'Liberals' and 'Conservatives'
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European Journal of Personality, Eur. J. Pers. 34: 448–469 (2020) Published online 26 March 2020 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/per.2249 Beyond ‘Liberals’ and ‘Conservatives’: Complexity in Ideology, Moral Intuitions, and Worldview Among Swedish Voters ARTUR NILSSON1*, HENRY MONTGOMERY2, GIRTS DIMDINS3, MARIA SANDGREN2, ARVID ERLANDSSON1 and ADRIAN TALENY4 1Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden 2Department of Psychology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden 3Department of Psychology, University of Latvia, Rīga, Latvia 4Department of Psychology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden Abstract: This research investigated the congruence between the ideologies of political parties and the ideological preferences (N = 1515), moral intuitions (N = 1048), and political values and worldviews (N = 1345) of diverse sam- ples of Swedish adults who voted or intended to vote for the parties. Logistic regression analyses yielded support for a series of hypotheses about variations in ideology beyond the left–right division. With respect to social ideology, resis- tance to change and binding moral intuitions predicted stronger preference for a social democratic (vs. progressive) party on the left and weaker preference for a social liberal (vs. social conservative or liberal-conservative) party on the right. With respect to political values and broader worldviews, normativism and low acceptance of immigrants predicted the strongest preference for a nationalist party, while environmentalism predicted the strongest preference for a green party. The effects were generally strong and robust when we controlled for left–right self-placements, eco- nomic ideology, and demographic characteristics. These results show that personality variation in the ideological do- main is not reducible to the simplistic contrast between ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’, which ignores differences between progressive and non-progressive leftists, economic and green progressives, social liberal and conservative rightists, and nationalist and non-nationalist conservatives. © 2020 The Authors. European Journal of Personality published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Association of Personality Psychology Key words: political preferences; moral intuitions; worldview; political values; party preference It is impossible to understand a person’s pursuit of meaning and life outcomes (e.g. Bardi & Schwartz, 2003; Bond, and goals in life—to really know him or her deep down— Leung, Au, Tong, & Chemonges-Nielson, 2004; Chen without taking his or her beliefs, values, moral convictions, et al., 2016). life-story narratives, and broader worldview into consider- This layer of personality is in turn intertwined with polit- ation (McAdams, 1995; McAdams & Pals, 2006; Nils- ical orientation. This is true particularly in modern demo- son, 2014b). These characteristics are important aspects of cratic societies that offer a plurality of political choices and personality in their own right. They make up the layer of per- rely on citizens to express their personal preferences. In these sonality that makes us all uniquely human, which may be the contexts, socio-demographic factors, such as income, educa- last to reach maturity (McAdams & Olson, 2010). In adult- tion, and occupation, which have traditionally accounted for hood, they exhibit levels of heritability, stability, and univer- much of the variation in political choices, have receding im- sality that are comparable with those of dispositional traits portance, while personality characteristics have increasing (Kandler, Zimmermann, & McAdams, 2014; Saucier importance (Caprara & Vecchione, 2017; Johnston, Lavine, et al., 2015), and they have unique effects on behaviour & Federico, 2017; Piurko, Schwartz, & Davidov, 2011; Schwartz et al., 2014). A rich body of research, drawing on several different research programmes in personality and so- *Correspondence to: Artur Nilsson, Department of Behavioural Sciences cial psychology, has demonstrated that leftists and rightists and Learning, Linköping University, SE-581 83 Linköping, Sweden. E-mail: [email protected] differ robustly in terms of their beliefs, values, moral priori- This article earned Open Data and Open Materials badges through ties, and socio-political attitudes (Caprara, Schwartz, Open Practices Disclosure from the Center for Open Science: https://osf.io/ Capanna, Vecchione, & Barbaranelli, 2006; Duckitt & tvyxz/wiki. The data are permanently and openly accessible at: Data in . Sibley, 2009; Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009; Schwarz, csv format: https://osf.io/94d8p/, Data in .sav format: https://osf.io/fzm2s, Analysis scripts for main analyses: https://osf.io/ye7f6, Data and scripts for Caprara, & Vecchione, 2010). tests of measurement invariance: https://osf.io/cyuwg, All supplements: Nevertheless, the fact that research in this area has tradi- https://doi.org/10.17605/osf.io/6k89s. And the materials are permanently tionally often relied on a simple contrast between ‘liberals’ and openly accessible at: Materials (see "SI Codebook.pdf"): https://osf.io/ ‘ ’ fi 94d8p/ and All supplements: https://doi.org/10.17605/osf.io/6k89s Author’s (or leftists) and conservatives (or rightists) is a signi cant disclosure form may also be found at the Supporting Information in the on- limitation. While some countries do have bi-party systems line version. © 2020 The Authors. European Journal of Personality published by Handling editor: Christian Kandler John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Association of Personality Psychology Received 14 November 2019 This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Revised 29 February 2020, Accepted 2 March 2020 Beyond ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’ 449 that pit liberals against conservatives (e.g. Democrats vs. Re- Rosema, 2017; Malka & Lelkes, 2010). What matters to publicans in the USA), many others have multi-party sys- the current purposes is that either process can account for a tems, in which voters are confronted with an ideological congruence between the ideological positions of parties and smorgasbord containing, for instance, socialist, social demo- their supporters without requiring us to assume that people cratic, green, feminist, social liberal, libertarian, social con- are able to explicitly describe the ideologies in question or servative, and nationalist parties. The competing ideologies coherently articulate their own ideological positions—an as- provide a wide range of different interpretations of social sumption that has long been considered unrealistic (Con- events and visions about the proper order of society that can- verse, 1964; Tomkins, 1963). not be reduced to a dichotomy between ‘liberalism’ and ‘con- The current research extends past work in several ways. servatism’ (Freeden, 2010). Given that political orientations While past studies on personality and party preferences in are the result of interplay between psychological processes multi-party systems have focused solely on basic values and elite ideological discourse (Caprara & Vecchione, 2018; and traits, we sought to provide a more comprehensive view Johnston et al., 2017; Jost, Federico, & Napier, 2009; of ideologically relevant personality characteristics within Verhulst, Hatemi, & Eaves, 2012), this distinction likely also the worldview domain, including ideological preferences, fails to adequately characterize the structure of political moral intuitions, political values, and broader left-wing and orientations. right-wing worldviews. We also took a richer set of political Some scholars have sought to capture the complexities ideologies into consideration, including radical left, green, of political orientations by dividing the left–right (or social democratic, social liberal, liberal-conservative, social liberal-conservative) dimension into one dimension focused conservative, and nationalist ideologies. We did this by fo- on economic equality and one focused on traditional social cusing on the case of Sweden, which is a Nordic welfare state issues (Feldman & Johnston, 2014; Gerber, Huber, with an ideologically diverse political landscape. Dowling, & Ha, 2010; Johnston et al., 2017). Recent studies have revealed that a combination of left-wing attitudes in Models of political orientations the economic sphere and right-wing attitudes in the social sphere is common, particularly in post-communist, tradi- We operationalized ideological preferences in terms of the tional, and low-development nations, and among individuals framework introduced by Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, and with low political engagement and strong needs for security Sulloway (2003), which divides left–right ideology broadly and certainty (Malka, Lelkes, & Soto, 2017; Malka, Soto, into resistance (vs. openness) to change and preference for Inzlicht, & Lelkes, 2014). Recent studies have also identi- equality (vs. acceptance of inequality), suggesting that left- fied distinct classes of liberals and conservatives in the ists are motivated to increase social, economic, and political USA, including libertarians, moderates, social conserva- equality and to support social change (which has, throughout tives, secular liberals, religious liberals, consistent liberals, history, most frequently been directed toward greater equal- and consistent conservatives, with unique patterns