenberg, J., Weise, D. & Solomon, S. (2010) The effects of mortality salience on political preferences: The roles of charisma and political orientation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 46:139–45.Google Scholar
Lord, C. G., Ross, L. & Lepper, M. R. (1979) Biased assimilation and attitude polarization: The effects of prior theories on subsequently considered evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37:2098–109.Google Scholar
Mercier, H. & Sperber, D. (2011) Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 34:57–74.Google Scholar
Morgan, G. S., Mullen, E. & Skitka, L. J. (2010) When values and attributions collide: Liberals' and conservatives' values motivate attributions for alleged misdeeds. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 36:1241–54.Google Scholar
Proulx, T., Inzlicht, M. & Harmon-Jones, E. (2012) Understanding all inconsistency compensation as a palliative response to violated expectations. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 16:285–91.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Proulx, T. & Major, B. (2013) A raw deal: Heightened liberalism following exposure to anomalous playing cards. Journal of Social Issues 69:455–72.Google Scholar
Taber, C. S. & Lodge, M. (2006) Motivated skepticism in the evaluation of political beliefs. American Journal of Political Science 50:755–69.Google Scholar
Tetlock, P. E. (2003) Thinking the unthinkable: Sacred values and taboo cognitions. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7:320–24.Google Scholar
Verhulst, B., Eaves, L. J. & Hatemi, P. K. (2012) Correlation not causation: The relationship between personality traits and political ideologies. American Journal of Political Science 56:34–51.Google Scholar
Wetherell, G., Brandt, M. J. & Reyna, C. (2013) Discrimination across the ideological divide: The role of perceptions of value violations and abstract values in discrimination by liberals and conservatives. Social Psychology and Personality Science 4:658–67.Google Scholar
Zhu, L. L., Kay, A. C. & Eibach, R. P. (2013) A test of the flexible ideology hypothesis: System justification motives interact with ideological cueing to predict political judgments. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 49:755–58.Google Scholar