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Abstract Recent research on conspiracy beliefs reveals that the general predisposition to believe conspiracy theories cuts across partisan and ideological lines. While this may signify that political orientations have no bearing on conspiratorial reasoning, it also may suggest that conspiracy theorists are simply less engaged in traditional left-right politics. In this manuscript, I consider the relationship between conspiratorial thinking and political constraint, or the extent to which individuals have a clear picture of "what goes with what" with respect to the various objects of the political world. Using the 2012 American National Election Study, I construct a measure of conspiratorial thinking, as well as several operationalizations of both ideological and group-based constraint and ideological thinking. Results show that individuals prone to conspiratorial thinking are less politically constrained—when it comes to both thoughts about issues and feelings about political groups—than their less conspiratorial counterparts. Moreover, conspiratorial thinking is positively associated with antigovernmental orientations and a lack of political efficacy, with conspiracy theorists perceiving a governmental threat to individual rights and displaying a deep skepticism that who one votes for really matters. These findings suggest that conspiratorial thinking may have broader implications for individuals' basic conceptualization of politics.

AbstractA rich literature documents the effects of survey interviewer race on respondents' answers to questions about political issues and factual knowledge. In this paper, we advance the study of interviewer effects in two ways. First, we examine the impact of race on interviewers' subjective evaluations of respondents' political knowledge. Second, we substitute measures of respondent/interviewer racial self-identification with interviewer perceptions of respondent skin tone. We find that white interviewers subjectively rate black respondents' knowledge lower than do black interviewers, even controlling for objective knowledge measures. Moreover, we identify a negative relationship between relative skin tone and interviewer's assessment of knowledge. Subsequent analyses show a linear relationship between subjective knowledge assessments and the difference between respondent and interviewer skin tone. We conclude with a discussion of the impact of colorism on survey administration and the measurement of political attitudes and democratic capabilities.

The last few years have witnessed an increase in democratic "backsliding" in the United States—a decline in the quality of democracy, typically accompanied by an influx of non-normative behavior, such as political violence. Despite the real consequences of support for violence, fairly little is known about such an extremist attitude outside studies of terrorism or aggression. Using a unique survey containing many psychological, political, and social characteristics, we find that perceived victimhood, authoritarianism, populism, and white identity are the most powerful predictors of support for violence, though military service, conspiratorial thinking, anxiety, and feelings of powerlessness are also related. These patterns suggest that subjective feelings about being unjustly victimized—irrespective of the truth of the matter—and the psychological baggage that accompanies such feelings lie at the heart of support for violence. We use these results to build a profile of characteristics that explain support for violence; the predictive validity of this profile is then tested by examining its relationship with support for the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot, with which it is strongly associated, even accounting for support for Donald Trump. Our findings have implications for the detection of extremist attitudes and our understanding of the non-partisan/ideological foundations of anti-social political behavior.

While cognitive psychologists have learned a great deal about people's propensity for constructing and acting on false memories, the connection between false memories and politics remains understudied. If partisan bias guides the adoption of beliefs and colors one's interpretation of new events and information, so too might it prove powerful enough to fabricate memories of political circumstances. Across two studies, we first distinguish false memories from false beliefs and expressive responses; false political memories appear to be genuine and subject to partisan bias. We also examine the political and psychological correlates of false memories. Nearly a third of respondents reported remembering a fabricated or factually altered political event, with many going so far as to convey the circumstances under which they "heard about" the event. False‐memory recall is correlated with the strength of partisan attachments, interest in politics, and participation, as well as narcissism, conspiratorial thinking, and cognitive ability.

AbstractWhile the alignment of partisan and ideological identities—sorting—serves as a primary explanation for the rise in affective polarization, we theorize that this connection does not hold for all Americans, especially racial subgroups with unique political experiences. Using both cross-sectional and panel data, we find that even though Whites have sorted, and differences between the South and elsewhere have diminished over time, Black Americans have not sorted since 1972. However, affective polarization is just as high among Blacks as it is Whites. Thus, sorting does not appear to explain Black affective polarization. Multivariate models provide additional evidence that sorting does not adequately explain affective polarization among Blacks. Instead, we find that group norms and group consciousness (e.g., linked fate) better account for affective polarization among Black Americans. These findings provide important nuance to the sorting thesis and shed light on the relationship between sorting and affective polarization.

Growing levels of polarization and out-group hostility have become fashionable explanations for the caustic politics of the Trump presidency. However, partisan and ideological identities cannot explain popular attraction to Trump's anti-elite and populist rhetoric, nor can polarization and sorting account for rising levels of mass identification as political independents. In light of these discrepancies, we offer an explanation for the Trump era unrelated to traditional left-right identities and ideologies: anti-establishment orientations. We argue that much of what is interpreted as an expression of partisan and ideological extremism or polarization is actually the product of a deep-seated antagonism toward the broader political establishment. We first exhibit the individual-level correlates of anti-establishment orientations, finding that people holding strong anti-establishment views exhibit relatively high levels of anti-social personality traits and distrust of others. We then show that anti-establishment orientations are more predictive than left-right orientations of beliefs in conspiracy theories regarding COVID-19, QAnon, and voter fraud. Most importantly, we demonstrate that, while anti-establishment orientations are positively related to support for Donald Trump, they are negatively related to support for Joe Biden and both major parties. In short, the toxicity emblematic of the Trump era—support for outsider candidates, belief in conspiracy theories, corrosive rhetoric, and violence—are derivative of antipathy towards the established political order, rather than a strict adherence to partisan and ideological dogma. We conclude that Trump's most powerful and unique impact on American electoral politics is his activation, inflammation, and manipulation of preexisting anti-establishment orientations for partisan ends.

Scholars have identified many social-psychological factors correlated with support for Donald Trump; however, attempts at modeling these factors tend to suffer from omitted variable bias on the one hand, or multicollinearity on the other. Both issues obscure inferences. Using two nationally representative surveys, we demonstrate the perils of including or failing to include many of these factors in models of Trump support. We then reconceptualize the social-psychological sources of Trump support as components of a broader "profile" of factors that explains Trump support in 2018 and vote choice in 2016, as well as attitudes about issues connected to Trump. Moreover, this profile—an amalgamation of attitudes about, for example, racial groups, immigrants, and political correctness—rivals partisanship and ideology as predictors of Trump support and is negatively related to support for mainstream Republican candidates. Our analyses suggest that Trump benefited from activating dimensions of public opinion that transcend traditional party cleavages.

Support for the U.S. Supreme Court does not appear to be polarized on ideological or partisan lines. However, the form of polarization for which the mass political behavior field has amassed substantial support is affective in nature. We reconsider the hypothesis that polarization does not bear on Court support by examining the role of affective polarization. Using three sources of nationally representative survey data, we consistently find a negative relationship between affective polarization and both diffuse and specific support for the Court. Moreover, neither general nor Court-specific political sophistication mitigates the negative effect of affective polarization; rather, sophistication exacerbates affective polarization's influence on support. Finally, panel data show that affective polarization precedes negative evaluations of the judiciary, though there is no support for the converse relationship. Evaluations of the Court are not free from the forces of polarization but are influenced by diverging extra-judicial emotional orientations toward in- and out-groups.