POLITICS AND PERSUASIONsuppressing and rationalizing the information that threatened their
preconceived view. What’s more, this was followed by activity in reward-
related brain areas, almost as if there was some satisfaction derived from
successfully resolving the awkward conflict in their minds.
Conservatives vs. liberals
Another strand of research in political psychology has focused on the
personality traits and situational factors associated with different polit-
ical orientations. Broadly speaking, political ideology can be divided into
a resistance to change or the pursuit of change – conservatism versus
liberalism. It’s tempting to believe that how people position them-
selves on this political continuum is based on reason alone, but there’s
mounting evidence that our political persuasion is primarily rooted in
our psychological make-up.
Several studies by John Jost at New York University have shown
that self-declared political conservatives show more positive implicit
(subconscious) attitudes towards conformity, stability and hierarchy
than do self-declared liberals. Either their chosen political orientation
has become ingrained or their political persuasion was motivated by
deeply held, non-conscious attitudes. Similar research has shown that
conservatives have stronger implicit preferences for dominant social
groups such as – in the US – white people over black people and hetero-
sexuals over homosexuals.
Turning to the Big Five personality factors (see p.177), Jost has also
uncovered evidence that conservatives tend to score higher on Consci-
entiousness, whereas liberals tend to score higher on Openness to
Experience. Consistent with this, there’s evidence that conservatives are
less creative than liberals. Stephen Dollinger at Southern Illinois Univer-
sity asked over four hundred students, who had been categorized as
conservative or liberal according to their views on issues such as gay rights
and immigration, to complete a half-finished drawing and take twenty
photos on the theme “Who are you?”. The efforts of the more conservative
students were consistently rated as less creative by the judges.
Further research by Jost has found that conservative values appear to
be motivated by an exaggerated fear of uncertainty and threat, including
death. There’s also evidence that people who hold conservative values
are more sensitive to interpersonal disgust, as measured by things like
a dislike of sitting on a seat left warm by someone else or an aversion to
wearing second-hand clothes. In a 2007 investigation involving Canadian