Decades of research suggest a correlation between belief in a dangerous world and political conservatism. However, research relied on a scale that may overemphasize certain types of dangers. Furthermore, few other world beliefs have been investigated, such that fundamental worldview differences between liberals and conservatives remain largely unknown. A preregistered study of nine samples (N = 5,461; mostly US Americans) found a negligible association between a newly improved measure of generalized dangerous world belief and conservatism, and that the original scale emphasized certain dangers more salient to conservatives (e.g., societal decline) over others most salient for liberals (e.g., injustice). Across many measures of political attitudes, other world beliefs—such as beliefs that the world is Hierarchical, Intentional, Just, and Worth Exploring—each explained several times more variance than dangerous world belief. This suggests the relevance of dangerous world belief to political attitudes has been overstated, and examining other world beliefs may yield insights.
In polarized times, understanding the world from liberal/conservative perspectives is key to perspective-taking, because that precedes cooperation. But perspective-taking requires knowing the other perspective. Maybe now perspective-taking efforts can bear more fruit. The author will discuss implications for understanding history and political campaigning as well as opportunities for political cooperation, for cooling discussions around Thanksgiving tables, and for even perhaps getting on the same page about what sort of world this is (and thus what policies are probably called for).
This talk is based on a paper published 2022 in Social Psychological and Personality Science.
Clifton, J. D. W., & Kerry, N. (2022). Belief in a Dangerous World Does Not Explain Substantial Variance in Political Attitudes, But Other World Beliefs Do. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506221119324