Motivated closed-mindedness mediates the effect of threat on political conservatism

Political Psychology

Volumn 32, Issue 5, 2011, Pages 785-811

  Thórisdóttir, Hulda ^a   Jost, John T ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ICELAND   (Iceland)

^b NEW YORK UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Closed mindedness; Cognitive load; Fear; Need for closure; Political conservatism; Political ideology; Threat

Indexed keywords

EID: 80051684629     PISSN: 0162895X     EISSN: 14679221     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9221.2011.00840.x     Document Type: Article

References (95)

1. Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswick, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, R. N. (1950). The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper & Brothers.
2. Altemeyer, R. A. (1998). The other "authoritarian personality." In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 30, pp. 47-91). New York: Academic Press.
3. Amodio, D. M., Jost, J. T., Master, S. L., & Yee, C. M. (2007). Neurocognitive correlates of liberalism and conservatism. Nature Neuroscience, 10, 1246-1247.
4. Anson, J., Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., & Greenberg, J. (2009). Political ideology in the 21st century: A terror management perspective on maintenance and change of the status quo. In J. T. Jost, A. C. Kay, & H. Thórisdóttir (Eds.), Social and psychological bases of ideology and system justification (pp. 210-240). New York: Oxford University Press.
5. Arndt, J., Greenberg, J., & Cook, A. (2002). Mortality salience and the spreading activation of worldview-relevant constructs: Exploring the cognitive architecture of terror management. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 131, 307-324.
6. Bennett, D. H. (1995). The party of fear (2nd ed.). New York: Random House.
7. Bobbio, N. (1996). Left and right: The significance of a political distinction. Cambridge: Polity Press.
8. Bonanno, G. A., & Jost, J. T. (2006). Conservative shift among high-exposure survivors of the September 11th terrorist attacks. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 28, 311-323.
9. Brehm, J. W., & Mann, M. (1975). Effect of importance of freedom and attraction to group members on influence produced by group pressure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31, 816-824.
10. Burke, E. (1790/1999). Reflections on the revolution in France. New York: Oxford University Press.
11. Carney, D. R., Jost, J. T., Gosling, S. D., & Potter, J. (2008). The secret lives of liberals and conservatives: Personality profiles, interaction styles, and the things they leave behind. Political Psychology, 29, 807-840.
12. Chajut, E., & Algom, D. (2003). Selective attention improves under stress: Implications for theories of social cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 231-248.
13. Chirumbolo, A., Areni, A., & Sensales, G. (2004). Need for cognitive closure and politics: Voting, political attitudes, and attributional style. International Journal of Psychology, 39, 245-253.
14. Cohen, F., Ogilvie, D. M., Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (2005). American roulette: The effect of reminders of death on support for George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 5, 177-187.
15. Cohrs, J. C., Kielmann, S., Maes, J., & Moschner, B. (2005). Effects of right-wing authoritarianism and threat from terrorism on restriction of civil liberties. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 5, 263-276.
16. Colbert, S. M., Peters, E. R., & Garety, P. A. (2006). Need for closure and anxiety in delusions: A longitudinal investigation in early psychosis. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 44, 1385-1396.
17. Davis, D. W., & Silver, B. D. (2004). Civil liberties vs. security: Public opinion in the context of the terrorist attacks on America. American Journal of Political Science, 48, 28-46.
18. Dechesne, M., & Kruglanski, A. W. (2004). Terror's epistemic consequences: Existential threats and the quest for certainty and closure. In J. Greenberg, S. Koole, & T. Pyszczynski (Eds.), Handbook of experimental existential psychology (pp. 247-262). New York: Guilford.
19. DeDreu, C. K., Koole, S. L., & Oldersma, F. L. (1999). On the seizing and freezing of negotiator inferences: Need for cognitive closure moderates the use of heuristics in negotiation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 348-362.
20. Doty, R. M., Peterson, B. E., & Winter, D. G. (1991). Threat and authoritarianism in the United States, 1978-1987. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 629-640.
21. Duckitt, J., & Fisher, K. (2003). The impact of social threat on world view and ideological attitudes. Political Psychology, 24, 199-222.
22. Duckitt, J., Wagner, C., du Plessis, I., & Birum, I. (2002). The psychological bases of ideology and prejudice: Testing a dual process model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 75-93.
23. Easterbrook, J. A. (1959). The effect of emotion on cue utilization and the organization of behavior. Psychological Review, 74, 16-28.
24. Echebarria, A., & Fernández, E. (2006). Effects of terrorism on attitudes and ideological orientation. European Journal of Social Psychology. 36, 259-265.
25. Eibach, R. P., & Libby, L. K. (2009). Ideology of the good old days: Exaggerated perceptions of decline and conservative politics. In J. T. Jost, A. C. Kay, & H. Thórisdóttir (Eds.), Social and psychological basis of ideology and system justification (pp. 402-426). New York: Oxford University Press.
26. Ellsworth, P. C., & Smith, C. A. (1988). From appraisal to emotion: Differences among unpleasant feelings. Motivation & Emotion, 12, 271-302.
27. Eysenck, M. W., & Calvo, M. G. (1992). Anxiety and performance: The processing efficiency theory. Cognition and Emotion, 6, 409-434.
28. Federico, C. M., Golec, A., & Dial, J. L. (2005). The relationship between the need for closure and support for military action against Iraq: Moderating effects of national attachment. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 621-632.
29. Ford, T. E., & Kruglanski, A. W. (1995). Effects of epistemic motivations on the use of accessible constructs in social judgment. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 950-962.
30. Fromm, E. (1941). Escape from freedom. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.
31. Gailliot, M. T., Schmeichel, B. J., & Baumeister, R. (2006). Self-regulatory processes defend against the threat of death: Effects of self-control depletion and trait self-control on thoughts and fears of dying. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 49-62.
32. Gilbert, D. T. & Osborne, R. E. (1989). Thinking backward: Some curable and incurable consequences of cognitive busyness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 940-949.
33. Greenberg, J., & Jonas, E. (2003). Psychological and political orientation-The left, the right, and the rigid: Comment on Jost etal. (2003). Psychological Bulletin, 129, 376-382.
34. Greenberg, J., Simon, L., Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., & Chatel, D. (1992).Terror management and tolerance: Does mortality salience always intensify negative reactions to others who threaten one's world-view? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 212-220.
35. Haidt, J., & Graham, J. (2007). When morality opposes justice: Conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals may not recognize. Social Justice Research, 20, 98-116.
36. Hansson, R. O., Keating, J. P., & Terry, C. (1974). The effects of mandatory time limits in the voting booth on liberal-conservative voting patterns. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 4, 336-342.
37. Hillier, A., Alexander, J. K., & Beversdorf, D. Q. (2006). The effect of auditory stressors on cognitive flexibility. Neurocase, 12, 228-231.
38. Hodges, W. F., & Spielberger, C. D. (1969). Digit span: An indicant of trait or state anxiety? Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 33, 430-434.
39. Hogg, M. A. (2007). Uncertainty-identity theory. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 39, pp. 69-126). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
40. Houghton, D. C., & Grewal, R. (2000). Please, let's get an answer-any answer: Need for consumer cognitive closure. Psychology and Marketing, 17, 911-934.
41. Huddy, L., Khatid, N., & Capelos, T. (2002). Trends: Reactions to the terrorism attacks of September 11, 2001. Public Opinion Quarterly, 66, 418-450.
42. Jameson, T. L., Hinson, J. M., & Whitney, P. (2004). Components of working memory and somatic markers in decision making. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 11, 515-520.
43. Jost, J. T. (2006). The end of the end of ideology. American Psychologist, 61, 651-670.
44. Jost, J. T., Federico, C. M., & Napier, J. (2009). Political ideology: Its structure, functions, and elective affinities. Annual Review of Psychology, 60, 307-337.
45. Jost, J. T., Fitzsimons, G. M., & Kay, A. C. (2004). The ideological animal: A system justification view. In J. Greenberg, S. L. Koole, & T. Pyszczynski (Eds.), Handbook of experimental existential psychology (pp. 263-283). New York: Guilford Press.
46. Jost, J. T., Glaser, J., Kruglanski, A. W., & Sulloway, F. J. (2003). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 339-375.
47. Jost, J. T., Kruglanski, A. W., & Simon, L. (1999). Effects of epistemic motivation on conservatism, intolerance, and other system-justifying attitudes. In L. L. Thompson, J. M. Levine, & D. M. Messick (Eds.), Shared cognition in organizations: The management of knowledge (pp. 91-116). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
48. Jost, J. T., Napier, J. L., Thórisdóttir, H., Gosling, S. D., Palfai, T. B., & Ostafin, B. (2007). Are needs to manage uncertainty and threat associated with political conservatism or ideological extremity? Personality and Social Psychological Bulletin, 33, 989-1007.
49. Keinan, G. (1987). Decision making under stress: Scanning of alternatives under controllable and uncontrollable threats. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 639-644.
50. Kirk, R. (Ed.) (1982). The conservative reader. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.
51. Knight, K. (1999). Liberalism and conservatism. In J. P. Robinson, P. R. Shaver, & L. S. Wrightsman (Eds.), Measures of political attitudes (pp. 59-158). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
52. Kossowska, M., & van Hiel, A. (2003). The relationship between need for closure and conservative beliefs in Western and Eastern Europe. Political Psychology, 24, 501-518.
53. Kruglanski, A. W. (1990). Lay epistemic theory in social-cognitive psychology. Psychological Inquiry, 1, 181-197.
54. Kruglanski, A. W. (2004). The psychology of closed-mindedness. New York: Psychology Press.
55. Kruglanski, A. W., Pierro, A., Mannetti, L., & De Grada, E. (2006). Groups as epistemic providers: Need for closure and the unfolding of group-centrism. Psychological Review, 113, 84-100.
56. Lambert, A., Scherer, L., Schott, J. P., Olson, K., Andrews, R., O'Brien, T., & Zisser, A. (2010). Rally effects, threat, and attitude change: An integrative approach to understanding the role of emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 886-903.
57. Landau, M. J., Johns, M., Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., Martens, A., Goldenberg, J. L., & Solomon, S. (2004a). A function of form: Terror management and structuring the social world. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 190-210.
58. Landau, M. J., Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., Cohen, F., Pyszczynski, T., Arndt, J., Miller, C. H., Ogilvie, D. M., & Cook, A. (2004b). Deliver us from evil: The effects of mortality salience and reminders of 9/11 on support for President George W. Bush. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 1136-1150.
59. Laponce, J. A. (1981). Left and right: The topography of political perceptions. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
60. Lavine, H., Lodge, M., Polichak, J., & Taber, C. (2002). Explicating the black box through experimentation: Studies of authoritarianism and threat. Political Analysis, 10, 343-361.
61. Lipset, S. M., & Raab. (1978). The politics of unreason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
62. Machiavelli, N. (1999/1513). The prince. London and New York: Penguin Classics.
63. Mack, A. (Ed.) (2004). Fear: Its political uses and abuses. Social Research. Special Issue.
64. Mannetti, L., Pierro, A., Kruglanski, A. W., Taris, T., & Bezinovic, P. (2002). A cross-cultural study of the Need for Cognitive Closure Scale: Comparing its structure in Croatia, Italy, the USA and the Netherlands. British Journal of Social Psychology, 41, 139-156.
65. Mathews A., & Mackintosh B. (1998). A cognitive model of selective processing in anxiety. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 22, 539-560.
66. Minogue, K. (1967). Conservatism. In P. Edwards (Ed.), The encyclopedia of philosophy (Vol. 2, pp. 195-198). New York: Macmillan.
67. Miu, A. C., Heilman, R. M., & Houser, D. (2008). Anxiety impairs decision-making: Psychophysiological evidence from an Iowa Gambling Task. Biological Psychology, 77, 353-358.
68. Mogg, K., Mathews, A., Bird, C., & Macgregor-Morris, R. (1990). Effects of stress and anxiety on the processing of threat stimuli. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 1230-1237.
69. Muller, J. Z. (2001). Conservatism: Historical aspects. In N. J. Smelser & P. B. Baltes (Eds.), International encyclopedia of the social and behavioral sciences (pp. 2624-2628). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
70. Nail, P. R., & McGregor, I. (2009). Conservative shift among liberals and conservatives following 9/11/01. Social Justice Research, 22, 231-240.
71. Nail, P. R., McGregor, I., Drinkwater, A. E., Steele, G. M., & Thompson, A. W. (2009). Threat causes liberals to think like conservatives. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 901-907.
72. Napier, J. L., & Jost, J. T. (2008). The "anti-democratic personality" revisited: A cross-national investigation of working class authoritarianism. Journal of Social Issues, 64, 595-617.
73. Neuberg, S. L., Judice, T. N., & West, S. G. (1997). What the Need for Closure Scale measures and what it does not: Toward differentiating among related epistemic motives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 1396-1412.
74. Oxley, D. R., Smith, K. B., Alford, J. R., Hibbing, M. V., Miller, J. L., Scalora, M., Hatemi, P. K., & Hibbing J. R. (2008). Political attitudes vary with physiological traits. Science, 32, 1667-70.
75. Preston, S. D., Buchanan, T. W., Stansfield, R. B., & Bechara, A. (2007). Effects of anticipatory stress on decision making in a gambling task. Behavioral Neuroscience, 121, 257-263.
76. Raghunathan, R., & Pham, M. T. (1999). All negative moods are not equal: Motivational influences of anxiety and sadness on decision making. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 79, 56-77.
77. Robin, C. (2004). Fear: The history of a political idea. New York: Oxford University Press.
78. Roets, A., van Hiel, A., Cornelis, I., & Soetens, B. (2008). Determinants of task performance and invested effort: A need for closure by relative cognitive capacity interaction analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 779-792.
79. Rothman, A. J., Haddock, G., & Schwarz, N. (2001). "How many partners is too many?" Shaping perceptions of vulnerability. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 31, 2195-2214.
80. Sales, S. M. (1973). Threat as a factor in authoritarianism: An analysis of archival data. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 28, 44-57.
81. Schwarz, N., Bless, H., Strack, F., Klumpp, G., Rittenauer-Schatka, H., & Simons, A. (1991). Ease of retrieval as information: Another look at the availability heuristic. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 195-202.
82. Sengupta, J., & Johar, G. V. (2001). Contingent effects of anxiety on message elaboration and persuasion. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 139-150.
83. Shrout, P. E., & Bolger, N. (2002). Mediation in experimental and nonexperimental studies: New procedures and recommendations. Psychological Methods, 7, 422-445.
84. Sidanius, J., & Ekehammar, B. (1980). Sex-related differences in socio-political ideology. Journal of Psychology, 21, 17-26.
85. Sidanius, J., & Pratto, F. (1999). Social dominance: An intergroup theory of social hierarchy and oppression. New York: Cambridge University Press.
86. Skitka, L. J., Mullen, E., Griffin, T., Hutchinson, S., & Chamberlin, B. (2002). Dispositions, scripts, or motivated correction? Understanding ideological differences in explanations for social problems. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 470-487.
87. Spencer, S. J., Zanna, M. P., & Fong, G. T. (2005). Establishing a causal chain: Why experiments are often more effective than mediational analyses in examining psychological processes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 845-851.
88. Spezio, M. L., & Adolphs, R. (2007). Politics and the evolving neuroscience literature. In W. R. Neuman, G. E. Marcus, A. Crigler, & M. MacKuen (Eds.), The affect effect: Dynamics of emotion in political thinking and behavior (pp. 71-95). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
89. Stenner, K. (2005). The authoritarian dynamic. New York: Cambridge University Press.
90. Thórisdóttir, H., Jost, J. T., Liviatan, I., & Shrout, P. (2007). Psychological needs and values underlying left-right political orientation: Cross-national evidence from Eastern and Western Europe. Public Opinion Quarterly, 71, 175-203.
91. Tiedens, L. Z., & Linton, S. (2001). Judgment under emotional certainty and uncertainty: The effects of specific emotions on information processing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 973-988.
92. van den Bos, K., Poortvliet, P. M., Maas, M., Miedema, J., & van den Ham, E. J. (2005). An enquiry concerning the principles of cultural norms and values: The impact of uncertainty and mortality salience on reactions to violations and bolstering of cultural worldviews. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 41, 91-113.
93. Webster, D. M., & Kruglanski, A. W. (1994). Individual differences in need for cognitive closure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 1049-1062.
94. Weise D. R, Pyszczynski, T., Cox, C. R, Arnd, J., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., & Kosloff, S. (2008). Interpersonal politics: The role of terror management and attachment processes in shaping political preferences. Psychological Science, 19, 448-55.
95. Willer, R. (2004). The effects of government-issued terror warnings on presidential approval ratings. Current Research in Social Psychology, 10, 1-12.