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various definitions for the two dimensions of political ideology
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Research over the last fifty years has suggested that political attitudes and values around the globe are shaped by two ideological dimensions, often referred to as economic and social conservatism. However, it remains unclear why this ideological structure exists. Here we highlight the striking concordance between these dual dimensions of ideology...
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Context 1
... contrast, scholars from many disciplines have converged upon two dimensions of political ideology. These dual dimensions have repeatedly emerged in the literature over the last 50 years (Table 1), despite researchers using different methodologies and, indeed, different labels to capture ideology. Some researchers have focused on the attitudes that people hold about political and social issues, clustering these into correlated categories using data-driven, atheoretical factor-analytic methods 10,11 . ...Context 2
... psychology has inductively derived clusters of moral values and noted how they strongly predict political ideology 14 , and crosscultural approaches have validated scale items across many different societies, finding that the same dimensions recur 15 . Across this myriad of methodologies, both exploratory and confirmatory, researchers have found very similar two-dimensional ideological structures, strongly suggesting that the scales in Table 1 are all capturing the same underlying psychological phenomena. ...Context 3
... number of promising evolutionary approaches have already derived important insights about the dimensions in Table 1. This includes work linking social conservatism to negativity bias 32 , disgust sensitivity 38 and adherence to social norms 39 , as well as work linking economic conservatism to upper-body strength 40 . ...Context 4
... humans became more committed to group viability, conforming to social norms in culturally marked groups and punishing norm-violators. We highlight the striking concordance between these two social drives and the two dimensions of political ideology captured in Table 1. We then outline how fitness trade-offs and behavioural plasticity are expected to maintain functional variation in cooperation and group conformity, naturally giving rise to the two dimensions of variation in political ideology. ...Context 5
... argue that these two fundamental human responses to the challenges of group living-cooperation and group conformityexplain why scholars have repeatedly identified a two-dimensional structure of political ideology and provide a principled foundation for the domain of each dimension. The first domain (left column of Table 1) is concerned with cooperating more across wider interdependent networks and sharing the spoils of cooperation more evenly. In our ancestral past, individuals had to constantly navigate cooperative dilemmas, such as collaborative foraging and meat sharing, as well as determine how to share the spoils of cooperation. ...Context 6
... analogous dilemmas underlie policy issues like taxation, welfare programs and free education. The second domain (right column of Table 1) is concerned with group conformity. For early humans living in highly interdependent social groups, it was vital to abide by group-wide social norms, sanction norm-violators and defend the group against outsiders. ...Context 7
... propose that both heritable individual differences and functional behavioural plasticity have maintained strategic variation in cooperation and group conformity in human populations, naturally giving rise to variation along the two dimensions of political ideology. Heritable individual differences in a general cooperative drive, combined with the presence of relevant situational cues (for example, perceptions of targets' need or ability to reciprocate 112 ), produce variation in willingness to cooperate with others, giving rise to variation along the first dimension of political ideology (left column of Table 1). Heritable individual differences in a general group conformist drive, combined with the presence of relevant situational cues (for example, perceived unpredictability or threats to group norms), produce variation in willingness to conform to and enforce group-wide social norms and defend the group, giving rise to variation along the second dimension of political ideology (right column of Table 1). ...Context 8
... individual differences in a general cooperative drive, combined with the presence of relevant situational cues (for example, perceptions of targets' need or ability to reciprocate 112 ), produce variation in willingness to cooperate with others, giving rise to variation along the first dimension of political ideology (left column of Table 1). Heritable individual differences in a general group conformist drive, combined with the presence of relevant situational cues (for example, perceived unpredictability or threats to group norms), produce variation in willingness to conform to and enforce group-wide social norms and defend the group, giving rise to variation along the second dimension of political ideology (right column of Table 1). Hence, in addition to explaining the essential nature of the two dimensions of political ideology, an evolutionary approach outlines how predictable interactions between genes and environment produce variation along the two dimensions. ...Context 9
... two dimensions of ideology, one referring to cooperation and the other referring to group conformity (Table 1). A close look at some exemplar items from the self-report scales in Table 1 reveals this pattern more clearly (Table 2). ...Context 10
... two dimensions of ideology, one referring to cooperation and the other referring to group conformity (Table 1). A close look at some exemplar items from the self-report scales in Table 1 reveals this pattern more clearly (Table 2). The scale items in the left column of Table 2 measure willingness to cooperate with others. ...Similar publications
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Citations
... As the evidence indicates that a higher sense of threat induces an authoritarian attitude and conservatism (Jost et al., 2018;Hickley, 2020;Sinn & Hayes, 2018). In conjunction, an authoritarian attitude tends to gravitate toward militarism, resorting to reliance on extreme force to mitigate threats (Osborne et al., 2023;Claessens et al., 2020;Escriba`-Folch et al., 2019). ...
The classical notion of authoritarian attitude claims it lowers subjective well-being (Onraet & Van Hiel, 2014). However, some findings indicated that the authoritarian attitude is a protective function. The current study's data involved 706 participants who responded to psychological questionnaires spread through online platforms. Results showed that the neuroticism trait mediated the link between authoritarian attitude and subjective well-being. The authoritarian attitude negative association with the neuroticism trait could influence the decrease in negative feelings and influence increase in flourishing and positive feelings. The result extends the explanation for adherence to an authoritarian worldview and can be used to explain the rise of Dutertismo in the Philippine context.
... As humans also become able to read texts in newspapers, books, or in the present era on digital devices, they are in the position to read or hear descriptions of life in previous times, the experiences of other people, and of other parts of the world. That humans have these abilities supports the notion that the evolutionary foundations of social life are cooperation within groups and compliance with social norms in culturally marked groups (Claessens et al., 2020). ...
... Beliefs about political and public affairs play a constitutive role in the social environment as they promote in-group cohesion and intergroup aversion (Claessens, 2020). Thereby, concepts about morality and norms are of importance because they provide rules for how to behave in a socially accepted and viable manner. ...
... These examples illustrate how people can believe in concepts that extend into the future for nonevidence-based reasons (Longheed & Simpson, 2017). People can hold religious or political beliefs without any explicit awareness of their structure in a manner similar to how they can use language without metacognitive awareness of its grammatical rules (Claessens et al., 2020). ...
Introduction
Believing comprises multifaceted processes that integrate information from the outside world through meaning‐making processes with personal relevance.
Methods
Qualitative Review of the current literature in social cognitive neuroscience.
Results
Although believing develops rapidly outside an individual's conscious awareness, it results in the formation of beliefs that are stored in memory and play an important role in determining an individual's behavior. Primal beliefs reflect an individual's experience of objects and events, whereas conceptual beliefs are based on narratives that are held in social groups. Conceptual beliefs can be about autobiographical, political, religious, and other aspects of life and may be encouraged by participation in group rituals. We hypothesize that assertions of future gains and rewards that transcend but are inherent in these codices provide incentives to follow the norms and rules of social groups.
Conclusion
The power of conceptual beliefs to provide cultural orientation is likely to fade when circumstances and evidence make it clear that what was asserted no longer applies.
... Political preferences may cluster together in various ways and our theory is mute on how the political landscape will be divided in a particular population. Although political ideology is not a unidimensional trait (e.g., Claessens et al., 2020), most empiri cal work has assumed that in Western populations political views are arranged along a dimension from the conservative-right to the liberal-left. This clustering of social and economic conservatism seems specific to Western populations; in non-Western pop ulations the correlation between social and economic conservatism is often near zero or negative (Malka et al., 2019). ...
What is the relation between morality and politics? If morality is a collection of cooperative rules, and politics is conflict over which cooperative projects to pursue, then they should be correlated. We examined the relation between moral values and political orientation in samples of participants from the USA (N = 518), Denmark (N = 552), the Netherlands (N = 353), and an international online population (N = 1,337). Political conservatism was consistently related to deference values. We also found some support for the hypotheses that political orientation has distinct relations with family values and group values, and has distinct relations with fairness values and reciprocity values. However, for most hypotheses the results showed no support, largely due to poor model fit or measurement error associated with the political scales. The results suggest that improved measurement of political preferences will help understand the relation between morality and politics.
... According to [76] and [77], political ideology is defined as a coherent and interconnected set of attitudes, moral values, and policies regarding the appropriate goals of society and how they should be achieved. Considering the values and beliefs associated with political ideology [76,78,79], the traditional way to classify this variable has been through a continuum, with the left/liberal wing on one end and the right/conservative wing on the other [79]. This way of characterizing the variable helps define the core values of individuals [76,[79][80][81]. ...
The essential role that entrepreneurs play in the economy, while acknowledged in the academic context, is not always recognized socially. In the specific case of Spain, the profession has even been called into question by public institutions, which is highly detrimental to both the social image of entrepreneurs and the country’s economy. Therefore, there is a need to identify factors that can improve this social image. This study aims to investigate one of these factors, specifically the effect of interest in economics. To do so, data from a large sample of 25,835 Spanish citizens from 2002–2022 were employed. The analysis was conducted using a combination of a neural network model and logistic regression. The conclusion of the study is that as interest in economics and business increases, the perception of entrepreneurs improves. Therefore, those individuals with less interest in economics tend to have a more negative view of this profession. This result opens up a potential avenue for enhancing the social image of entrepreneurs, as a higher interest in economics and business, which could be achieved through effective communication campaigns or basic education, leads to an improvement in perception.
... Many studies have converged upon two main dimensions of political ideology. These dual dimensions have repeatedly emerged despite the different labels used to name them [8,9]. The first dimension, often designated as "economic conservatism" or "social dominance", predicts positions on issues like taxation, welfare programs, and government public investment. ...
Neuroimaging of political ideologies (left-wing vs. right-wing; conservatism vs. liberalism), unveiled brain systems for mediating the cognitive and affective inclinations of partisanship. Brain networks related to deliberation and cognitive control, as well as those processing subjective values and social norms, were mainly involved. Correlational links from normative people were corroborated by brain lesions and focal transcranial stimulation techniques. Neuroimaging studies with extremists ready to endorse violent actions are scarce and do not provide fully concordant maps with those coming from people with strong partisanship allegiances. The present review discusses the advances made in the description of the neural systems that mediate both ordinary partisanship (the “partisan brain”), and radicalized extremism prone to violence (the “extremist brain”), signaling concomitances and differences. Further advances might come from unveiling distinctive interactions between prefrontal cortex areas with other cortical and subcortical regions that may help to outline dedicated maps and modes of operation. Moreover, measuring the hardness of beliefs and the strength of value adscriptions together with cognitive flexibility/rigidity, aggressiveness, ambition, high-risk seeking and other individual traits rooted in psychobiological substrates appear indispensable to distinguish between partisanship alignments and violent extremism proneness.
... Daily activities such as media exposure, social media access and even personal relationships are actively selected based on ideological beliefs (Spohr, 2017), demanding research attention for better understandings of its growing influence. Particularly, one ideological dimension indexing individuals' tendency to conform to social norms has been consistently found in research across distinct societies at least since the 1950s (Adorno et al., 1950;Claessens et al., 2020). This ideological dimension is notable for its relationship with a wide array of phenomena, including voting behavior (Womick, Rothmund, Azevedo, King, and Jost, 2019), prejudice (Sibley et al., 2006), support for torture (Benjamin Jr, 2016), corruption (Vilanova et al., 2022b), belief in conspiracy theories (Wood & Gray, 2019), and even dietary habits (Milfont et al., 2021). ...
Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) is a central predictor of distinct phenomena such as prejudice, voting behavior, corruption, conspiratory beliefs and dietary habits. Given its theoretical and practical relevance, researchers have incorporated RWA measures in large-scale surveys but their length is an impediment. Although short RWA scales exist, none consider the cultural variability of the RWA structure in non-WEIRD contexts such as Brazil. Here, we report data from five cross-sectional and longitudinal Brazilian samples (Ntotal = 2,493) used to develop a short RWA version that considers cross-cultural specificities of the Brazilian context, where an alternative four-factor model was observed. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses confirmed a four-factor structure comprising Authoritarianism, Traditionalism, Submission to Authority and Contestation to Authority dimensions. Six-month longitudinal results indicated that Authoritarianism and Traditionalism are more stable than both Submission and Contestation to Authority. Correlations between these dimensions and right-wing political self-categorization were statistically equivalent for the full 34-item RWA scale version and the new 12-item version. Results confirm the psychometric properties of the four-factor, 12-item RWA scale in this underrepresented cultural context.
... The two ideological attitudes in this dual-process model, right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO), are adaptive responses to these notions of the social world. Having evolutionary roots, RWA suggests an orientation towards ingroup cohesion and social control that helps to effectively deal with external threat and gain security, while SDO suggests a striving to maintain group hierarchy and exploitation, which helps to adapt and cope with competition and rivalry (Claessens et al., 2020;Duckitt & Sibley, 2016;Sinn & Hayes, 2018). ...
Even though wide access to any warranted information in the modern age, the problem of unfounded belief is still relevant, since these beliefs often lead to negative consequences (e.g., vaccination refusal, homeopathic treatment, etc.). The aim of this study was testing the relationship of social worldviews with paranormal beliefs and conspiracy beliefs. We assumed dimensionality hypothesis based on functional standpoint that there should be a general factor (underlying all the domains of paranormal beliefs and generic conspiracist beliefs), which has associations with the social worldviews as well. Derived our analysis from the survey of 228 participants (Mage = 30.6, SD = 11.7), we found that (a) the structure of paranormal and generic conspiracist beliefs can be described by a bifactor model; (b) the general factor of paranormal and generic conspiracist beliefs in the bifactor model was positively associated with global belief in just world and dangerous worldview; (c) paranormal beliefs were positively associated with global belief in just world and negatively associated with competitive worldview; (d) generic conspiracist beliefs were positively associated with dangerous worldview, competitive worldview, and zero-sum game belief; (e) contrary to our hypotheses, there was no evidence for any negative association of paranormal beliefs with dangerous worldview or zero-sum game belief and for any negative association of generic conspiracist beliefs with global belief in just world. We claim that the unfounded beliefs can be of some functional nature, demonstrating a connection with social worldviews, which opens up new perspectives for considering this problem within the framework of social psychology.
... Values thus bridge between individuals and social groups, and between individual psychology and politics. Intriguingly, of the great diversity of different values that individuals might hold, much work on the structure of human values identifies two overriding dimensions (Claessens et al., 2020). Converging findings from various studies indicate the two-dimensional structure of values is widespread, including work in politics (Duckitt and Sibley, 2010) as well as studies of the basic structure of personal values (Schwartz, 1992;Schwartz et al., 2012). ...
... The dual foundations framework has recently proposed that the various existing two-dimensional measures of values and ideology reflect the independent rediscovering of two fundamental challenges or trade-offs that are inherent to the evolution of human group-living (Claessens et al., 2020): one related to fairness in managing and distributing public goods and the other related to the extent of social control in collective activities (Tomasello et al., 2012;Tomasello and Vaish, 2013;Jensen et al., 2014;Burkart et al., 2018). ...
... Nevertheless, diminished autonomy can restrict the ability to innovate and adopt novel solutions to social problems, creating other incentives to loosen social control (Kendal et al., 2005;Whitehead and Richerson, 2009). The dual foundations framework thus expects the trade-off between this second set of strategies will shape individuals' values about social control and autonomy (Claessens et al., 2020). ...
Psychological research repeatedly identifies two dimensions of political values. Recent work argues that these dimensions reflect the dual evolutionary foundations of human social and political life: a trade-off between cooperation and competition that generates differences in values about social inequality, and a trade-off in managing group coordination that generates differences in values about social control. Existing scales used to measure political values, however, were created prior to this framework. Here, we introduce the Dual Foundations Scale, designed to capture values about the two trade-offs. We validate the scale across two studies, showing it accurately and reliably measures both dimensions. Our results support key predictions of the dual foundations framework and pave the way for future work on the foundations of political ideology.
... For example, values such as liberty, equality, and fraternity are historically closely associated with the institution of democracy, which we suggest is likely to inform our mental models of the democratic politico-social system and people's engagement with this human social system. Arguably, such mental models constitute a significant aspect of what is typically called ideology, a loosely interconnected and interlocking system of political beliefs (e.g., Claessens, Fischer, Chaudhuri, Sibley, & Atkinson, 2020;Converse, 1964;Kashima, Perfors, Ferdinand, & Pattenden, 2021). ...
Like any organism, humanity constructs its niche and adapts to the rest of nature by modifying available materials around them. In the era that some have dubbed the "Anthropocene," human niche construction has gone so far as to threaten the planetary climate system. The central question of sustainability is how humanity can collectively self-regulate niche construction, that is, humanity's relationship with the rest of nature. In this article, we argue that to resolve the collective self-regulation problem for sustainability, sufficiently accurate and relevant aspects of causal knowledge about the functioning of complex social-ecological systems need to be cognized, communicated, and collectively shared. More specifically, causal knowledge about human-nature interdependence-how humans interact with each other and the rest of nature-is critical for coordinating cognitive agents' thoughts, feelings, and actions for the greater good without falling into the trap of free riding. Here, we will develop a theoretical framework to consider the role of causal knowledge about human-nature interdependence in collective self-regulation for sustainability, review the relevant empirical research primarily focusing on climate change, and take stock of what is currently known and what we need to investigate in the future.
... That "left" and "right" reflect the poles of a meaningful and coherent dimension of psychological functioning is the crucial assumption of the rigidity-of-the-right hypothesis (see Morgan & Wisneski, 2017). Yet, the left-right continuum can be decomposed into (at least) two distinct dimensionsnamely, social vs. economic-that are uncorrelated, on average, across nations (Claessens et al., 2020;Malka et al., 2019) and have divergent psychological signatures (Federico & Malka, 2021). Furthermore, people differ along many broad political-ideological dimensions not meaningfully encompassed by the leftright dimension (Nilsson et al., 2020;Saucier, 2013), suggesting that variation across social and economic represents the tip of the taxonomic iceberg (see Costello et al., 2023). ...
... We also found moderately-sized (βs between .1 and .2) relations between this belief component and a spate of cognitive outcomes, including low task switching fluency, low proactive cognitive control, and low fluid intelligence. These rigidity-conservatism relations did not extend to a belief composite reflecting economic conservatism, highlighting a need for theoretical accounts of political beliefs that allow social conservatism and economic conservatism to be driven by distinct cognitive and motivational factors (Claessens et al., 2020;Costello & Lilienfeld, 2021;Federico, 2021;Feldman & Johnston, 2014). Relatedly, given that the strongest elements of the social conservatism factor were religion-related, the hard taxonomic boundary often drawn between social conservatism and religion was not supported by our data (Bouchard & Johnson, 2021;Zmigrod, 2022a). ...
Longstanding psychological accounts of political conservatism and political extremism posit a foundational role for rigid thoughts, feelings, goals, and behaviors. Critically, these theories rest on a set of auxiliary, implicit hypotheses that can be broadly summarized as follows: rigidity, conservatism, and extremism are conceptually and statistically coherent and offer an appropriate level of definitional resolution for researchers to characterize their mechanistic interplay. Yet rigidity and political ideology are heterogeneous phenomena and so, too, may be their channels of covariance. Here, we use a far-reaching set of self-report measures and cognitive tasks and a flexible, bottom-up analytic strategy to (1) explore the latent structure of political beliefs and rigidity, broadly construed, (2) identify relations between various “flavors” of belief systems and rigidity, and (3) identify dimension-specific non-linear effects. The result is a high-resolution and high-bandwidth “map” of the covariance space that challenges several core assertions of popular theoretical models of political ideology and extremism and surfaces several novel hypotheses that merit consideration in future research. Our results underscore the degree to which individual differences (in both beliefs and rigidity) are situated within intricate causal systems and manifest heterogeneously across diverse people and contexts.
