In the United States, while the number of COVID-19 cases continue to increase, the practice of social distancing and mask-wearing have been controversial and even politicized. The present study ...examined the role of psychological traits in social distancing compliance and mask-wearing behavior and attitude. A sample of 233 U.S. adult residents were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk. Participants completed scales of social distancing compliance, mask-wearing behavior and attitude, need for cognition, self-control, risk attitude, and political ideology. Epidemiological information (seven-day positive rate and the number of cases per 100,000) was obtained based on the state participants resided in. As a result, epidemiological information did not correlate with social distancing compliance mask-wearing. Political ideology, on the other hand, was a significant factor, with a more liberal tendency being associated with greater engagement in social distancing compliance and mask-wearing behavior an attitude. Importantly, those who were more risk averse, or had a higher level of self-control or need for cognition practiced more social distancing and mask-wearing, after controlling for demographics, epidemiological information, and political ideology. Furthermore, for mask-wearing behavior, political ideology interacted with both need for cognition and self-control. Collectively, the study revealed the psychological roots of individual differences in social distancing and mask-wearing compliance.
How does CEO political ideology influence the pay disparity between a CEO and typical firm employees? Drawing on the upper echelons theory, we postulate that politically liberal CEOs are more ...inclined to address within‐firm vertical pay disparity versus conservative or neutral CEOs, because liberals attend more closely to potential inequality issues and are more open to social changes. We furthermore contend that the effect of CEO political ideology varies across certain contextual factors. Results based on a sample of United States public firms support our arguments. Our study contributes to the literature on income inequality by highlighting CEO political ideology as a crucial determinant and investigating the boundary conditions.
The partisanship of American inventors Fehder, Daniel; Teodoridis, Florenta; Raffiee, Joseph ...
Research policy,
September 2024, 2024-09-00, Volume:
53, Issue:
7
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Using panel data on 251,511 patent inventors matched with voter registration records containing partisan affiliation, we provide the first large-scale look into the partisanship of American ...inventors. We document that the modal inventor is Republican and that the partisan composition of inventors has changed in ways that are not reflective of partisan affiliation trends amongst the broader population. We then show that the partisan affiliation of inventors is associated with technological invention related to guns and climate change, two issue areas associated with partisan divide. These findings suggest that inventor partisanship may have implications for the direction of inventive activity.
•We provide the first large-scale look into the partisanship of American inventors.•The partisanship composition of inventors has changed in ways that are not reflective of broader population trends.•The partisanship affiliation of inventors is associated with partisan divide innovation topics – guns and climate change.•Our study suggests a deeper dive into the relationship between partisanship and what gets invented is warranted.
We investigate the dispositional sources of managerial discretion by theorizing that CEOs’ personality traits affect the extent to which their firms’ strategies reflect their preferences. In a ...longitudinal study of Fortune 500 firms, we examine the moderating influence of two personality traits—narcissism and extraversion—on the relationship between CEOs’ liberal- or conservative-leaning political ideologies and two firm strategies: corporate social responsibility (CSR) and workforce downsizing. We anticipate and confirm that liberalleaning CEOs are more likely than others to enact CSR practices, and conservative-leaning CEOs are more likely than others to engage in downsizing. We find that extraversion strengthens these effects: it increases liberal CEOs’ use of CSR and conservative CEOs’ use of downsizing. Narcissism likewise strengthens the effect of CEO liberalism on CSR, but it does not significantly moderate the effect of CEO conservatism on downsizing. In a supplementary study using primary data from working professionals, we further explore the distinct mechanisms associated with these two personality traits. We find that narcissism relates strongly to individuals’ inflated perception of their discretion, whereas extraversion relates to their ability to sell an issue to others. Our study furthers research on managerial discretion by providing nuanced theory and evidence on innate sources of CEOs’ influence, and it enhances research on CEOs’ political ideology by spotlighting the dispositional boundary conditions of its effects on firms’ strategies.
There has been a substantial increase in research on the determinants and consequences of political ideology among political scientists and social psychologists. In psychology, researchers have ...examined the effects of personality and motivational factors on ideological orientations as well as differences in moral reasoning and brain functioning between liberals and conservatives. In political science, studies have investigated possible genetic influences on ideology as well as the role of personality factors. Virtually all of this research begins with the assumption that it is possible to understand the determinants and consequences of ideology via a unidimensional conceptualization. We argue that a unidimensional model of ideology provides an incomplete basis for the study of political ideology. We show that two dimensions—economic and social ideology—are the minimum needed to account for domestic policy preferences. More importantly, we demonstrate that the determinants of these two ideological dimensions are vastly different across a wide range of variables. Focusing on a single ideological dimension obscures these differences and, in some cases, makes it difficult to observe important determinants of ideology. We also show that this multidimensionality leads to a significant amount of heterogeneity in the structure of ideology that must be modeled to fully understand the structure and determinants of political attitudes.
Donald Trump is the first U.S. President to be on the record as having anti-vaccination attitudes. Given his enormous reach and influence, it is worthwhile examining the extent to which allegiance to ...Trump is associated with the public's perceptions of vaccine safety and efficacy. In both Study 1 (N = 518) and Study 2 (N = 316), Trump voters were significantly more concerned about vaccines than other Americans. This tendency was reduced to non-significance after controlling for conspiracist ideation (i.e., general willingness to believe conspiracy theories) and, to a lesser degree, political conservatism. In Study 2, participants were later exposed to real Trump tweets that either focused on his anti-vaccination views, or focused on golf (the control condition). Compared to when the same respondents were sampled a week earlier, there was a significant increase in vaccine concern, but only among Trump voters who were exposed to the anti-vaccination tweets. The effects were exclusively negative: there was no evidence that anti-vaccination Trump tweets polarized liberal voters into becoming more pro-vaccination. In line with the social identity model of leadership, Study 2 indicates that some leaders do not simply represent the attitudes and opinions of the group, but can also change group members' opinions.
•Trump voters are more concerned about vaccines than other Americans.•This effect emerges via Trump voters' greater willingness to believe conspiracies.•Reading Trump's antivaxx tweets increases vaccination concern among Trump voters.•Trump's antivaxx tweets did not polarize liberal voters into being more provaxx.
The rigidity-of-the-right hypothesis (RRH), which posits that cognitive, motivational, and ideological rigidity resonate with political conservatism, is an influential but controversial psychological ...account of political ideology. Here, we leverage several methodological and theoretical sources of this controversy to conduct an extensive quantitative review with the dual aims of probing the RRH's basic assumptions and parsing the RRH literature's heterogeneity. Using multilevel meta-analyses of relations between varieties of rigidity and ideology measures alongside a bevy of potential moderators (s = 329, k = 708, N = 187,612), we find that associations between conservatism and rigidity are tremendously heterogeneous, suggesting a complex-yet conceptually fertile-network of relations between these constructs. Most notably, whereas social conservatism was robustly associated with rigidity, associations between economic conservatism and rigidity indicators were inconsistent, small, and not statistically significant outside of the United States. Moderator analyses revealed that nonrepresentative sampling, criterion contamination, and disproportionate use of American samples have yielded overestimates of associations between rigidity-related constructs and conservatism in past research. We resolve that drilling into this complexity, thereby moving beyond the question of if conservatives are essentially rigid to when and why they might or might not be, will help provide a more realistic account of the psychological underpinnings of political ideology.
Historical records suggest that the political extremes—at both the “left” and the “right”—substantially endorsed conspiracy beliefs about other-minded groups. The present contribution empirically ...tests whether extreme political ideologies, at either side of the political spectrum, are positively associated with an increased tendency to believe in conspiracy theories. Four studies conducted in the United States and the Netherlands revealed a quadratic relationship between strength of political ideology and conspiracy beliefs about various political issues. Moreover, participants’ belief in simple political solutions to societal problems mediated conspiracy beliefs among both left- and right-wing extremists. Finally, the effects described here were not attributable to general attitude extremity. Our conclusion is that political extremism and conspiracy beliefs are strongly associated due to a highly structured thinking style that is aimed at making sense of societal events.
This study examined the relationship between attachment style and fear of contamination during the COVID-19 pandemic, hypothesizing that anxiously attached participants would be more distressed when ...their safe space was threatened by someone leaving and returning. During May 2020, n = 355 participants provided demographics, personality, health anxiety scores, attachment styles, political ideology, and attitudes towards the pandemic. In both social media and MTurk subsamples (but not in a subsample from a ListServ of professional psychologists), anxious attachment was a significant predictor of distress above and beyond personality and health anxiety. In addition, political ideology emerged as a consistent predictor of perceptions of the seriousness of COVID-19, even holding the other predictors constant. Understanding an individual's attachment style may be helpful in working with them in their trauma. This research also contributes to early empirical evidence for the impact of political ideology on self-reported attitudes and behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Carbon pricing is a policy instrument for mitigating climate change. For such climate policies to be enforceable and effective, citizen support is crucial. We examined how values and political ...orientation relate to people's acceptance of carbon pricing using Schwartz's theory of basic human values and a representative online survey of 4091 Austrian residents. The results showed that liberals were more in favor of carbon pricing than conservatives. This effect can partly be explained by the value of universalism (i.e., the value of the welfare of all people and nature) which is more important to liberals than to conservatives. However, presenting messages that emphasized the need for carbon pricing and were framed in accordance with values that fit participants' political orientation did not influence how much people accepted carbon pricing. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings and suggest directions for future research.
•Representative study about the influence of political orientation and values on the acceptance of carbon pricing, an actual example of a climate mitigation policy.•Presenting value congruent messages and different carbon prices had no effect on carbon pricing acceptance.•Liberals were always more in favor of carbon pricing, regardless of the price amount or message framing.
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