Year: 2014
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The majority of psychological theories of political orientation are predicated on the assumption that negatively-valenced emotion enhances conservative belief. In support of this notion, exposure to fear-inducing and disgusting stimuli motivate conservative versus liberal shifts in political beliefs. However, we have recently suggested that research in this area has confounded valence with arousal, which may have led to the premature conclusion that negative valence, rather than arousal more generally, is associated with conservative political beliefs. In a series of 4 studies, we tested the hypothesis that arousal, rather than negative valence per se, promotes conservative orientation. In Studies 1 and 2, experimentally-induced positive as well as negative emotional arousal was associated with enhanced agreement with right-wing political speeches, controlling for baseline political orientation. Studies 3 and 4 used event-related potentials (ERPs) to determine the relationship between political orientation and electrophysiological sensitivity to emotional stimuli. In Study 3, conservatism versus liberalism was associated with heightened feedback-related negativity -- an ERP component thought to index activity in neural regions associated with reward processing -- in response to positive feedback. In Study 4, conservatives, compared to liberals, demonstrated heightened amplitude of the late positive potential (an ERP component that covaries with the motivational salience of stimuli) in response to emotional stimuli, regardless of valence. Taken together, these investigations provide preliminary evidence to support an arousal model of political orientation, which may more accurately portray the psychological motivations underlying conservatism.
Source: TSpace (University of Toronto)
Author: Shona M. Tritt
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2563517870