Political Orientation Predicts Credulity Regarding Putative Hazards

Softly empowering a prosocial expert in the family: lasting effects of a counter-misinformation intervention in an informational autocracy

The present work is the first to comprehensively analyze the gravity of the misinformation problem in Hungary, where misinformation appears regularly in the pro-governmental, populist, and socially conservative mainstream media. In line with international data, using a Hungarian representative sample (Study 1, N = 991), we found that voters of the reigning populist, conservative party could hardly distinguish fake from real news. In Study 2, we demonstrated that a prosocial intervention of ~ 10 min (N = 801) helped young adult participants discern misinformation four weeks later compared to the control group without implementing any boosters. This effect was the most salient regarding pro-governmental conservative fake news content, leaving real news evaluations intact. Although the hypotheses of the present work were not preregistered, it appears that prosocial misinformation interventions might be promising attempts to counter misinformation in an informational autocracy in which the media is highly centralized. Despite using social motivations, it does not mean that long-term cognitive changes cannot occur. Future studies might explore exactly how these interventions can have an impact on the long-term cognitive processing of news content as well as their underlying neural structures.

Bullshit can be harmful to your health: Bullibility as a precursor to poor decision--making

Bullshitting is characterized by sharing information with little to no regard for truth, established knowledge, or genuine evidence. It involves the use of various rhetorical strategies to make one's statements sound knowledgeable, impressive, persuasive, influential, or confusing in order to aid bullshitters in explaining things in areas where their obligations to provide opinions exceed their actual knowledge in those domains. Distinct from gullibility (i.e., a propensity to accept a false premise in the presence of untrustworthiness cues), we highlight the research on bullibility (i.e., believing bullshit even in the face of social cues that signal something is bullshit) and its links to erroneous judgments and decisions. A deeper understanding of bullibility is critical to identifying and correcting poor decision-making.

Rumors in Retweet: Ideological Asymmetry in the Failure to Correct Misinformation

We used supervised machine-learning techniques to examine ideological asymmetries in online rumor transmission. Although liberals were more likely than conservatives to communicate in general about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings (Study 1, N = 26,422) and 2020 death of the sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein (Study 2, N = 141,670), conservatives were more likely to share rumors. Rumor-spreading decreased among liberals following official correction, but it increased among conservatives. Marathon rumors were spread twice as often by conservatives pre-correction, and nearly 10 times more often post-correction. Epstein rumors were spread twice as often by conservatives pre-correction, and nearly, eight times more often post-correction. With respect to ideologically congenial rumors, conservatives circulated the rumor that the Clinton family was involved in Epstein's death 18.6 times more often than liberals circulated the rumor that the Trump family was involved. More than 96% of all fake news domains were shared by conservative Twitter users.

The relation between authoritarian leadership and belief in fake news

Individual factors such as cognitive capacities matter when one is requested to spot fake news. We suggest, however, that social influence-specifically as exercised by an authoritarian leader-might matter more if one is expected to agree with the fake news. We developed a single-item prototype measure of leadership styles and recruited participants from four Western democratic countries (Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, United States, N = 501) who identified their immediate boss as an autonomous, paternalistic, or authoritarian leader. Then they were asked to evaluate the accuracy of several fake news articles and their expectations to agree with their boss when asked about these articles. People with authoritarian bosses were less accurate in spotting fake news (Cohen's d = 0.32) compared to employees with autonomous bosses. The bigger effect, however, was that they would agree with their boss about the fake news article when it was shared by their authoritarian boss compared to employees with autonomous (Cohen's d = 1.30) or paternalistic bosses (Cohen's d = 0.70). We argue that in addition to effects on the perceived accuracy of information, social influence, conformity, and obedience are crucial and unacknowledged factors of how misinformation may be maintained and propagated by authoritarian leaders.

Political bias indicators and perceptions of news

Introduction

Recently, a variety of political bias indicators for social and news media have come to market to alert news consumers to the credibility and political bias of their sources. However, the effects of political bias indicators on how people consume news is unknown. Creators of bias indicators assume people will use the apps and extensions to become less biased news-consumers; however, it is also possible that people would use bias indicators to confirm their previous worldview and become more biased in their perceptions of news.

Methods

Across two studies, we tested how political bias indicators influence perceptions of news articles without partisan bias (Study 1, N = 394) and articles with partisan bias (Study 2, N = 616). Participants read news articles with or without political bias indicators present and rated the articles on their perceived political bias and credibility.

Results

Overall, we found no consistent evidence that bias indicators influence perceptions of credibility or bias in news. However, in Study 2, there was some evidence that participants planned to use bias indicators in the future to become more biased in their future news article selection.

Discussion

These data shed light on the (in) effectiveness of interventions against blindly consuming biased news and media.

Teachers' anti-black biases in disciplinary decisions: The role of mindfulness

Research suggests that disparities in exclusionary discipline can be explained, in part, by teachers' anti-Black biases in disciplinary decision-making. An emerging body of literature also speaks to the benefits of cultivating mindfulness for bias reduction. The present study adds to the literature by assessing whether mindfulness is associated with differences in teachers' responses to student disciplinary infractions as a function of student signaled race, which was manipulated as a between-subjects factor. We predicted that teachers with lower levels of mindfulness, as measured via self-report, would demonstrate greater anti-Black bias in response to students' disciplinary files than teachers with higher levels of mindfulness. Teachers (N = 179) completed the study via an online research participant platform. Consistent with hypothesis, we found that participants' self-reported mindfulness in teaching moderated their responses to a disciplinary file as a function of student signaled race, b = -1.05, F(1, 175) = 4.50, p = 0.035, η_p² = 0.03, 95% CI [-2.03, -0.07]. Specifically, participants with lower levels of mindfulness rated the disciplinary infraction as more severe if it was enacted by a Black boy compared to a White boy. At higher levels of mindfulness, however, the opposite pattern emerged; participants demonstrated more leniency if the infraction was perpetrated by a Black boy, relative to a White boy. Our research adds to the literature and suggests that improving teachers' ability to remain present in the classroom may improve their ability to make more equitable decisions in managing students' misbehavior.

Hungarian, lazy, and biased: the role of analytic thinking and partisanship in fake news discernment on a Hungarian representative sample

"Why do people believe blatantly inaccurate news headlines? Do we use our reasoning abilities to convince ourselves that statements that align with our ideology are true, or does reasoning allow us to effectively differentiate fake from real regardless of political ideology?" These were the questions of Pennycook and Rand (2019), and they are more than actual three years later in Eastern Europe (especially in Hungary) in the light of the rise of populism, and the ongoing war in Ukraine - with the flood of disinformation that follows. In this study, using a representative Hungarian sample (N = 991) we wanted to answer the same questions-moving one step forward and investigating alternative models. We aimed to extend the original research with the examination of digital literacy and source salience on media truth discernment. Most of the observations of Pennycook and Rand were confirmed: people with higher analytic thinking were better at discerning disinformation. However, the results are in line with the synergistic integrative model as partisanship interacted with cognitive reflection: anti-government voters used their analytic capacities to question both concordant and discordant fake news more than pro-government voters. Furthermore, digital literacy increased detection, but source salience did not matter when perceiving disinformation.

Investigating the Relation of Political Orientation and Vaccination Outcomes: Identifying the Roles of Political Ideology, Party Affiliation, and Vaccine Hesitancy

Popular press and academic articles alike suggest that political orientation is a primary determinant of vaccination willingness, vaccination, and vaccine word-of-mouth (i.e., sharing of information regarding vaccines). In the current article, we test the validity of these suggestions, and we also assess the differential roles of political ideology (e.g., liberal-conservative) and party affiliation (e.g., Democrat-Republican) as well as the mediating effect of vaccine hesitancy's dimensions. To do so, we perform a four-wave survey study with 223 participants that completed all waves. Our results support that political orientation indeed relates to our outcomes of interest. Our results also show that political ideology has a more pronounced effect than party affiliation, and the vaccine hesitancy dimensions of Health Risks and Healthy mediate many of these relations. From these results, we suggest many directions for future research and practice, including the integration of political discourse theories in studies on political orientations and vaccination.

Experimental and cross-cultural evidence that parenthood and parental care motives increase social conservatism

Differences in attitudes on social issues such as abortion, immigration and sex are hugely divisive, and understanding their origins is among the most important tasks facing human behavioural sciences. Despite the clear psychological importance of parenthood and the motivation to provide care for children, researchers have only recently begun investigating their influence on social and political attitudes. Because socially conservative values ostensibly prioritize safety, stability and family values, we hypothesized that being more invested in parental care might make socially conservative policies more appealing. Studies 1 (preregistered; n = 376) and 2 (n = 1924) find novel evidence of conditional experimental effects of a parenthood prime, such that people who engaged strongly with a childcare manipulation showed an increase in social conservatism. Studies 3 (n = 2610, novel data from 10 countries) and 4 (n = 426 444, World Values Survey data) find evidence that both parenthood and parental care motivation are associated with increased social conservatism around the globe. Further, most of the positive association globally between age and social conservatism is accounted for by parenthood. These findings support the hypothesis that parenthood and parental care motivation increase social conservatism.

The i-frame and the s-frame: How focusing on individual-level solutions has led behavioral public policy astray

An influential line of thinking in behavioral science, to which the two authors have long subscribed, is that many of society's most pressing problems can be addressed cheaply and effectively at the level of the individual, without modifying the system in which the individual operates. We now believe this was a mistake, along with, we suspect, many colleagues in both the academic and policy communities. Results from such interventions have been disappointingly modest. But more importantly, they have guided many (though by no means all) behavioral scientists to frame policy problems in individual, not systemic, terms: To adopt what we call the "i-frame," rather than the "s-frame." The difference may be more consequential than i-frame advocates have realized, by deflecting attention and support away from s-frame policies. Indeed, highlighting the i-frame is a long-established objective of corporate opponents of concerted systemic action such as regulation and taxation. We illustrate our argument briefly for six policy problems, and in depth with the examples of climate change, obesity, retirement savings, and pollution from plastic waste. We argue that the most important way in which behavioral scientists can contribute to public policy is by employing their skills to develop and implement value-creating system-level change.

Navigating the COVID-19 pandemic in the contingency framework: Antecedents and consequences of public's stance toward the CDC

This study applied the contingency theory of conflict management to examine how contingency factors influence the public's perceptual and behavioral responses to COVID-19 and stance toward the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In particular, we tested political ideology as an important individual characteristic variable to examine its roles in the contingency theory framework. The findings revealed that two situational variables (i.e., threat appraisal and attitudes toward CDC) positively influenced the public's contingency accommodation stance toward the CDC. Furthermore, greater conservatism was significantly associated with lower levels of threat appraisal and more negative attitudes toward the CDC, however it did not influence the stance toward the CDC. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings and directions for future research are discussed.

Implications of instrumental and ritual stances for traditionalism–threat responsivity relationships

Jagiello et al.'s bifocal stance theory provides a useful theoretical framework for attempting to understand the connection between greater adherence to traditional norms and greater sensitivity to threats in the world. Here, we examine the implications of the instrumental and ritual stances with regard to various evolutionary explanations for traditionalism–threat sensitivity linkages.

Conservatism predicts aversion to consequential Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize society by automating tasks as diverse as driving cars, diagnosing diseases, and providing legal advice. The degree to which AI can improve outcomes in these and other domains depends on how comfortable people are trusting AI for these tasks, which in turn depends on lay perceptions of AI. The present research examines how these critical lay perceptions may vary as a function of conservatism. Using five survey experiments, we find that political conservatism is associated with low comfort with and trust in AI-i.e., with AI aversion. This relationship between conservatism and AI aversion is explained by the link between conservatism and risk perception; more conservative individuals perceive AI as being riskier and are therefore more averse to its adoption. Finally, we test whether a moral reframing intervention can reduce AI aversion among conservatives.

Are face masks a partisan issue during the COVID-19 pandemic? Differentiating political ideology and political party affiliation

Popular press articles have asserted that those with certain political orientations are less likely to wear face masks during the COVID‐19 pandemic. We propose that this relation is due to differential information shared by political parties rather than values associated with face mask wearing. We further propose that, when assessed together, political party affiliation (e.g., Republican, Democrat) but not political ideology (e.g., conservative, liberal) predicts face mask wearing, and this effect is mediated by perceptions of efficacy doubts but not perceptions that face masks infringe upon the wearer's independence. We performed a three‐wave, time‐separated survey study with 226 participants. Each proposal was supported. When assessed together, political party affiliation but not political ideology significantly predicted face mask wearing, and a significant indirect effect was observed via perceptions of efficacy doubts but not independence. Our results support that face mask wearing is a unique preventative action, which should be understood using political theory.

Politically oriented bullshit detection: Attitudinally conditional bullshit receptivity and bullshit sensitivity

Bullshit results from communicating with little to no regard for truth, evidence, or established knowledge (Frankfurt, 1986; Petrocelli, 2018a). Such disregard for truth serves as a common source of antiscientific beliefs and endorsement of alternative facts and is thereby critical to understand. To examine how social perceptions of bullshit may be conditional upon the political orientation of a source and the extremity of one’s political attitudes, two experiments manipulated the alleged political source of bullshit messages and measured the direction and strength of political orientation. In Experiment 1, participants rated the profundity of nonsense statements allegedly stated by high-profile left/liberal or right/conservative political leaders. Experiment 2 participants rated the profundity of both bullshit statements and factual quotations regarding innovation. Results of both experiments suggest that bullshit receptivity and bullshit sensitivity are dependent on the alignment of the source’s bullshit content with the direction and extremity of one’s political attitudes.

Conservatives' susceptibility to political misperceptions

The idea that U.S. conservatives are uniquely likely to hold misperceptions is widespread but has not been systematically assessed. Research has focused on beliefs about narrow sets of claims never intended to capture the richness of the political information environment. Furthermore, factors contributing to this performance gap remain unclear. We generated an unique longitudinal dataset combining social media engagement data and a 12-wave panel study of Americans' political knowledge about high-profile news over 6 months. Results confirm that conservatives have lower sensitivity than liberals, performing worse at distinguishing truths and falsehoods. This is partially explained by the fact that the most widely shared falsehoods tend to promote conservative positions, while corresponding truths typically favor liberals. The problem is exacerbated by liberals' tendency to experience bigger improvements in sensitivity than conservatives as the proportion of partisan news increases. These results underscore the importance of reducing the supply of right-leaning misinformation.

The Influence of Political Ideology on Fake News Belief: The Portuguese Case

The relationship between a subject’s ideological persuasion with the belief and spread of fake news is the object of our study. Departing from a left- vs. right-wing framework, a questionnaire sought to position subjects on this political-ideological spectrum and demanded them to evaluate five pro-left and pro-right fake and real news, totaling 20 informational products. The results show the belief and dissemination of (fake) news are related to the political ideology of the participants, with right-wing subjects exhibiting a greater tendency to accept fake news, regardless of whether it is pro-left or pro-right fake news. These findings contradict the confirmation bias and may suggest that a greater influence of factors such as age, the level of digital news literacy and psychological aspects in the judgment of fake news are at play. Older and less educated respondents indicated they believed and would disseminate fake news at greater rates. Regardless of the ideology they favor, the Portuguese attributed higher credibility to the sample’s real news, a fact that can be meaningful regarding the fight against disinformation in Portugal and elsewhere.

Geographic distribution of prejudice toward African Americans: Applying the two-dimensional model

Using the two-dimensional model of prejudice as a theoretical framework, we examined the geographic distribution of prejudice toward African Americans in the United States (N = 10,522). We found the East South Central, West South Central, and South Atlantic regions were associated with modern racism, principled conservatism characterized the Mountain region, aversive racism was prevalent in the East North Central region, and finally, low in prejudice was found in the Pacific, West North Central, Mid Atlantic, and New England regions. Additional analyses on political conservatism, social conservatism, and egalitarianism generally supported the distinctions between prejudice types made by the two-dimensional model. We believe mapping regional prejudice may have implications for testing theoretical differences between distinct types of prejudice as well as for implementing prejudice reduction strategies.

The relationship between political affiliation and beliefs about sources of "fake news"

The 2016 US Presidential campaign saw an explosion in popularity for the term “fake news.” This phenomenon raises interesting questions: Which news sources do people believe are fake, and what do people think “fake news” means? One possibility is that beliefs about the news reflect a bias to disbelieve information that conflicts with existing beliefs and desires. If so, then news sources people consider “fake” might differ according to political affiliation. To test this idea, we asked people to tell us what “fake news” means, and to rate several news sources for the extent to which each provides real news, fake news, and propaganda. We found that political affiliation influenced people’s descriptions and their beliefs about which news sources are “fake.” These results have implications for people’s interpretations of news information and for the extent to which people can be misled by factually incorrect journalism.

Infection threat shapes our social instincts

We social animals must balance the need to avoid infections with the need to interact with conspecifics. To that end we have evolved, alongside our physiological immune system, a suite of behaviors devised to deal with potentially contagious individuals. Focusing mostly on humans, the current review describes the design and biological innards of this behavioral immune system, laying out how infection threat shapes sociality and sociality shapes infection threat. The paper shows how the danger of contagion is detected and posted to the brain; how it affects individuals’ mate choice and sex life; why it strengthens ties within groups but severs those between them, leading to hostility toward anyone who looks, smells, or behaves unusually; and how it permeates the foundation of our moral and political views. This system was already in place when agriculture and animal domestication set off a massive increase in our population density, personal connections, and interaction with other species, amplifying enormously the spread of disease. Alas, pandemics such as COVID-19 not only are a disaster for public health, but, by rousing millions of behavioral immune systems, could prove a threat to harmonious cohabitation too.

Communication training is inadequate: the role of deception, non-verbal communication, and cultural proficiency

In this commentary, we argue that the limited experiential exposure of medical students to different cultures makes the instruction devoted to communication skills inadequate. The relationship of these dynamics to honesty in clinical encounters is explored. Absent significant experiential exposure to differing group cultures to counter the natural tendency to favor one's own, discrimination prevails. Knowledge or awareness of cultural differences does not necessarily equate to communication proficiency. Critically, interactions based on lived experience offer a deeper knowledge and understanding of culturally meaningful nuances than that imparted through other formats. Medical students' lack of experiential exposure to different cultures results in communication miscues. When the stakes are high, people detect those miscues diminishing trust in the doctor-patient relationship. Greater experiential cultural exposure will enhance the facility and use of culturally specific communication cues. At its core, the requisite transformation will require medical students to adapt to other cultures and greater representation by marginalized and stigmatized populations not only among the studentry but staff and faculty. The time is now to ensure that the physicians we produce can care for all Americans. What cannot be taught must be identified by the selection process. Competence with half the population is a failure for American medicine.

The Dark Side of Morality - Neural Mechanisms Underpinning Moral Convictions and Support for Violence

People are motivated by shared social values that, when held with moral conviction, can serve as compelling mandates capable of facilitating support for ideological violence. The current study examined this dark side of morality by identifying specific cognitive and neural mechanisms associated with beliefs about the appropriateness of sociopolitical violence, and determining the extent to which the engagement of these mechanisms was predicted by moral convictions. Participants reported their moral convictions about a variety of sociopolitical issues prior to undergoing functional MRI scanning. During scanning, they were asked to evaluate the appropriateness of violent protests that were ostensibly congruent or incongruent with their views about sociopolitical issues. Complementary univariate and multivariate analytical strategies comparing neural responses to congruent and incongruent violence identified neural mechanisms implicated in processing salience and in the encoding of subjective value. As predicted, neuro-hemodynamic response was modulated parametrically by individuals' beliefs about the appropriateness of congruent relative to incongruent sociopolitical violence in ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and by moral conviction in ventral striatum. Overall moral conviction was predicted by neural response to congruent relative to incongruent violence in amygdala. Together, these findings indicate that moral conviction about sociopolitical issues serves to increase their subjective value, overriding natural aversion to interpersonal harm.

Neurocognitive hacking A new capability in cyber conflict?

This article presents a discussion of neurocognitive hacking and its potential for use at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of cyber conflict. Neurocognitive hacking refers to the ability to activate specific neural areas of the brain, via subliminal or supraliminal stimuli, to shape the behavioral outcomes of an adversary. Research suggests that awareness of mortality-related stimuli has neural correlates in the right amygdala and left anterior cingulate cortex and mediates negative behavior toward out-group members, including unconscious discriminatory behavior. Given its in-group/out-group dynamic, the phenomenon could be exploited for use in information operations toward target populations, specifically ones that are multiethnic, multicultural, or multireligious. Although development of the theoretical framework behind neurocognitive hacking is ongoing, mortality-related stimuli are proposed to activate one's unconscious vigilance system to further evaluate the locus and viability of the suspect stimuli. Research suggests that the subsequent discriminatory affective reactions directed toward out-group members are representative of automatic heuristics evolved to protect the organism in the event a stimulus represents a more serious threat to survival. Therefore, presenting mortality-related stimuli over computer networks to targeted audiences may facilitate the ingestion of tailored propaganda or shaping of specific behavioral outcomes within a population, including sowing division in a target community or weakening support for a specific political regime.

We Only Believe in News That We Doctored Ourselves

Abstract. In this research we aimed to explore the importance of partisanship behind the belief in wish-fulfilling political fake news. We tested the role of political orientation, partisanship, and conspiracy mentality in the acceptance of pro- and anti-government pipedream fake news. Using a representative survey ( N = 1,000) and a student sample ( N = 382) in Hungary, we found that partisanship predicted belief in political fake news more strongly than conspiracy mentality, and these connections were mediated by the perceived credibility of source (independent journalism vs. political propaganda) and economic sentiment. Our findings suggest that political bias can be more important in predicting acceptance of pipedream political fake news than conspiracy mentality.

Moral Foundations in the 2015-16 U.S. Presidential Primary Debates: The Positive and Negative Moral Vocabulary of Partisan Elites

Moral foundations theory (MFT) suggests that individuals on the political left draw upon moral intuitions relating primarily to care and fairness, whereas conservatives are more motivated than liberals by authority, ingroup, and purity concerns. The theory of conservatism as motivated social cognition (CMSC) suggests that conservatives are more attuned than liberals to threat and to negative stimuli. Because evidence for both accounts rests on studies of mass publics, however, it remains unclear whether political elites of the left and right exhibit these inclinations. Thus, this analysis uses the 2015-16 United States presidential primary season as an occasion to explore partisan differences in candidates’ moral rhetoric. The analysis focuses on verbal responses to questions posed during party primary debates, a setting that is largely unscripted and thus potentially subject to intuitive influences. The Moral Foundations Dictionary is employed to analyze how frequently candidates used words representing various moral foundations, distinguishing between positive and negative references to each. Consistent with CMSC, the Republican candidates were more likely to use negative-valence moral terminology, describing violations of moral foundations. The direction of some partisan differences contradicts the expectations of MFT. Donald Trump, a novice candidate, was an exception to the typical Republican pattern, making markedly lower overall use of moral-foundations vocabulary.

Politics and Parental Care: Experimental and Mediational Tests of the Causal Link Between Parenting Motivation and Social Conservatism

People vary greatly in their desire for, willingness to care for, and emotions toward children. This variation in “parenting motivation” predicts a range of cognition and behavior. Strategic perspectives on political attitudes suggest that parenting motivation should be associated with more socially conservative attitudes, since these attitudes prioritize self-protection norms. Across three studies, we found that parenthood mediated age-related increases in social conservatism. Study 1 found that an experimental child interaction prime increased social conservatism in parents but not in nonparents. Study 2 (preregistered, n = 803) found a main effect of the prime, while Study 3 (preregistered, n = 763) found no experimental effect. Study 3 also found that the relationship between parenting motivation and social conservatism was mediated by both sexual attitudes and perceived threats. These findings attest to the important relationship between parenthood and social conservatism but also suggest that “parenting” primes have either inconsistent or trivial implications within online samples.

Electoral fortunes reverse, mindsets do not

Conservatives and liberals have previously been shown to differ in the propensity to view socially-transmitted information about hazards as more plausible than that concerning benefits. Given differences between conservatives and liberals in threat sensitivity and dangerous-world beliefs, correlations between political orientation and negatively-biased credulity may thus reflect endogenous mindsets. Alternatively, such results may owe to the political hierarchy at the time of previous research, as the tendency to see dark forces at work is thought to be greater among those who are out of political power. Adjudicating between these accounts can inform how societies respond to the challenge of alarmist disinformation campaigns. We exploit the consequences of the 2016 U.S. elections to test these competing explanations of differences in negatively-biased credulity and conspiracism as a function of political orientation. Two studies of Americans reveal continued positive associations between conservatism, negatively-biased credulity, and conspiracism despite changes to the power structure in conservatives’ favor.

At Least Bias Is Bipartisan: A Meta-Analytic Comparison of Partisan Bias in Liberals and Conservatives

Both liberals and conservatives accuse their political opponents of partisan bias, but is there empirical evidence that one side of the political aisle is indeed more biased than the other? To address this question, we meta-analyzed the results of 51 experimental studies, involving over 18,000 participants, that examined one form of partisan bias-the tendency to evaluate otherwise identical information more favorably when it supports one's political beliefs or allegiances than when it challenges those beliefs or allegiances. Two hypotheses based on previous literature were tested: an asymmetry hypothesis (predicting greater partisan bias in conservatives than in liberals) and a symmetry hypothesis (predicting equal levels of partisan bias in liberals and conservatives). Mean overall partisan bias was robust ( r = .245), and there was strong support for the symmetry hypothesis: Liberals ( r = .235) and conservatives ( r = .255) showed no difference in mean levels of bias across studies. Moderator analyses reveal this pattern to be consistent across a number of different methodological variations and political topics. Implications of the current findings for the ongoing ideological symmetry debate and the role of partisan bias in scientific discourse and political conflict are discussed.

Battle of Wits

Political conservatism and threat salience have been consistently associated with intergroup bias. However, prior research has not examined potential effects of conservatism and/or threat on the attribution of relative in-group/out-group intelligence. In a cross-cultural study conducted in Spain and the United Kingdom, priming violent conflict with ISIS led participants to view an in-group ally as relatively more intelligent than an out-group adversary, in an effect mediated by feelings of anger (but not fear or general arousal). Conservatism similarly predicted biased perception of the ally’s relative intellect, a tendency that was driven by militaristic (not social/fiscal) political attitudes but was not explained by associated increases in state anger following conflict cues. This overall pattern indicates that conflict cues and militaristic political orientation heighten assessments of relative intergroup intellect during warfare via distinct affective and attitudinal pathways.

Ideological Responses to the EU Refugee Crisis: The Left, the Right, and the Extremes

The 2016 European Union (EU) refugee crisis exposed a fundamental distinction in political attitudes between the political left and right. Previous findings suggest, however, that besides political orientation, ideological strength (i.e., political extremism) is also relevant to understand such distinctive attitudes. Our study reveals that the political right is more anxious, and the political left experiences more self-efficacy, about the refugee crisis. At the same time, the political extremes—at both sides of the spectrum—are more likely than moderates to believe that the solution to this societal problem is simple. Furthermore, both extremes experience more judgmental certainty about their domain-specific knowledge of the refugee crisis, independent of their actual knowledge. Finally, belief in simple solutions mediated the relationship between ideology and judgmental certainty, but only among political extremists. We conclude that both ideological orientation and strength matter to understand citizens’ reactions to the refugee crisis.