individual diff- political attitudes and irrationality

Question 1

political attitudes
-right wing authoritarianism
-3 factors
-history

Answer 1

-was associated with studies in socio and psyc after world war 2
-conservatism -70s and 80s
-social dominance theory 90s

Question 2

left wing authoritarianism
history

Answer 2

-long perceived to be the ‘loch ness monster’ so essentially non existent
-studys began after 2010

Question 3

authoritarianism
what did theordore adorno say about authoritarianism

Answer 3

-theordore adorno 1950 sdefined it as
- excessive conformity
-intolerance of others
-rigid and stereotyped patterns of thoughts
-(submissive behaviour towards authority)

Question 4

psychodynamic definition of authoratarianism

Answer 4

-an authoritarian individual directs their aggression towards other social groups in order to resolve feelings of personal weakness

Question 5

how do we measure authoritarianism?
-how we measure
-limitations

Answer 5

-first scale developed by adorno 1950 : F scale (facism scale)
-suggests things like : ‘the businessman and the manufacturer are much more important to society than the artist and the professor’ and you would agree or disagree

-criticised for being based on myths and old fashioned viewpoints

Question 6

right wing authoritarianism
altmeyers

Answer 6

• altermeyer 1966,1999

-accept abuses of power of government
-prejudiced on racial,ethnic,nationalist and sexual grounds
-cause and inflame intergroup conflict
-fearful
-self righteous
-accept insufficent evidence to support their beliefs
-conform to the opinion of others
-beleive they have no personal failings
-punitive attitudes (would punish if they believe something is wrong)
-trust authorities too much
-dogmatic

Question 7

right wing authoritarianism scale developed by altmeryer

Answer 7

RWAS is the scale
-scale has very strongly disagree-very strongly agree (1-9 point scale)
-‘a women’s place should be wherever she wants to be. the days when women are submissive to their husbands and social conventions belong strictly in the past’ (obviously someone who is right wing would disagree with this)
-‘there is no one right way to live life; everybody has to create their own way. (would negatively feed right wing

Question 8

altmeyers conceptulisation of rwa

Answer 8

-called tripartite conceptualisation: aggression, submission, conventionalism

Question 9

problems with right wing authoritariaisms

Answer 9

-double standards and inconsistencies
:insistence on rights of majority when part of the majority , however insist on rights of the minority when part of the minority
-claiming censorship of own ideas but censoring ideas of others

-highlighting differences in cognitive processes in authoritarian (perceiving and dealing with information)
personality (big five)
-right wing authoritarianism strongly positively correlated with conscientiousness
-but negative correlation with openness to experience

Question 10

conservatism
-wilson patterson 1968

Answer 10

wilson patterson 1968 developed the attitude inventory

Question 11

concepts within conservatism

Answer 11

-religion puritanism
(adherence for church authority,fundeamentalism)

-anti hedonism
(people whp have social persmissiveness, tendancy to view pleasurable things as wrong)
(opposing sexual freedom,drinking alcohol..)

-militarism-punitiveness
(willingness to protect the nation and its values)

ethnocentrism-intolerance
(racial superiority)

conservatism builds on right wing authoritarianism

Question 12

social dominance orientation
rosa parks
segregation laws

Answer 12

-1s December 1955 rosa parks bus segregation (was told to move for a white man)
-December 1956 the us supreme court decided that bus segregation violated the constitution
-although this seems a long time ago, we still have inequality in civil rights nowadays - some groups maintain social dominance

Question 13

social dominance theory

Answer 13

-social dominance is maintained because
-humans are predisposed to form social hierarchies
these hierarchies manifest as oppression
-eg sexism racism, prejudiced
-based on social hierarchy

Question 14

what maintains social dominance

Answer 14

-individual discrimination (eg racist comments,employements preferences based on gender)
-institutional discrimination (eg established clubs based on ability or interest from which specific groups are excluded)
-behavioural asymmetry (favouring members of outgroup, internalisation of stereotypes)

Question 15

how can we measure social dominance orientation

Answer 15

-Pratto et al. (1996): Social Dominance Orientation Scale (1= Very negative to 7 = Very positive)
* “Some groups of people are simply not the equals of others”
* “This country would be better off if we cared less about how equal all people are”
* “To get ahead in life, it is sometimes necessary to step on others”
* Another measure of right-wing attitudes

Question 16

left wing authoritarianism

Answer 16

Stone (p.14, 1980): The Myth of Left-Wing Authoritarianism
* “It seems a waste of time to continue to test a hypothesis with so little support as left-wing authoritarianism…
* Largely based on findings that leftists scored low on dogmatism

Question 17

why has left wing authoritarianism been overlooked?

Answer 17

Original authoritarianism research was a reaction to far-right ideology (fascism)  mainly focusing on social conservatism

• Overreliance on WEIRD samples (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic)
• A handful of studies looking at authoritarianism in post-socialist countries(Eastern Europe)

Question 18

left wing authoritarianism
costello et al 2002 : clarifying the structure and nature of left wing authoritarianism

Answer 18

Core markers of authoritarianism symmetrical across the spectrum
:* Dogmatism
* Cognitive rigidity
* Prejudice
* Lethal partisanship
* Left-wing authoritarianism: The revolutionary personality
* The present establishment should be overthrown
*  Main difference between “winged-ness”: orientation towards the present hierarchy

Question 19

measuring left wing authoritarianism

Answer 19

• LWA scale (Costello et al., 2022)
• “The rich should be stripped of their belongings and status” (Anti-hierarchical Aggression)
• “Radical and progressive moral values can save our society” (Anti-conventionalism)
• “When we spend all our time protecting the right to “free speech” we’re protecting the rights of sexists, racists, and homophobes at the cost of marginalized people” (Top-down Censorship)

Question 20

personality and left wing (big five)

Answer 20

-negative correlations with agreeableness, conscientiousness, -openess to experience
-positive correlations with extraversion

Question 21

commonality in both right and left wing authoritarianism

Answer 21

-preference for social uniformity
-prejudice towards different others
-willingness to wield group authority to coerce behaviour
-cognitive rigidity
-aggression and punitiveness towards perceived enemies
-outsized concern for hierarchy
-moral absolutism
-political violence

Question 22

rwa and lwa differences

Answer 22

rwa
-higher confirmatory thinking
-higher dogmatism
-higher cognitive rigidity
-lower openness
-lower belief in science
-political violence to support the system (police brutality)

lwa
-higher negative affect
-higher neuroticism
-higher preferences for state control
-higher beliefs in determinism
-higher beliefs in dangerous world
-higher partisan violence
-higher moral disengagement
-higher political intolerance
-political violence against the system (violent protests)

Question 23

zmigrod et al 2021 exp

Answer 23

looked at individual differences based on the extremes of political spectrum, by looking at cognitive functioning
-do individuals who are on the political spectrum left to right, differ in their cognitive abilities

-look at graphs

-top one shows cognitive flexibility as measure by remote association test
-we can see highest cognitive flexibility can be found on the slight left of the political spectrum
-individuals who hold liberal political views show highest cognitive flexibility

-other two graphs show accuracy on the Wisconsin sorting card test
-need to be flexible to be able to flexible in your thinking
-as we go lower on the accuracy there is higher confidence in decision to die for the group
-this correlation shows willingness to engage in aggression up to giving yourself up for views
-parallel for both side of the political spectrum

Question 24

i 35 mins

Answer 24

i

Question 25

9

Answer 25

9

Question 26

irrationality
hornsey 2020
why facts are not enough

Answer 26

-hornsey suggests that to understand beliefs that’s counter scientific knowledge , we need to study the roots of such irrational beliefs
-developed the tree model
-we typically focus on surface attitudes
-

Question 27

conspiracist worldview

Answer 27

Openness to nonofficial accounts of reality
* Climate scepticism
* Opposition to GMO
* Suspicion of lab-grown meat
* Measured by people’s endorsement of several famous conspiracies(9/11, the death of Princess Diana)
* Strongest for antivaccination views (stronger relationship that conservative views)