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Concerns about public opinion-based threats to American democracy are often tied to evidence of partisan bias in factual perceptions. However, influential work on expressive survey responding suggests that many apparent instances of such bias result from respondents insincerely reporting politically congenial views in order to gain expressive psychological benefits. Importantly, these findings have been interpreted as "good news for democracy" because partisans who knowingly report incorrect beliefs in surveys can act on their correct beliefs in the real world. We synthesize evidence and commentary on this matter, drawing two conclusions: (1) evidence for insincere expressive responding on divisive political matters is limited and ambiguous and (2) when experimental manipulations in surveys reduce reports of politically congenial factual beliefs, this is often because such reported beliefs serve as flexible and interchangeable ways of justifying the largely stable allegiances that guide political behavior. The expressive value of acting on political commitments should be viewed as a central feature of the American political context rather than a methodological artifact of surveys.

Elites degrade democracy in part because of incentives that arise from public opinion. We report pre-registered and exploratory tests of which Americans are most likely to support democracy-degrading action, focusing on three distinct democracy attitudes assessed in a large demographically representative sample 5 weeks before the 2020 election. Professed opposition to democracy was relatively rare and most common among citizens who felt disengaged with politics. But a different pattern of findings emerged for attitudes toward (1) flagrant, politically congenial authoritarian policy action and (2) election subversion framed with a pro-democracy justification. These anti-democratic attitudes were relatively common, related to cultural conservatism among both Republicans and Democrats, and – consistent with an "involved-but-ignorant" hypothesis – highest among those who combined strong political interest with low political sophistication. We recommend an increased focus on attitudes toward flagrant, contextualized, and politically cued authoritarian actions, including actions framed in pro-democracy terms.

Research on the dispositional origins of political preferences is flourishing, and the primary conclusion drawn from this work is that stronger needs for security and certainty attract people to a broad‐based politically conservative ideology. Though this literature covers much ground, most integrative assessments of it have paid insufficient attention to the presence and implications of contingencies in the relationship between dispositional attributes and political attitudes. In this article, we review research showing that relationships between needs for security and certainty and political preferences vary considerably—sometimes to the point of directional shifts—on the basis of (1) issue domain and (2) contextual factors governing the content and volume of political discourse individuals are exposed to. On the basis of this evidence, we argue that relationships between dispositional attributes and political preferences vary in the extent to which they reflect an organic functional resonance between dispositions and preferences or identity‐expressive motivation to adopt a political attitude merely because it is discursively packaged with other need‐congruent attitudes. We contend that such a distinction is critical to gaining a realistic understanding of the origins and nature of ideological belief systems, and we consequently recommend an increased focus on issue‐based and contextual variation in relationships between dispositions and political preferences.

AbstractIsrael is viewed unfavorably among wide segments of the public within several European democracies, despite being regarded itself as a Western democracy. Does drawing attention to Israel's democratic attributes improve views toward Israel? In two surveys with Dutch national samples, anti-Semitic affect, low anti-Arab/Muslim affect, and left-wing political orientation independently predicted anti-Israel sentiment. However, in experiments embedded within the surveys, making salient Israel's democratic attributes had opposite effects on Israel attitude across those on the right and the left – slightly decreasing anti-Israel sentiment among those with a right-wing orientation but slightly increasing anti-Israel sentiment among those with a left-wing orientation. We discuss potential explanations grounded in social psychological theory as well as implications for the strategic communication efforts of groups seeking to influence attitudes toward Israel.

During the last decade, a great deal of news media attention has focused on informing the American public about scientific findings on global warming (GW). Has learning this sort of information led the American public to become more concerned about GW? Using data from two surveys of nationally representative samples of American adults, this article shows that the relation between self‐reported knowledge and concern about GW is more complex than what previous research has suggested. Among people who trust scientists to provide reliable information about the environment and among Democrats and Independents, increased knowledge has been associated with increased concern. But among people who are skeptical about scientists and among Republicans more knowledge was generally not associated with greater concern. The association of knowledge with concern among Democrats and Independents who trust scientists was mediated by perceptions of consensus among scientists about GW's existence and by perceptions that humans are a principal cause of GW. Moreover, additional analyses of panel survey data produced findings consistent with the notion that more knowledge yields more concern among Democrats and Independents, but not among Republicans. Thus, when studying the relation of knowledge and concern, it is important to take into account the content of the information that different types of people acquire and choose to rely upon.

Research on personality and political preferences generally assumes unidirectional causal influence of the former on the latter. However, there are reasons to believe that citizens might adopt what they perceive as politically congruent psychological attributes, or at least be motivated to view themselves as having these attributes. We test this hypothesis in a series of studies. Results of preregistered panel analyses in three countries suggest reciprocal causal influences between self-reported personality traits and political preferences. In two two-wave survey experiments, a subtle political prime at the beginning of a survey resulted in self-reported personality traits that were more aligned with political preferences gauged in a previous assessment. We discuss how concurrent assessment within the context of a political survey might overestimate the causal influence of personality traits on political preferences and how political polarization might be exacerbated by political opponents adopting different personality characteristics or self-perceptions thereof.

The right–left dimension is ubiquitous in politics, but prior perspectives provide conflicting accounts of whether cultural and economic attitudes are typically aligned on this dimension within mass publics around the world. Using survey data from ninety-nine nations, this study finds not only that right–left attitude organization is uncommon, but that it is more common for culturally and economically right-wing attitudes to correlatenegativelywith each other, an attitude structure reflecting a contrast between desires for cultural and economicprotection vs. freedom. This article examines where, among whom and why protection–freedom attitude organization outweighs right–left attitude organization, and discusses the implications for the psychological bases of ideology, quality of democratic representation and the rise of extreme right politics in the West.

Recent events have raised concern about potential threats to democracy within Western countries. If Western citizens who are open to authoritarian governance share a common set of political preferences, then authoritarian elites can attract mass coalitions that are willing to subvert democracy to achieve shared ideological goals. With this in mind, we explored which ideological groups are most open to authoritarian governance within Western general publics using World Values Survey data from fourteen Western democracies and three recent Latin American Public Opinion Project samples from Canada and the United States. Two key findings emerged. First, cultural conservatism was consistently associated with openness to authoritarian governance. Second, within half of the democracies studied, including all of the English-speaking ones, Western citizens holding a protection-based attitude package—combining cultural conservatism with left economic attitudes—were the most open to authoritarian governance. Within other countries, protection-based and consistently right-wing attitude packages were associated with similarly high levels of openness to authoritarian governance. We discuss implications for radical right populism and the possibility of splitting potentially undemocratic mass coalitions along economic lines.

Some argue that there is an organic connection between being religious and being politically conservative. We evaluate an alternative thesis that the relation between religiosity and political conservatism largely results from engagement with political discourse that indicates that these characteristics go together. In a combined sample of national survey respondents from 1996 to 2008, religiosity was associated with conservative positions on a wide range of attitudes and values among the highly politically engaged, but this association was generally weaker or nonexistent among those less engaged with politics. The specific political characteristics for which this pattern existed varied across ethno‐religious groups. These results suggest that whether religiosity translates into political conservatism depends to an important degree on level of engagement with political discourse.