The Fundamental Psychological Bias that determines your politics

From: _http://www.spring.org.uk/2014/08/the-fundamental-psychological-bias-that-determines-your-politics.php

Our position on the political spectrum — right, left or centrist — could be down to a deep-seated psychological bias in the way people think about the world.

That’s according to new research published in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences, which tested reactions to viewing negative stimuli, like people eating worms or maggot-infested wounds (Hibbing et al., 2014). _http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9292100&fileId=S0140525X13001192

The study found that the more conservative people’s politics was, the more intense their reaction to these pictures.

The variation between people was quite striking: some people did not seem to mind the pictures that much, while others reacted strongly, with much higher levels of skin conductance, showing they were sweating more.

This finding, combined with other research from around the world, suggests our so-called ‘negativity bias’ — an automatic orientation towards negative aspects of our environments — may be at the heart of our place on the political spectrum.

The authors explain:

“Across research methods, samples and countries, conservatives have been found to be quicker to focus on the negative, to spend longer looking at the negative, and to be more distracted by the negative.” (Hibbing et al., 2014).

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A higher negativity bias may lead some people — conservatives — to lean towards creating order and promoting stability.

A lower negatively bias may lead others — liberals — to prefer innovation and progress.

One of the study’s authors, John Alford of Rice University, said:

“These natural tendencies to perceive the physical world in different ways may in turn be responsible for striking moments of political and ideological conflict throughout history.”

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The researchers are quick to point out that this is not a criticism of people who lean towards the right:

* Everyone has a negativity bias: paying attention to negative events is likely to keep us alive longer.

* Some research finds conservatives are happier.

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Not a controversial conclusion

Kevin Smith of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, another of the study’s authors, said:

“We see the ‘negativity bias’ as a common finding that emerges from a large body of empirical studies done not just by us, but by many other research teams around the world.

We make the case in this article that negativity bias clearly and consistently separates liberals from conservatives.”

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Amongst experts in the area, the findings do not appear particularly controversial.

The journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences asks other academics to comment on articles it publishes.

Of 26 commentaries published for this article, only three or four seriously disputed the findings.

The others were broadly supportive of the idea that people’s negativity bias has a crucial impact on their politics.

Political scientists John Hibbing, concluded by saying:

“Conservatives are fond of saying ‘liberals just don’t get it,’ and liberals are convinced that conservatives magnify threats.

Systematic evidence suggests both are correct.”

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Seems that the ideal position would be somewhere in the middle on this.

What if you're an anarchist?

Dragon Snacks said:

What if you're an anarchist?

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From what I have read, anarchists are considered as an extreme version of left wing activism. Anarchists reject all forms of authority and hierarchical structures. They embrace egalitarianism and personal freedom.

In terms of psychological scale tests employed for authoritarianism, two scales used are the RWA and LWA, right and left wing authoritarianism scales. These scales try to identify attitude clusters concerning

- authoritarian aggression : endorsing the implementation of violent methods to establish or uphold their ideology

- authoritarian submission : obedience to authority figures

- conventionality : adherence to established norms

These clusters identify RWA personalities well. LWA scales have to be modified in certain contexts. Altmeyer's LWA scale uses the

-"aggression" scale to identify aggressive tendencies directed against established authorities and persons supporting established authorities

-"submission" scale to identify obedience towards leaders dedicated towards overthrowing established authorities

The conventionalism norm becomes somewhat iffy for left wing ideologies though some researchers have tried to create an analogue.

Anarchists score high in the LWA aggression cluster and low on the LWA submission cluster in studies coming out of Europe, Belgium in particular. Anarchists differ from LWAs (communists for example) since the former is expected to fight any regime considered authoritarian. The aggression facet helps distinguish "extremist" groups from other moderate ideological groups and would include anarchists and communists in the "extremist" camp. The submission facet helps distinguish between anarchists and communists.

Both carefully constructed self-report scales for measuring authoritarian tendencies applied to appropriate samples (LWA or anarchism are fringe phenomena in the Western world) as well as brain imaging studies bring out one important and consistent finding. Moderates and extremists differ significantly in the interpretation of political and psychological concepts. Authors of the study A step into the anarchist's mind using neural methods found that "an extreme political attitude of a moderate differs from an extreme political attitude of an anarchist". Extremists and moderates process certain types of information differently - so one may not be able to simply extend and extrapolate moderate attitudes to obtain an extremist attitude.

It's an interesting and robust connection made in the article, between negativity focus and being politically conservative.

Seems that the ideal position would be somewhere in the middle on this.

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I personally think it is disadvantageous to have that type of ingrained "automatic orientation towards negative aspects of our environments." It makes sense in the jungle obviously, but in terms of higher order processing and long term thinking it's more maladaptive. In my experience those with this negativity bias tend to be more easily hystericizied due to their forceful visceral-emotional inputs affecting their reasoning abilities. I think that's why out of the extremely partisan official news channels available in the US, Fox (the conservative one) is head and shoulders above the rest in its pathological rhetoric and paramoralisms.

Lobaczewsky has said the more psychologically complex a species is, the more psychological diversity there is. Perhaps negativity orientation is just another point of diversity. This would make their functioning suitable for some occupations but not others. Security and policing, perhaps. Who knows.

whitecoast said:

Seems that the ideal position would be somewhere in the middle on this.

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I personally think it is disadvantageous to have that type of ingrained "automatic orientation towards negative aspects of our environments." It makes sense in the jungle obviously, but in terms of higher order processing and long term thinking it's more maladaptive. In my experience those with this negativity bias tend to be more easily hystericizied due to their forceful visceral-emotional inputs affecting their reasoning abilities. I think that's why out of the extremely partisan official news channels available in the US, Fox (the conservative one) is head and shoulders above the rest in its pathological rhetoric and paramoralisms.

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Lacking that orientation however means being less inclined to pay attention to the negative aspects of our reality, and the negative possibilities of various developments. And the world contains plenty of people who see nothing wrong and ignore all signs that point to something not-so-nice ahead - or, if they intellectually know about it, they act as if it doesn't exist. The way things are looking, that's not going to be very conducive to survival - nor helping to improve the situation in the world. A person who doesn't understand the problem can't contribute towards a solution.

As Laura mentioned, a balance seems the best - neither ignoring the negatives nor getting lost in reactions toward them.