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AbstractA series of new conceptualizations of left‐wing authoritarianism have recently been proposed to counterbalance the traditional focus on right‐wing authoritarianism in political psychology. This article scrutinizes conceptual confusions in the literature on authoritarianism that have been exacerbated by these new conceptualizations, including a pseudo‐debate about the existence of left‐wing authoritarianism; a conflation of the psychological phenomenon of authoritarianism with the more general category of all antidemocratic predispositions; and a number of logical, conceptual, and statistical fallacies that obscure psychological differences between antidemocratic predispositions on the right and the left. It proposes that antidemocratic predispositions on the right typically involve an authoritarian adherence to established norms along with violence and repression directed at perceived threats to, or deviations from, these norms, whereas those that occur on the left more commonly involve a motivation to overthrow the established authority along with violence and repression directed at perceived threats to superordinate ideological values. It concludes with a call for a broadened and reinvigorated program of research that studies the complexity and diversity of antidemocratic predispositions on the left, the right, and beyond, and their causal impact on antidemocratic attitudes and actions, drawing on insights from multiple traditions and fields of research.

A representative sample (n = 2282) of Swedish adults completed the Moral Foundations Questionnaire, which measures moral intuitions concerning care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity. A subset (n = 607) completed a measure of intuitions about liberty. Measurement invariance was estimated across sex, age, education, income, left-right placement, religiosity, and party preference groups, based on multigroup confirmatory factor analyses of two-, three-, five-, six-, and eight-factor models, as well as bifactor models (with methods factors or a general factor). Acceptable configural, metric, and scalar invariance was obtained for most group comparisons, particularly based on the more complex models. The clearest exceptions were (1) configural non-invariance in comparisons involving participants with very low education or income, and (2) scalar non-invariance in comparisons of ideological groups based on three- and six-factor models but not the eight-factor model, which distinguished lifestyle liberty from government liberty. ; Funding: Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsradet) [2014-01158]; Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond) [P14-0978:1]

According to Polarity Theory, all ideologies are fundamentally polarized by a conflict between Humanism, which idealizes and glorifies humanity, and Normativism, which portrays human goodness and worth as contingent upon conformity and achievement. Humanism and Normativism have, however, turned out to be distinct worldviews rather than opposite ends of a single bipolar continuum. Introducing a hierarchical model of their structure and developing scales to measure each facet, I previously showed that they are negatively related across views of human nature, interpersonal attitudes, and attitudes to affect, but not across epistemologies and political values. This report presents the eight-item facet scales and fifteen-item short-measures of humanism and normativism, along with descriptive statistics for each item in US and Swedish samples.

Broad systems of meaning permeating a person's worldview are crucial to personality, because they organize beliefs, values, and attitudes and imbue lives with meaning and direction. Yet they have attracted little research. Humanism and Normativism are arguably the broadest worldview constructs to date, encompassing attitudes about human nature, society, morality, affect, and epistemology. According to Polarity Theory, they are antithetical: Humanism glorifies humanity, portraying human beings as intrinsically valuable, whereas Normativism portrays human worth as contingent upon norm conformity and achievement of ideals. But previous research has shown that they are distinct. The current studies further investigated their differences. Study 1 demonstrated correlations with other worldview constructs: mechanism, positivism (Normativism), organicism, constructivism, and transcendentalism (Humanism). In Study 2, Normativism correlated with absolutist thinking, including belief in certain knowledge, essentialist beliefs, political conservatism, and both religious fundamentalism and opposition to religion, whereas Humanism correlated with spirituality and opposition to inequality. Study 3 demonstrated correlations with Big Five Aspects, including compassion, enthusiasm, and openness (Humanism) and low compassion, openness, and intellect, but high orderliness (Normativism). The differential underpinnings and explanatory powers of Humanism and Normativism are discussed.

Persons are not just mechanical systems of instinctual animalistic proclivities, but also language-producing, existentially aware creatures, whose experiences and actions are drenched in subjective meaning. To understand a human being as a person is to understand him or her as a rational system that wants, fears, hopes, believes, and in other ways imbues the world with meaning, rather than just a mechanical system that is subject to the same chains of cause and effect as other animals. But contemporary personality psychology has, to a great extent, focused on the behavioral side of personality, while neglecting its meaning side, failing to realize that subjective meanings are part of the very constitution rather than just causes of personality. My overarching purpose with this dissertation is, consequently, to contribute to the establishment of a genuinely non-reductive science of personality that systematically studies the systems of meaning that comprise a person's worldview in their own right, as sources of meaning in personality. I both establish conceptual and theoretical foundations for the psychology of worldviews and present empirical research on worldviews. The conceptual and theoretical issues are addressed in the introductory chapters and the first paper. I begin by explicating a non-reductive realist philosophy of personality that steers between reductionism and social constructionism, and by suggesting that we need a more coherent understanding of personality and a richer study of it, rather than a radically new methodology. I continue by discussing the limitations of, and conceptual issues with, previous approaches to personality, and by outlining the conceptual foundations for a psychology of worldviews to remediate their weaknesses, demarcating worldview constructs as referring to presuppositions, concepts, and narrative scripts that, by working as the substrata, or background, for intentional thought, feeling, and action, form the most central sources of meaning. I continue by discussing the structure and dynamics of worldviews in terms of the relationship between innate meaning-making mechanisms and the universal features of the existential condition that they address. I conclude the introductory chapters by describing the background of the empirical research and by discussing limitations with the present thesis and directions for future theory and research. I continue, in the first paper, to argue that the study of traits (objective behavioral regularities) and the study of worldviews (subjective meanings) form mutually irreducible parts of personality psychology and that worldviews are not inherently less universal in terms of structure, or in other ways less basic, than traits. I conclude this paper by emphasizing the need to address coherence not just in behavior, but also within worldviews and between traits and worldviews, and to complement traditional individual differences research with personalistic methodology. The empirical research is presented in the second and third papers included in this thesis. This research addresses Humanism and Normativism, which are arguably the two broadest and potentially most important worldview constructs in the research literature today, representing whether human beings are thought of as intrinsically valuable and ontologically important (humanism) or as acquiring value and reality only through the attainment of external norms and ideals (normativism). Although originally thought to be opposites, previous research has suggested that they are uncorrelated. In the first empirical paper, I introduce a hierarchical model of their structure, develop scales to measure their facets, and demonstrate through confirmatory factor analysis that they are, contrary to previous wisdom, negatively related in terms of view of human nature, attitude to affect, and interpersonal attitude, but unrelated in terms of epistemology and political values. I present evidence also of discriminant and predictive validity in relation to other worldview variables, life goals, educational field, political and religious orientation, and the Big Five aspects. In the second empirical paper, I use humanism and normativism to explain the broad systems of meaning that potentially underlie, and intersect with, variables from the most important models of the underpinnings of political ideology today, through path modeling. The results suggest that humanism is related to political ideology through preference for equality, as mediated by moral concern with fairness and the avoidance of harm, emotionality, and honesty-humility, and that normativism is related to political ideology through conservative attitudes in general, as mediated by system justification, moral concern with authority, loyalty, and purity, and low openness. Both of the empirical articles provide ample evidence of broad systems of meaning cutting across different aspects of the worldview and of their explanatory power with regards to other psychological phenomena. These studies thereby help to substantiate the viability of the psychology of worldviews.

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]

Previous research suggests that threat can bolster anti-immigration attitudes, but less is known about the effects of threat on ideological tolerance. We tested the hypothesis that realistic threats — tangible threats to e.g., the safety or financial well-being of one's group — bolster support for right-wing extremists. In Experiment 1, participants (N = 200) learned that crime and unemployment rates were either increasing (high threat condition) or remaining the same (low threat condition). Consistent with our hypothesis, higher threat lead to a significant increase in tolerance for right-wing, but not left-wing, extremists. In a second, pre-registered extended replication experiment (N = 385), we added a baseline (no threat) condition. Additionally, attitudes to immigrants were examined as a mediator. This experiment produced non-significant threat effects on tolerance of right-wing extremists. Overall, the current research provides weak support for the hypothesis that realistic threats have asymmetric effects on tolerance of political extremists. However, consistent with previous research, people were more tolerant of extremists within their own ideological camp.

Previous research suggests that threat can bolster anti-immigration attitudes, but less is known about the effects of threat on ideological tolerance. We tested the hypothesis that realistic threats — tangible threats to e.g., the safety or financial well-being of one's group — bolster support for right-wing extremists. In Experiment 1, participants (N = 200) learned that crime and unemployment rates were either increasing (high threat condition) or remaining the same (low threat condition). Consistent with our hypothesis, higher threat lead to a significant increase in tolerance for right-wing, but not left-wing, extremists. In a second, pre-registered extended replication experiment (N = 385), we added a baseline (no threat) condition. Additionally, attitudes to immigrants were examined as a mediator. This experiment produced non-significant threat effects on tolerance of right-wing extremists. Overall, the current research provides weak support for the hypothesis that realistic threats have asymmetric effects on tolerance of political extremists. However, consistent with previous research, people were more tolerant of extremists within their own ideological camp. ; peerReviewed ; publishedVersion

Previous research suggests that threat can bolster anti-immigration attitudes, but less is known about the effects of threat on ideological tolerance. We tested the hypothesis that realistic threats — tangible threats to e.g., the safety or financial well-being of one's group — bolster support for right-wing extremists. In Experiment 1, participants (N = 200) learned that crime and unemployment rates were either increasing (high threat condition) or remaining the same (low threat condition). Consistent with our hypothesis, higher threat lead to a significant increase in tolerance for right-wing, but not left-wing, extremists. In a second, pre-registered extended replication experiment (N = 385), we added a baseline (no threat) condition. Additionally, attitudes to immigrants were examined as a mediator. This experiment produced non-significant threat effects on tolerance of right-wing extremists. Overall, the current research provides weak support for the hypothesis that realistic threats have asymmetric effects on tolerance of political extremists. However, consistent with previous research, people were more tolerant of extremists within their own ideological camp.

This study investigated ideological belief bias, and whether this effect is moderated by analytical thinking. A Swedish nationally representative sample (N = 1005) evaluated non-political and political syllogisms and were asked whether the conclusions followed logically from the premises. The correct response in the political syllogisms was aligned with either leftist or rightist political ideology. Political orientation predicted response accuracy for political but not non-political syllogisms. Overall, the participants correctly evaluated more syllogisms when the correct response was congruent with their ideology, particularly on hot-button issues (asylum to refugees, climate change, gender-neutral education, and school marketization). Analytical thinking predicted higher accuracy for syllogisms of any kind among leftists, but it predicted accuracy only for leftist and non-political syllogisms among rightists. This research contributes by refining a promising paradigm for studying politically motivated reasoning, demonstrating ideological belief bias outside of the United States across diverse political issues, and providing the first evidence that analytical thinking may reduce such bias.

Previous research suggests that threat can bolster anti-immigration attitudes, but less is known about the effects of threat on ideological tolerance. We tested the hypothesis that realistic threats — tangible threats to e.g., the safety or financial well-being of one's group — bolster support for right-wing extremists. In Experiment 1, participants (N = 200) learned that crime and unemployment rates were either increasing (high threat condition) or remaining the same (low threat condition). Consistent with our hypothesis, higher threat lead to a significant increase in tolerance for right-wing, but not left-wing, extremists. In a second, pre-registered extended replication experiment (N = 385), we added a baseline (no threat) condition. Additionally, attitudes to immigrants were examined as a mediator. This experiment produced non-significant threat effects on tolerance of right-wing extremists. Overall, the current research provides weak support for the hypothesis that realistic threats have asymmetric effects on tolerance of political extremists. However, consistent with previous research, people were more tolerant of extremists within their own ideological camp. ; Funding: Linnaeus University Centre for Discrimination and Integration Studies

Moral foundations theory proposes that intuitions about what is morally right or wrong rest upon a set of universal foundations. Although this theory has generated a recent surge of research, few studies have investigated the real-world moral consequences of the postulated moral intuitions. We show that they are predictably associated with an important type of moral behaviour. Stronger individualizing intuitions (fairness and harm prevention) and weaker binding intuitions (loyalty, authority, and sanctity) were associated with the willingness to comply with a request to volunteer for charity and with the amount of self-reported donations to charity organizations. Among participants who complied with the request, individualizing intuitions predicted the allocation of donations to causes that benefit out-groups, whereas binding intuitions predicted the allocation of donations to causes that benefit the in-group. The associations between moral foundations and self-report measures of allocations in a hypothetical dilemma and concern with helping in-group and out-group victims were similar. Moral foundations predicted charitable giving over and above effects of political ideology, religiosity, and demographics, although variables within these categories also exhibited unique effects on charitable giving and accounted for a portion of the relationship between moral foundations and charitable giving. (c) 2020 The Authors. European Journal of Personality published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Association of Personality Psychology ; Funding Agencies|Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond) [P14-0978:1]; Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsradet)Swedish Research Council [2014-1158]

This article investigates how donation behavior to charitable organizations and helping intentions toward begging European Union (EU)-migrants are related. This question was tested by analyzing survey responses from 1,050 participants sampled from the general Swedish population. Although the overall results suggested that donations to charitable organizations were positively related to helping intentions toward beggars, the results differed substantially as a function of whether the organization was perceived to focus its efforts on outgroup victims or on ingroup victims. Specifically, whereas donation behavior toward outgroup-focused organizations clearly predicted more helping intentions toward beggars (also when controlling for demographics, education, income, religiosity, and political inclination), donation behavior toward ingroup-focused organizations predicted slightly less helping intentions toward beggars. We conclude that the type of charitable organization a person donates to might tell us more about his or her values and preferences than merely whether or not he or she donates at all. ; Funding Agencies|Riksbankens Jubileumsfond [P14-0978:1]

This article investigates how donation behavior to charitable organizations and helping intentions toward begging European Union (EU)-migrants are related. This question was tested by analyzing survey responses from 1,050 participants sampled from the general Swedish population. Although the overall results suggested that donations to charitable organizations were positively related to helping intentions toward beggars, the results differed substantially as a function of whether the organization was perceived to focus its efforts on outgroup victims or on ingroup victims. Specifically, whereas donation behavior toward outgroup-focused organizations clearly predicted more helping intentions toward beggars (also when controlling for demographics, education, income, religiosity, and political inclination), donation behavior toward ingroup-focused organizations predicted slightly less helping intentions toward beggars. We conclude that the type of charitable organization a person donates to might tell us more about his or her values and preferences than merely whether or not he or she donates at all.