Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

Why Conservatives Prefer Walmart to Trader Joe’s

February 7, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: TREKANDSHOOT/SHUTTERSTOCK)

The cliché that liberals shop at Trader Joe’s, while conservatives prefer Walmart, is no doubt overstated. But where would the perception come from? Newly published research provides a compelling answer: brand-name products. Conservatives gravitate toward them, and Walmart, unlike Trader Joe’s, is packed with them. That provocative conclusion can be drawn from a study in the journal Psychological Science. A research team led by Vishal Singh of New York University’s Stern School of Business has discovered a relationship between voting behavior, high levels of religiosity, and ... Read More

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Is Conservatism Our Default Ideology?

March 29, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

According to a recent Gallup poll, 40 percent of Americans describe themselves as conservative, while only 21 percent call themselves liberal. (Another 35 percent are self-identified moderates.) This gap has long puzzled scholars. If left and right ideologies comprise a mutually dependent yin-yang system, reflecting different approaches to meeting our most basic needs, shouldn’t they be held by roughly the same proportion of people? One possible explanation is that some “conservatives” wear the label quite loosely. Another points to the long-established link between right-wing ... Read More

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Explaining Liberals to Conservatives, and Vice-Versa

February 22, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Pleas to tone down the heated political rhetoric in America tend to suffer the same fate as sensible-eating guidelines: endorsed in principle and ignored in practice. It’s clear enough why. The views of liberals and conservatives rest on fundamentally different foundations, making it difficult to locate common ground. Lacking a basic understanding of their opponents’ motivations, partisans view those on the other side of the ideological divide warily, often assuming the worst. In his essential new book, The Righteous Mind, psychologist Jonathan Haidt offers no easy way out of this ... Read More

More like this: March-April 2012, Politics, Views Reviews and Interviews
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Conservatives’ Politics of Fear a Biological Response

January 23, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

The tone of this year’s Republican presidential primary (which now seems destined to last much longer than Mitt Romney had been planning) seems sort of, well, fearful. One after the other, these would-be presidents have warned of looming threats — war with Iran, economic collapse, class warfare, social disintegration, illegal immigration — and have sought to position themselves as the best candidate for the job of protecting America. Their political advisers must understand a psychological phenomenon that researchers have been studying for some time now: conservatives appear to be ... Read More

More like this: Politics, The Idea Lobby
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The Mental Roots of Racial Prejudice

April 11, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

A recent poll finding nearly half of Mississippi Republicans disapprove of interracial marriage is a disturbing reminder of the continuing prejudice faced by minority groups in 21st-century America. Why is such bias seemingly immune to eradication, and why does it seem to be more prevalent among social conservatives? A fascinating new study from Italy suggests at least part of the answer can be traced to the way we process information and form political attitudes. Psychologists Luigi Castelli and Luciana Carraro of the University of Padua present evidence that our perception of minority ... Read More

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Cleanliness Cues Activate Conservative Attitudes

April 4, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

They may not know it, but Republicans have a secret weapon in their attempt to convince Americans of the correctness of their cause: hand sanitizers. Such commonplace reminders of the concept of physical cleanliness can influence moral and political attitudes. That’s the conclusion of Cornell University psychologists Erik Helzer and David Pizarro, who report this effect is particularly strong in the arena of sexual morality. Their study, just published in the journal Psychological Science, brings together three interesting threads of recent psychological research: 1. The notion that ... Read More

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Wording Change Softens Global Warming Skeptics

March 2, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Are you convinced climate change is real? What about global warming? Yes, that second question is redundant. But new research finds the two labels, which are widely used interchangeably, evoke remarkably different responses among self-described Republicans. Writing in the journal Public Opinion Quarterly, a research team led by University of Michigan psychologist Jonathon Schuldt reports Republicans are far more skeptical of “global warming” than of “climate change.” In an experiment conducted as part of a large survey, the researchers found 44 percent of Republicans endorsed the ... Read More

More like this: Environment, Findings, NEWS, Science, Science & Environment
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America Not as Politically Conservative as You Think

January 14, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Among the many memes floating around in the wake of the 2010 election is that America has taken a rightward turn, and conservative pundits seem re-energized in calling America a center-right nation. After all, a plurality of American voters (42 percent) now call themselves “conservative” — as compared to just 35 percent who say they are “moderate” and 20 percent who say they are “liberal.” Two years ago, moderates and conservatives both were at 37 percent. But new research suggests that pundits ought to be cautious of overinterpreting the conservative label: It doesn’t ... Read More

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Linking Uncivil Rhetoric With Violent Acts

January 11, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Partisans have been quick in the wake of Saturday's shooting in Tucson, Ariz., to point fingers, and to point fingers at pointed fingers, alternately deploring and defending the heated political rhetoric that somehow seems tied — in perception if not reality — to the attempted assassination of a U.S. congresswoman. Sarah Palin is to blame. Or maybe Sharron Angle is. Or it's the president himself, who must deeply regret now his intemperate pledge to "bring a gun" to the opponent's "knife fight." When the blame subsides, we'll be left with a national discussion about where most of us ... Read More

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A New Take on Political Ideology

October 26, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

With another contentious U.S. election approaching, opinions predictably have hardened as voters gravitate toward candidates who best embody their particular political position. Partisans — that is, nearly everyone aside from the handful of genuine independents, who tend to be disengaged from the process — habitually divide the world between right-thinking, like-minded people and those fools who just don't get it. As much as we stake our identity on such core beliefs, it's unlikely we emerged from the womb as little liberals or libertarians. This raises a fundamental question: At what ... Read More

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