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A psychological approach to the study of political ideology -- The end of the end of ideology -- Elective affinities : the intersection of "top-down" and "bottom-up" processes -- Political conservatism as motivated social cognition -- The secret lives of liberals and conservatives : dispositional and situational factors -- Authoritarian aggression, group-based dominance, and the liberal conundrum -- Ideological asymmetries and the essence of political psychology -- The promise and pitfalls of political neuroscience -- Epilogue: The values of a political psychologist.

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface -- 1. A New "Discourse of Voluntary Servitude -- 2. What Is Social Justice? -- 3. Intellectual Precursors, Major Postulates, and Practical Relevance of System Justification Theory -- 4. Stereotyping and the Production of False Consciousness -- 5. The Psychology of System Justification: Eighteen Hypotheses about Rationalization of the Status Quo, Internalization of Inferiority, and Potential Conflicts among Self, Group, and System Justification Motives -- 6. Does a Sense of Powerlessness Foster the Legitimation of Authority and Hierarchy? -- 7. "Poor but Happy": The System-Justifying Potential of Complementary Stereotypes -- 8. The Subjugation and Self-Subjugation of Girls and Women -- 9. Belief in a Just God (and a Just Society): Religion as a Form of System Justification -- 10. Overcoming Resistance to Change and Motivated Skepticism about Climate Change -- 11. Why Men and Women Do and Don't Rebel -- 12. System Justification Theory Twenty-Five Years Later: Criticisms, Rebuttals, and Future Directions -- Appendix A -- Appendix B -- Notes -- References -- Acknowledgments -- Index.

In an important study of popular support for the National Front following the November 13, 2015 terrorist attacks in France, Vasilopoulos, Marcus, Valentino, and Foucault (2019) argue that (1) anger—rather than fear—explains support for the Far Right and (2) the effect of fear on support for the Far Right is negative, rather than positive, as previous work (including my own) would suggest. However, these conclusions are based on statistical models that adjust for anger (but no other emotional variables) when investigating the effects of fear, and the results indicate the presence of a suppression effect. Following a collegial exchange with the authors, I share evidence (which they provided) that (1) the effect of fear on support for the Far Right is in fact positive and significant (rather than negative) and (2) anger and authoritarianism both mediate the effect of fear on support for the Far Right. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Individuals are not merely passive vessels of whatever beliefs and opinions they have been exposed to; rather, they are attracted to belief systems that resonate with their own psychological needs and interests, including epistemic, existential, and relational needs to attain certainty, security, and social belongingness. Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, and Sulloway () demonstrated that needs to manage uncertainty and threat were associated with core values of political conservatism, namely respect for tradition and acceptance of inequality. Since 2003 there have been far more studies on the psychology of left‐right ideology than in the preceding half century, and their empirical yield helps to address lingering questions and criticisms. We have identified 181 studies of epistemic motivation (involving 130,000 individual participants) and nearly 100 studies of existential motivation (involving 360,000 participants). These databases, which are much larger and more heterogeneous than those used in previous meta‐analyses, confirm that significant ideological asymmetries exist with respect to dogmatism, cognitive/perceptual rigidity, personal needs for order/structure/closure, integrative complexity, tolerance of ambiguity/uncertainty, need for cognition, cognitive reflection, self‐deception, and subjective perceptions of threat. Exposure to objectively threatening circumstances—such as terrorist attacks, governmental warnings, and shifts in racial demography—contribute to modest "conservative shifts" in public opinion. There are also ideological asymmetries in relational motivation, including the desire to share reality, perceptions of within‐group consensus, collective self‐efficacy, homogeneity of social networks, and the tendency to trust the government more when one's own political party is in power. Although some object to the very notion that there are meaningful psychological differences between leftists and rightists, the identification of "elective affinities" between cognitive‐motivational processes and contents of specific belief systems is essential to the study of political psychology. Political psychologists may contribute to the development of a good society not by downplaying ideological differences or advocating "Swiss‐style neutrality" when it comes to human values, but by investigating such phenomena critically, even—or perhaps especially—when there is pressure in society to view them uncritically.

Over the last decade or so, political scientists and legal academics have begun studying the links between ideologies, on one hand, and legal principles and policy outcomes on the other. This book brings together international experts on those topics to examine the sometimes unsettling interactions between psychology, ideology, and law

According to Silvan Tomkins polarity theory, ideological thought is universally structured by a clash between two opposing worldviews. On the left, a humanistic worldview seeks to uphold the intrinsic value of the person; on the right, a normative worldview holds that human worth is contingent upon conformity to rules. In this article, we situate humanism and normativism within the context of contemporary models of political ideology as a function of motivated social cognition, beliefs about the social world, and personality traits. In four studies conducted in the U.S. and Sweden, normativism was robustly associated with rightist (or conservative) self-placement; conservative issue preferences; resistance to change and acceptance of inequality; right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation; system justification and its underlying epistemic and existential motives to reduce uncertainty and threat; and a lack of openness, emotionality, and honesty-humility. Humanism exhibited the opposite relations to most of these constructs, but it was largely unrelated to epistemic and existential needs. Humanism was strongly associated with preferences for equality, openness to change, and low levels of authoritarianism, social dominance, and general and economic system justification. We conclude that polarity theory possesses considerable potential to explain how conflicts between worldviews shape contemporary politics. ; Funding Agencies|US National Science FoundationNational Science Foundation (NSF) [BCS-1627691]; Swedish Science Council [421-2011-01333]

Abstract
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 fairness- and harm-related words, whereas conservative
legislators used more authority-related 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.

In this article we synthesize theory and research from several areas of psychology and political science to propose and test a causal model of the effects of threat on political attitudes. Based in part on prior research showing that fear, threat, and anxiety decrease cognitive capacity and motivation, we hypothesize that under high (vs. low) threat, people will seek to curtail open-ended information searches and exhibit motivated closed-mindedness (one aspect of the need for cognitive closure). The subjective desire for certainty, control, and closure, in turn, is expected to increase the individual's affinity for political conservatism, insofar as resistance to change and adherence to authority figures and conventional forms of morality are assumed to satisfy these epistemic motives more successfully than their ideological opposites. Consistent with this account, we find in Studies 1a and 1b that putting people into a highly threatened mindset leads them to exhibit an increase in motivated closed-mindedness and to perceive the world as more dangerous. Furthermore, in Study 2 we demonstrate that a subtle threat manipulation increases self-reported conservatism (or decreases self-reported liberalism), and this effect is mediated by closed-mindedness. In Study 3, we manipulated closed-mindedness directly and found that high (vs. low) cognitive load results in a greater affinity for the Republican (vs. Democratic) party. Finally, in Study 4 we conducted an experiment involving political elites in Iceland and found that three different types of threat (to the self, group, and system) all led center-right politicians to score higher on closed-mindedness and issue-based political conservatism. Implications for society and for the theory of ideology as motivated social cognition are discussed. Adapted from the source document.