Compassion Combats Conservativism - Miller-McCune
Why is this so? Quoting a colleague, Jost wrote that “threat leads to increased cognitive narrowing (black/white thinking, a heightened need for closure), which in turn leads to a preference for conservative rhetoric and ideology.”
Jost added that this dynamic — the bane of liberals everywhere — will likely hold true unless some way is found “of getting everyone who walks into a voting booth to write a brief essay about the virtues of compassion before they pull the lever.”
Indeed, given the fact so many political campaigns are fear-based, it’s difficult to imagine a scenario where too many people enter the voting booth with the notion of compassion in the forefront of their minds. So the threat-increases-conservatism dynamic appears secure.
comments from researcher:
I was the lead author on this research. I just became aware of this article, and would like to very briefly clear up a few things. This research provides evidence that mortality-based-threat (and not other types of threat) motivate efforts to uphold salient aspects of one’s worldview. In no way, shape, or form does this research confirm the contentions that “threat” makes people conservative. The reminder of uncertainty mentioned in the article was in fact a control topic and tests showed that thinking about it simply DID NOT influence political candidate preferences. However, candidate preferences were significantly influenced by thoughts of death such that people became EITHER conservative or progressive, depending on their current value orientation. I find it disturbing that that no member of our research team was contacted for comment, especially given that our results were “re-described” in an inaccurate way by our colleague at nyu. Finally, I would agree that many political campaigns are fear-based, which is why our research sheds an important light on the efforts of progressive candidates to incorporate compassion into their message.