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To determine when and why a company's apology for a moral transgression might backfire, this study considers a rarely researched cue: exposure of company misconduct by non-governmental organisations (NGOs). In three experimental studies, we demonstrate that after companies' moral transgressions are exposed by NGOs, their apologies exacerbate consumers' negative responses because consumers view the companies as having increased moral and behavioural hypocrisy. Consumers' political orientations moderate the mediating effect of companies' moral hypocrisy as, following exposure by an NGO, conservatives perceive the company issuing an apology to be more deceptive, which is not the case for liberals. Thus, this study expands upon the developing research stream related to the efficacy of apologies as strategic responses to preventable crises. It specifies an underlying mechanism that explains when and why exposure by NGOs causes apologies to backfire and suggests practical guidelines for companies when developing appropriate apologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On October 7, 2023, a Hamas-led terrorist attack in Israel killed 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped about 250 others. The almost immediate spread of news and images of the attack produced heavy emotional reactions in public opinion in many countries. The article analyzes data from a representative survey on the attitudes toward Jews and Muslims of Italian undergraduates conducted between late September and late October 2023, encompassing both those dramatic events and the war that followed. Four main findings emerge. First, Italian students tend to organize attitudes towards Jews around three main dimensions, those toward Muslims around one. Second, attitudes towards the two groups vary according to cultural values of reference, commitment to study, and political orientation. Third, negative attitudes towards Muslims are more prevalent than those toward Jews, but this difference narrows between center-left and left-leaning students and, in some cases, reverses. Finally, the analysis shows that one of the dimensions organizing unfavourable attitudes towards Jews experienced very substantial growth on the days immediately following October 7, that is, the date of the Hamas terrorist attack inside Israeli territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Company activities are important contributors to climate change. Consumers take companies' actions toward environment into account when they decide to engage with these companies. We study under which conditions corporate misconduct with respect to climate change outrages consumers, eliciting negative moral emotions. Moreover, we explore the capacity of these negative moral emotions to energize consumer decisions and action tendencies to retaliate against "offending" companies. Testing two moderated mediation models on random samples of 152 adult citizens of the United States and 159 adult citizens of France, we show that negative moral emotions experienced by consumers that witness corporate malfeasance toward the climate determine negative attitudes toward the company and intentions to penalize it. Moreover, for both samples, empathy, collective self, and moral identity moderate the relationship between the perception of corporate irresponsibility and moral emotions, while the effect of political orientation is culturally specific. These findings help to uncover under which conditions consumer hostile responses toward corporate misconduct takes place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital surveillance is pervasive in cyberspace, with various parties continuously monitoring online activities. The ways in which internet users perceive and respond to such surveillance across overlapping contexts warrants deeper exploration. This study delves into the acceptance of digital surveillance by internet users and their subsequent self-protective actions against it in three distinct contexts: government, commercial, and interpersonal surveillance. Survey responses collected from 356 internet users in the U.S. showed that acceptance levels for surveillance varied between institutional and interpersonal contexts. However, the degree of self-protection remained consistent across all three contexts. Privacy concerns, algorithm awareness, and perceived privacy control played nuanced roles to both surveillance acceptance and self-protection measures in each context. Interestingly, political orientation emerged as a significant moderating factor on surveillance acceptance. Conservative-leaning participants were less accepting of surveillance overall, especially government surveillance. For conservatives, higher privacy concerns meant less acceptance of both government and corporate surveillance. Liberals' acceptance levels remained fairly consistent and were less affected by privacy concerns. These findings underscore the significance of contextual differences in privacy and surveillance research and provide implications for refining the existing theoretical frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the potential causal relationship between political orientation and education investment by using panel data from 21 OECD countries from 1970 to 2020 and utilizing estimators that address endogeneity (i.e. 2SLS, System GMM, and Lewbel 2SLS). In particular, using communist influence as a physical instrument for political orientation, we find a positive impact of the right political orientation on education investment, and the impact of the left orientation is negative. The positive impact from the right orientation is also stronger than the negative impact from the left. Moreover, these core results are robust to alternative measures of political orientation and education investment, alternative estimators that address endogeneity, and the moderation effect of innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although climate change poses a pressing threat, skepticism persists. Previous research aims to raise awareness and foster pro-environmental behaviors, but the effectiveness of threatening messages remains uncertain. It is crucial to understand how different subgroups react in relation to the nature of these threats. In this study, the impact of COVID-19 mortality salience on climate change attitudes and behaviors was examined, considering political orientation and Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) as moderators. Participants (N = 187, NFemale = 134, NMale = 52, NOther = 1; Mage = 28.06, SDage = 9.73) after being randomly assigned to personal threat, collective threat, or control conditions, reported their concern for climate change and their intention to engage in sustainable behaviors (i.e., consume less high-polluting food, consume more vegetables than meat and engage in a sustainable diet). In contrast with previous literature, findings revealed that conservatives and individuals with higher RWA levels showed increased concern for climate change after being exposed to both personal and collective mortality threats, while liberals and low-RWA individuals always exhibited high concern for climate change and were not influenced by mortality salience. However, there were no notable effects on intentions to adopt an eco-sustainable dietary behavior. These findings highlight the role of mortality salience in shaping right-wing participants' attitudes, but not behaviors, toward climate change. The discrepancy between pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors underscores the attitude-behavior gap, with concerns about the environment not necessarily translating into concrete actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Countering violent extremism (CVE) intervention programs are often designed as non-punitive approaches to reduce the likelihood of youth joining terrorist groups through offering social, family, mental health, and/or practical supports. Since public support is crucial for determining whether a CVE intervention program is implemented or successful, we conducted two online vignette-based experiments to examine how factors such as political orientation, the youth's ethnicity, and the public's perspective-taking with at-risk youth can alter their support. Across both studies (U.S. online sample N = 153, U.K. online sample N = 760), participants generally reported less support for a CVE intervention program aimed at at-risk youth than a similar gang intervention program, although in the U.K., conservatives supported both programs the same relatively lower amount (compared to liberals). This effect was partially explained by participants reporting less perspective-taking with an at-risk youth considering joining a terrorist group than considering joining a gang, which in turn led to lower public support of the program. This suggests that CVE intervention programs face barriers, even among the more liberal-leaning members of the public, and that helping people to take the perspective of at-risk youth may be one pathway for increasing public support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic policy uncertainty significantly influences governmental decisions regarding environmental sustainability, particularly in CO2 emissions reduction efforts. This study examines the impact of economic policy uncertainty on environmental inefficiency across 136 emergent and non‐emerging countries from 1990 to 2018, using an unbalanced and heterogeneous sample. Additionally, we explore the moderating effects of institutional quality and political orientation on this relationship. Employing a directional distance function in a parametric context, our analysis reveals that economic policy uncertainty exacerbates environmental inefficiency. However, we find that institutional quality and political orientation act as important moderating factors, fostering greater environmental sustainability. Sensitivity analyses support these empirical findings, providing insights into potential implications for economic policy and guiding regulatory and policymaking efforts toward achieving enhanced environmental sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carefully standardized facial images of 591 participants were taken in the laboratory while controlling for self-presentation, facial expression, head orientation, and image properties. They were presented to human raters and a facial recognition algorithm: both humans (r =.21) and the algorithm (r =.22) could predict participants' scores on a political orientation scale (Cronbach's α =.94) decorrelated with age, gender, and ethnicity. These effects are on par with how well job interviews predict job success, or alcohol drives aggressiveness. The algorithm's predictive accuracy was even higher (r =.31) when it leveraged information on participants' age, gender, and ethnicity. Moreover, the associations between facial appearance and political orientation seem to generalize beyond our sample: The predictive model derived from standardized images (while controlling for age, gender, and ethnicity) could predict political orientation (r ≈.13) from naturalistic images of 3,401 politicians from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. The analysis of facial features associated with political orientation revealed that conservatives tended to have larger lower faces. The predictability of political orientation from standardized images has critical implications for privacy, the regulation of facial recognition technology, and understanding the origins and consequences of political orientation. Public Significance Statement: We demonstrate that political orientation can be predicted from neutral facial images by both humans and algorithms, even when factors like age, gender, and ethnicity are accounted for. This indicates a connection between political leanings and inherent facial characteristics, which are largely beyond an individual's control. Our findings underscore the urgency for scholars, the public, and policymakers to recognize and address the potential risks of facial recognition technology to personal privacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the effect of pathogen and mortality salience on moral values and political orientation, testing competing hypotheses derived from three relevant perspectives. While Terror Management Theory (TMT) predicts a delayed shift toward preexisting moral values and political orientation, Pathogen Prevalence Hypothesis (PPH) anticipates a shift toward binding moral foundations, and Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition (PCMSC) posits a shift toward political Principlism. This was an experimental study with salience type (mortality, pathogen, control) and delay (immediate, delayed) as independent variables. The effect of pathogen salience on moral foundations and political orientation was consistent with TMT. Also, there was a delayed PPH-directed effect of pathogen salience on moral foundations, and a PCMSC-consistent effect of pathogen salience on political orientation. Findings are discussed in light of possible differences in the timeline of effects and provided insight to reconcile contradictory predictions of the three perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central aspect of political conservatism is the notion that the system is fair. Political conservatives tend to defend the system more than do liberals. Here we test whether the link between political orientation and this system justification tendency depends on the comparisons people make across time. Across five studies, we found that the typically observed link between conservative (vs. liberal) political orientation and system justification is only observed when no temporal comparisons are made, or when the status quo is compared to a future alternative. However, this association is not observed when the status quo is compared to the past. Instead, when comparing the present to the past, the link between political orientation and system justification was blocked (Studies 1, 2, and 4) or even reversed (Study 3). Theoretically, these results connect the system justification literature to literature on temporal comparison and suggest that system justification is meaningfully influenced by comparisons processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political orientation reflects beliefs, opinions, and values that are, at least in part, rooted in stable interindividual differences. Whereas evidence has accumulated with regard to the relevance of basic personality dimensions, especially concerning the sociocultural dimension of political ideology, less attention has been paid to the more specific dispositional tendency to assign a higher weight to one's own utility above others' (i.e., socially aversive personality), which is likely to play a pivotal role concerning the economic dimension of political ideology in particular. In three studies with over 66,000 participants from 38 countries, we show that individuals with elevated levels in aversive personality tend to endorse more right-wing political orientations in terms of a single left–right dimension, hold relevant ideological beliefs tied to both sociocultural and economic conservatism, and report corresponding electoral voting behavior. We further provide support for the idea that this overlap between a dispositional tendency toward aversive behavior and a right-wing political orientation can be attributed to shared belief systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article replicates and extends previous results indicating that system justification, in a pool of non‐American samples, decreases at the extremes of the political continuum. Data came from 29 European countries enrolled in nine rounds of the European Social Survey from 2002 to 2018. Results indicated that right‐wingers were more likely to support the existing social system than left‐wingers. However, a significant and negative quadratic effect emerged indicating that system justification decreased among extremists in both left and right‐leaning poles. Findings also revealed that the level of national populist voting moderated the relationship between political orientation and system justification so that the difference between extreme leftists and extreme rightists was further reduced when national populist voting was higher. Results seem to confirm that extremists can be critical of the existing social system and that this trend is affected by the level of the rise in populism in those countries. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political orientations are increasingly relevant to romantic relationships. Self-categorization theory suggests that individuals prefer partners with the same political views. However, few studies have identified the factors associated with willingness to date or not to date across the political divide. Using survey data from 416 single participants from Hong Kong, the study found that older, female, and participants who were politically neutral or yellow were less willing to date across the political divide. Furthermore, a greater belief in politics–morality equivalence (i.e. regarding people from the opposite political camp as morally different from themselves) was associated with less willingness to date across the divide; this association was more negative among people with higher communication competence. At the same time, among people with a higher level of communication competence, utopianism (i.e. believing ideal worlds may exist) was positively associated with such willingness. The results demonstrate that communication competence has a paradoxical influence on willingness to date across the political divide, which challenges the assumption that communication can bridge the divide between people who hold different views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Popular press and academic articles alike suggest that political orientation is a primary determinant of vaccination willingness, vaccination, and vaccine word-of-mouth (i.e., sharing of information regarding vaccines). In the current article, we test the validity of these suggestions, and we also assess the differential roles of political ideology (e.g., liberal-conservative) and party affiliation (e.g., Democrat-Republican) as well as the mediating effect of vaccine hesitancy's dimensions. To do so, we perform a four-wave survey study with 223 participants that completed all waves. Our results support that political orientation indeed relates to our outcomes of interest. Our results also show that political ideology has a more pronounced effect than party affiliation, and the vaccine hesitancy dimensions of Health Risks and Healthy mediate many of these relations. From these results, we suggest many directions for future research and practice, including the integration of political discourse theories in studies on political orientations and vaccination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) such as Large Language Models (LLMs) have a concerning tendency to generate politically biased content. This is a challenge, as the emergence of GAI meets politically polarized societies. Therefore, this research investigates how people react to biased GAI-content based on their pre-existing political beliefs and how this influences the acceptance of GAI. In three experiments (N = 513), it was found that perceived alignment between user's political orientation and bias in generated content (in text and images) increases acceptance and reliance on GAI. Participants who perceived alignment were more likely to grant GAI access to sensitive smartphone functions and to endorse the use in critical domains (e.g., loan approval; social media moderation). Because users see GAI as a social actor, they consider perceived alignment as a sign of greater objectivity, thus granting aligned GAI access to more sensitive areas.

Witnessing altruistic behaviour can elicit moral elevation, an emotion that motivates prosocial cooperation. This emotion is evoked more strongly when the observer anticipates that other people will be reciprocally cooperative. Coalitionality should therefore moderate feelings of elevation, as whether the observer shares the coalitional affiliation of those observed should influence the observer's assessment of the likelihood that the latter will cooperate with the observer. We examined this thesis in studies contemporaneous with the 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests. Although BLM protests were predominantly peaceful, they were depicted by conservative media as destructive and antisocial. In two large-scale, pre-registered online studies (total N = 2172), political orientation strongly moderated feelings of state elevation elicited by a video of a peaceful BLM protest (Studies 1 and 2) or a peaceful Back the Blue (BtB) counter-protest (Study 2). Political conservatism predicted less elevation following the BLM video and more elevation following the BtB video. Elevation elicited by the BLM video correlated with preferences to defund police, whereas elevation elicited by the BtB video correlated with preferences to increase police funding. These findings extend prior work on elevation into the area of prosocial cooperation in the context of coalitional conflict.

In Zadie Smith's novel "White Teeth," published in 2000, a deep exploration is conducted into the speculative landscapes surrounding the diaspora of immigrants from various countries to Britain starting from the Second World War onward. The narrative of "White Teeth" intricately navigates the experiences of these distilled immigrants who find themselves ensnared in a disordered, estranged world, compelled to navigate a maze of alienation, seeking to assert their identity through the careful construction of mimicry and adaptation mechanisms. Within the colonial backdrop of Britain, a meticulous examination within this research paper brings to light the existing disparities prevalent during the country's colonial era, shedding light on the transcultural perspectives on racism defined by skin pigmentation and intensity, a pivotal theme that centers predominantly on the characters of Samad Iqbal and his two sons, Millat and Magid. Zadie Smith's exploration in "White Teeth" skillfully juxtaposes the tumultuous interactions between the native British population and the incoming immigrants, offering a profound analysis into how the intertwining of immigrant narratives and the escalating socio-cultural and political undercurrents of White supremacy culminates in the creation of adverse effects, leading to a spiral of isolation within the colonial hub. Through a nuanced lens, the novel delves deep into the complexities of these intercultural dynamics, unraveling the intricate threads that bind together the contrasting worlds of the British and immigrant communities, ultimately exposing the underlying tensions and power struggles that shape their interactions. The gradual unfolding of these interwoven narratives serves to illustrate the profound impact of colonial legacies on individual lives, highlighting the enduring influence of historical contexts on the present-day realities of multicultural societies. In essence, "White Teeth" stands as a poignant reflection on the multifaceted nature of immigrant experiences, offering a compelling insight into the intricate web of socio-political influences that shape identities and relationships in a colonial landscape. By navigating the complex terrain of cultural assimilation and resistance, Zadie Smith weaves a tapestry of narratives that resonate with universal themes of displacement, struggle, and resilience, inviting readers to contemplate the enduring legacy of colonial histories on contemporary social structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does political partisanship extend to childhood? To what degree are children, a largely non‐political population, impacted by parents' and communities' political orientations? We examined children's behaviours and attitudes during a politically divisive event – the COVID‐19 pandemic. Children (4‐ to 12‐year‐olds; N = 313) of liberal (vs. conservative) parents reported greater preventive COVID‐19 behaviours, such as mask wearing and physical distancing, and responded more positively to these health behaviours. At the community level, children living in Democratic‐voting (vs. Republican‐voting) U.S. counties more strongly endorsed preventive COVID‐19 behaviours. Political orientation was a better predictor than education, income, religiosity, population‐density, and infection rates. Mediation and moderation analyses revealed that the parent–child political link was driven by children's perceptions of their parents' guidance, behaviours, and concern about COVID‐19, and that this link was attenuated in Democratic‐ versus Republican‐voting counties. Political orientation appears to play an unexpectedly prominent role, both at the intimate family and broader community level, in determining children's behaviours and attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political orientation profoundly influences individual and social decisions. Yet adequate and culturally adaptable tools to quantify it are missing. In personality research, it is common to use questionnaires to capture the multifaceted nature of a construct. Thus, surprisingly, most studies assess political orientation using single‐item scales that fail to account for cultural contexts beyond two‐party systems. Using a bottom‐up approach in which the core content of political orientation was defined by a German sample (N = 117), the current preregistered study developed a contemporary German questionnaire of political orientation (CGPOQ). The CGPOQ consists of 20 items that together form three main factors: "Tradition and National Security," Gender and Sexuality," and "Global Thinking." The factor structure that was determined by exploratory factor analysis (N = 1,089) was validated by confirmatory factor analysis in an independent sample (N = 303). Good fit was demonstrated by comparing the CGPOQ with several convergent (self‐identification, older conservatism questionnaire, voting intention, social dominance orientation, right‐wing authoritarianism) and divergent (religiosity, empathy) measures. The results indicate that the CGPOQ is a valid and reliable instrument for measuring political orientation in a German population. Furthermore, it challenges the assumption that political orientation relies on the same two dimensions across cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unconditional basic income (UBI) is a redistributive policy proposal that is receiving increasing attention in the Spanish political sphere. Welfare attitudes literature has shown that support for UBI is higher among left‐wing citizens and those of lower socioeconomic status. However, previous studies have not addressed the mediating role of ideological values such as egalitarianism or meritocratism in supporting UBI. Furthermore, studies have not considered the interactive relationship between ideological and self‐interest motives when studying attitudes toward UBI. Drawing on modernization theory, we propose that individuals' socioeconomic status conditions the role of ideological motivations in shaping support for UBI. To test this hypothesis, we study data from two different surveys conducted in Spain in 2017 (N = 1958) and 2021 (N = 2004). Our findings suggest that ideology is a less relevant motivation for supporting UBI among the Spanish citizens of lower socioeconomic status, but it becomes increasingly salient among higher‐status citizens. Among the latter, egalitarian values lead leftists to support UBI, whereas anti‐egalitarian and meritocratic values lead rightists to anti‐UBI positions. We discuss these findings within the framework of modernization theory, addressing support for UBI by different social groups and the ability of this policy proposal to elicit broad‐based support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present research tested whether people engage in more victim blaming toward unvaccinated COVID-19 victims than toward vaccinated COVID-19 victims. In two experiments (total N = 799), participants were randomly assigned to read one of two fictitious vignettes about an unvaccinated COVID-19 victim or a vaccinated COVID-19 victim. Both experiments found that participants attributed more blame and free will to the unvaccinated COVID-19 victim than to the vaccinated COVID-19 victim. Moreover, Experiment 2 found that free will attributions mediated the effect of victim vaccination status on victim blaming. Both experiments also found that participants with stronger liberal attitudes attributed more blame to the unvaccinated COVID-19 victim, but less blame to the vaccinated COVID-19 victim, than participants with stronger conservative attitudes. These relations remained significant while controlling for just world beliefs and participant vaccination status. The present research suggests that, compared to vaccinated COVID-19 victims, people believe that unvaccinated COVID-19 victims could have done otherwise—that is, they could have chosen to get vaccinated. The present research also suggests that liberals and conservatives differentially engage in victim blaming to corroborate their partisan attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the relationship between political orientation, government change, and public satisfaction with food policies in the Republic of Korea. Utilizing data from the Consumer Behavior Survey for Foods (CBSF) conducted by the Korea Rural Economic Institute from 2020 to 2021, we employ fixed effects models to examine the impact of political orientation, the presence of a conservative government, and their interactions on satisfaction across various dimensions of food policy. We also analyze the change in satisfaction levels from 2020 to 2021 based on shifts in political orientation. The results reveal complex dynamics between political alignment, government performance, and public perceptions. While conservatives and liberals exhibit higher satisfaction with labeling policies, they show lower satisfaction with safety and redress policies. The presence of a conservative government is associated with higher satisfaction in specific policy areas but lower overall satisfaction. Changes in political orientation significantly influence policy satisfaction, with shifts away from conservatism and towards liberalism leading to decreased satisfaction. The findings highlight the importance of understanding the nuanced preferences of different political groups and the need for responsive and transparent food policy frameworks. This study advances the theoretical understanding of the political economy of policy satisfaction and provides novel policy implications for effective governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intellectual humility (IH) appears to offer one solution to political hostility. However, research on how IH associates with political orientation and the strength of their political belief is mixed, leaving open the possibility of two potential confounds in research on the benefits of intellectual humility: people who are high in intellectual humility might have different ideological beliefs or might be less polarized than those who are lower in intellectual humility. In the current research, we address this concern in a large, pre-registered, and systematic analysis of nine samples (N = 3,248). We find that IH is generally unassociated with the strength of people’s political belief but is reliably associated with a more liberal political orientation. We discuss implications of these findings for research in this domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political polarisation has become an increasingly alarming issue in society, exacerbated by the widespread use of social media and the development of filter bubbles among social media users. This environment has left users susceptible to disinformation, especially those with whom a user is politically aligned. In this research, we integrate truth bias, elaboration likelihood model and new media literacy into a model for explaining social media engagement (with both disinformation and factual information) and analysing how political polarisation (operationalised as political alignment between users) influences perceptions and behaviours. Using an experimental design, we analyse the model separately for posts containing disinformation and factual information, highlighting key differences. Political alignment positively moderates truth bias's effect on engagement with disinformation. For both disinformation and factual information, political alignment moderates the effect of generalised communicative suspicion (GCS) on truth bias, such that GCS's effect on truth bias flips from negative to positive as political alignment increases. Issue involvement and political alignment appear to be the primary drivers of disinformation engagement, with critical consuming media literacy failing to mitigate engagement. Our findings contribute to the understanding of persuasion, conviction, amplification, polarisation and aversion related to fake news on social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global crises have become increasingly more frequent and consequential. Yet the impact of these crises is unevenly distributed across countries, leading to discrepancies in (inter)national crisis-regulating institutions' ability to uphold public trust and safeguard their constituents' well-being. Employing the paradigm of citizens as customers of political institutions, drawing on attribution and sociopolitical trust theories, and using the COVID-19 pandemic as an empirical context, the authors investigate how consumers' relative perceptions of local impact following a global crisis affect the psychological processes of institutional trust formation and consumer well-being. Conducting one survey-based study in two countries affected disproportionately by the pandemic's first wave (the United States and Greece) and one experimental study in a third country (Italy) during the pandemic's second wave, the authors find that institutional trust declines more in countries whose citizens hold perceptions of higher relative local impact following a global crisis; institutional blame attributions explain trust erosion; institutional distrust decreases consumer well-being and adherence to institutional guidelines; consumers' globalization attitudes immunize international institutions from blame and distrust; and political conservatives transfer blame and distrust from national to international institutions amid global crises. The findings enrich the institutional branding and trust literatures and have implications for stakeholders involved in global crisis management (e.g., policy makers, political marketers, institutional brand managers). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined differences in reactions to climate change as a function of belief in God. We studied four samples, convenience samples of university students in the USA (n = 627) and in Poland (n = 628), a nationally representative sample of adults in Poland (n = 1154), and a nationally representative sample of adults in the USA (n = 1098). In each study we measured the distress people felt about climate change, belief in God, and left–right political orientation. These constructs were measured slightly differently across the studies. Regardless of how these constructs were measured, believers were less distressed by climate change than non-believers, and with only a few exceptions, these differences disappeared after covarying political orientation (left–right or liberal-conservative). Contrary to those who argue that there is something inherent in religious belief that predisposes people to deny or ignore climate change, the present results suggest that it is the (growing) confluence of faith and conservative political orientation that is responsible for the fact that some people of faith tend to deny climate change or actively oppose efforts to combat it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has consistently found that more political conservatism is related to higher anti-vaccination attitudes. However, little work has investigated how intellectual humility could potentially contribute to this relationship. Employing the social judgment theory of attitude change, we examined whether conservatism could mediate the association between intellectual humility and anti-vaccination attitudes. Participants (N = 1,293; 40.1% female; Mage = 38.23 years, SDage = 11.61, range of age was 18–78) completed a multifaceted measure of intellectual humility, an assessment of four types of anti-vaccination attitudes, and a measure of political orientation. Results from structural equation modeling revealed that decreased levels of most aspects of intellectual humility (i.e., independence of intellect and ego, openness to revising one's viewpoint, and lack of intellectual overconfidence) are associated with more conservative political views, which in turn is associated with stronger anti-vaccination attitudes, particularly worries about unforeseen future effects, concerns about commercial profiteering, and preference for natural immunity. These findings suggest that intellectual humility could reflect one's latitude widths, thereby predicting their openness to vaccine massaging, and thus may play an important role in addressing anti-vaccination attitudes, especially when politics is involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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To slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus, some U.S. State governments restricted public activity by implementing lockdowns. The possibility remains that lockdowns may need to be implemented in the future, whether to combat novel strains of COVID-19 or entirely different viruses. The present experiment tested whether thinking about a future lockdown affects people's attitudes toward institutions. We found that conservative participants who thought about a future lockdown reported less intention to adhere to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines and less trust in the government compared to conservative participants in a control condition. We also found that liberal participants who thought about a future lockdown reported more trust in the government and the CDC, compared to liberal participants in a control condition. These findings suggest that merely considering a future lockdown affects people's intended adherence and institutional trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conservative political orientation is a strong predictor of gun ownership in the United States. We explore the extent to which this relationship is mediated by two related belief systems: Christian nationalism and Right-Wing conspiratorial thinking. Drawing on nationally representative data from the sixth wave of the Baylor Religion Survey (N = 1,248), we use logistic regression and the Karlson-Holm-Breen method to analyze gun ownership, disaggregated by type of gun and reason for ownership. Christian nationalism and conspiratorial thinking underlie political effects on automatic and semi-automatic guns, handguns, and guns owned for protection, especially among non-Hispanic white respondents. Christian nationalism and conspiratorial thinking are less salient to driving political differences in long gun or recreational gun ownership. Findings elucidate the belief-based mechanisms underlying the societally important link between conservative politics and gun ownership, demonstrating how beliefs pattern who owns guns (and why) in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on discussions about the manifestation of incivility in online news comments sections, our research operationalizes the concept of incivility and suggests a methodological approach that relies on manual and automated text analysis and regression analysis to assess its prevalence and identify its predictors. Relying on a data analysis of over two million comments on immigration and unemployment retrieved from twelve newspapers websites from six countries (Brazil, Chile, Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom, and United States), our study confirms the prevalence of incivility in online news comments sections and shows that comments on the topic of immigration, with clear political orientation, particularly right-wing, and displaying populism and false information perception are more prone to include discursive features of incivility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous explanations regarding transnational solidarity in the European Union (EU) have mainly focussed on factors including left–right self‐placement, support for European integration and European identity. We expand this model by considering deeper psychological determinants of transnational solidarity: values, operationalised as Schwartz's basic human values of universalism and security. We expect them to exert (1) direct effects on transnational solidarity – measured as support for pan‐European social benefits – and (2) indirect effects via the three aforementioned factors. We test and find evidence to support our theoretical framework using multigroup structural equation modelling and data from the European Social Survey. We further show that the effect size of the value of universalism on preferences for an EU social benefit scheme in each country is positively moderated by that country's net contribution to the EU budget, highlighting the interaction between material interests and psychological value motivations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how authoritarianism as a factor in child‐rearing values (CRV) is associated with political orientation, party support, and policy preferences among voters and societal elites in the Nordic context, which is characterized by social trust and solidarity, feelings of affinity, and a modest degree of ideological polarization. Based on a representative citizen survey conducted in 2018 (n = 4,076) and an elite survey conducted in 2020 (n = 948) among Finnish political, administrative, advocacy, business, and influence elites, our findings suggest that authoritarianism in Finland mostly relates to culturally conservative, and less to economically conservative, political orientations. While authoritarianism is connected to policy preferences and political orientations on both cultural and economic dimensions, it has more relevance for preferences regarding cultural issues than economic ones. Our findings support the notion that authoritarianism plays a role in political orientation mainly in the cultural realm. Overall, our study indicates that authoritarianism as captured by the CRV scale might be a politically important underpinning among both citizens and societal elites also outside the U.S. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trust in science is polarized along political lines—but why? We show across a series of highly controlled studies (total N = 2,859) and a large-scale Twitter analysis (N = 3,977,868) that people across the political spectrum hold stereotypes about scientists' political orientation (e.g., "scientists are liberal") and that these stereotypes decisively affect the link between their own political orientation and their trust in scientists. Critically, this effect shaped participants' perceptions of the value of science, protective behavior intentions during a pandemic, policy support, and information-seeking behavior. Therefore, these insights have important implications for effective science communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined if ethnic majority members with different background characteristics (national identification, political orientation, gender, education, and age) differ in the perception that their ethnic group owns the country they live in, and whether this can explain their opinions about stricter immigration policies. Using nationally diverse samples of Anglo-Australian (N = 475), Dutch (N = 599), and British participants (N = 1005), we found that ownership beliefs were consistently positively associated with support for stricter immigration policies. Further, we showed that ownership beliefs were stronger among higher national identifiers, men, right-wing, lower educated (United Kingdom only), and older people (Australia only), and ownership partially accounted for these groups’ stronger endorsement of stricter immigration policies. Our study underscores the relevance of ownership beliefs as a novel construct that can explain the relation between personal background characteristics and anti-immigration stance among ethnic majority populations in Western countries.

Several studies have examined the consumption and spread of fake news on social media. Two notable gaps, though, exist in the extant literature. First, prior research has focused on the political orientation of users while ignoring the broader context of sharing, namely the perceived political orientation of their social media peers. Second, there is limited insight about how user states, especially those related to their judgment abilities, influence the critical evaluation of fake news on social media. This paper addresses these gaps by theorizing the roles of perceived peer political orientation and self-objectivity states of users in translating biased credibility assessments of fake news into biased sharing intentions. It reports on an 7experiment (n=408) that primed self-perceived objectivity (a state) in half of the participants to examine its efficacy in moderating the influence of credibility bias (the extent to which users believe the news that highlight ideas that are consistent with their political orientation more than fake news articles that highlight ideas that are inconsistent with their political orientation) on sharing bias (the extent to which they are likely to share fake news that highlight ideas that are consistent with their political orientation more than fake news that highlight ideas that are inconsistent with their political orientation) while accounting for the moderating effect of perceived peer political orientation (a contextual factor). We found that consistency of fake news with people's political orientation increased credibility bias and sharing bias and that credibility bias increased sharing bias. We also found that perceived alignment between a user and their peers' political orientation, as a social context, reduced the effect of credibility bias on sharing bias. Finally, we found mixed support for the moderating effects of primed self-objectivity on the influence of credibility bias on sharing bias; it affected only liberal-leaning participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a series of studies in the U.S. (total N participants = 4,828) using both news articles (Studies 1-2) and constructed scenarios (Studies 3-4), we investigated how judgments of responsibility, blame, causal contribution, and punishment for alleged perpetrators and victims of sexual misconduct are influenced by (1) the political orientation of media outlets, (2) participants’ political orientation, and (3) the alleged perpetrators’ political orientation. Results indicated that participants’ political orientation, and the interaction between participants’ and alleged perpetrators’ political orientation, predicted moral judgments. Conservative participants were generally more likely inculpate and punish alleged victims in all four studies. Both conservative and liberal participants judged politically-aligned alleged perpetrators more leniently than politically-opposed alleged perpetrators. This political ingroup effect was ubiquitous across all tests of the dependent measures for conservative participants; whereas it was muted and unreliable for liberal participants. The findings collectively demonstrate that moral judgments about sexual misconduct are politicized at multiple psychological levels, and in ways that asymmetrically affect victims.

Augmented by the rise of social media, contemporary culture has increasingly witnessed the phenomenon of “cancellation” – that is, a brand's swift and public fall from grace, catalyzed through digital platforms like Twitter and, in turn, traditional media. We are the first to examine individual difference predictors of cancelling proclivity. We explore the relationship between a novel individual difference, political identity centrality (the extent to which one's political identity [e.g., liberal, conservative] is central to self-concept), and individuals' propensity to seek retribution from a moral transgressor online (i.e., their “cancelling proclivity”). Additionally, we test the mediating roles of individual differences in moral exporting (actively promoting and supporting the proliferation of one's own moral beliefs), social vigilantism (the tendency of individuals to impress and propagate their “superior” beliefs onto “ignorant” others), virtue signaling (signaling one's virtuousness for public respect or admiration), and self-efficacy on the relationship between political identity centrality and cancelling proclivity. Using an online panel (n = 459), we uncover that political identity centrality is significantly and positively associated with cancelling proclivity operationalized as reaction strength to transgressions and calling-out (calling attention to a transgression) and piling-on a transgressor (mass public prolific addition of comments about the transgression and transgressor). Interestingly while both virtue signaling and social vigilantism were found to be significant mediators, they played distinct roles wherein virtue signaling mediates the relationship for strength of reaction to transgressions, and social vigilantism mediates the relationship for calling-out and piling-on. The current research illustrates that some individual behavior may be less about what someone believes and rather the importance of those beliefs to one's identity – a valuable insight not previously identified in the literature. We discuss theoretical contributions, implications for future research, and applied implications (e.g., how brands might recover from cancellations).

The growth of heterodox ideological configurations, or ideological inconsistencies, among the electorate of Western countries, has been offered as one explanation for recent momentous political events, such as Brexit or the election of Donald Trump as US President. Previous research, however, suggests that ideological inconsistency has been typical for Central and Eastern European (CEE) states for the past thirty years after the fall of the Socialist regimes there. Based on a survey of 102 active members of local and national party structures in Bulgaria, followed by in-depth interviews with the same respondents, I develop a conceptual and methodological approach aimed at objectively measuring Bulgarians' political values and ideological orientations. Building on previous research on the statistical independence of the social and economic dimensions of ideology, this study identifies three main models of ideological inconsistency at the party-elite level in Bulgaria, offering evidence of the "homogeneity in ideological inconsistency" in this post-Socialist country, with party elites and electorate following the same patterns of inconsistency. The existence of a conservative value complex, integrating traditionalist, statist, and nationalist attitudes regarding the social sphere, is another major finding of the study. I discuss the specific historical and socio-cultural background contributing to ideological inconsistency in Bulgaria and potential implications for the wider CEE region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We formulate the decision to engage in self-defense within a Bayesian framework and report an experiment assessing the influence of situational cues and individual difference variables on perceptions of threat and intentions to act in self-defense. US adult respondents (N  = 235) read four ambiguous threat vignettes involving situations in which the respondent is alone in a high- or low-crime area and is approached by a male stranger exhibiting either high or low immediate threat cues. For each vignette, respondents indicated a probability that the stranger intends to harm and a binary intention to either engage in proactive self-defense or not. The extent to which manipulated proximal and distal cues influenced threat perception probabilities was moderated by both respondents' gender and political orientation. Threat perception probabilities mediate the influence of both proximal and distal cues on the intention to engage in proactive self-defense. Even odds thresholds of perceived threat probability to engage in self-defense ranged from 0.62 to 0.65 across the four scenarios, suggesting that failing to react to an actual threat is perceived as two to three times more costly than that of mistaken self-defense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While most parents support their adolescents receiving school-based sex education, there is variability in which sex education topics receive the most support from parents. Conservative political orientation and greater religiosity have been independently associated with parents' lack of support for school-based sex education; however, no studies have examined the intersection of these two factors. The three goals of this study were to: 1) identify how specific sexual education topics cluster together to form content areas; 2) examine if religiosity and political orientation are uniquely associated with these content areas; and 3) examine if political orientation moderates the relationship between parents' religiosity and their perceived importance for the specific sex education content areas. Participants were a national sample of 881 US parents. The sex education topics clustered into three content areas: Factual Knowledge (e.g., STI transmission), Practical Skills (e.g., how to access condoms), and Pleasure and Identity (e.g., pleasurable aspects of sex). Politically conservative and more religious parents reported the lowest perceived importance for each content area. Importantly, these main effects were qualified by a significant interaction: parents who reported both political conservativism and high levels of religiosity reported the lowest perceived importance for these three content areas being taught. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have explained political orientation and morality as a consequence of epistemic needs and empathic motivation. In this study, we replicate previous research on the influence of psychological states on moral foundations, system justification, and political orientation among Japanese participants. Consistent with previous findings, empathy is positively associated with care and fairness (called individualizing foundations) whereas epistemic needs to manage certainty (e.g., need for closure) are positively associated with ingroup loyalty, respect for authority, and purity (called binding foundations). Empathy and the need for closure indirectly affect political orientation and system justification through their influence on moral foundations. Contrary to previous findings, we find empathy to be positively associated with binding foundations whereas the need for closure is positively associated with individualizing foundations. We discuss the implications of these findings to show that moral foundations are a result of motivated social cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political actors pay attention to newspapers because they stimulate them to address a topic, reflect public opinion, provide feedback to their decisions, and help them to generate effective messages. Previous surveys showed that this is true for scientific issues. It follows that the newspaper coverage of scientific issues should appear as politically oriented, as observed regarding climate change. Here, we tested this prediction regarding educational neuroscience. This scientific issue is interesting because it implies no major economic interest and because the relevance of neuroscience regarding teaching in the classroom is still highly controversial. As hypothesized, we observed that the French press appeared strongly polarized: the right-leaning press was mostly favorable to educational neuroscience, whereas critical opinions were mainly found in the social-democrat press. Although the relevance of neuroscience toward teaching was rarely discussed in scientific arguments, political actors often invoked educational neuroscience in the press to legitimate their decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this paper is to assess pro-environmental behavior, climate change anxiety, perception, hope, and despair in different political orientations. Our specific aims included to assess the validity of all the instruments used; to assess whether the factor structure of the scales were valid across political orientations; to evaluate their reliability; to assess differences concerning age, gender, and political orientation; to learn the variables that explain pro-environmental behavior; and to evaluate the moderating role of climate change perception, despair, and hope in the relationship between climate change anxiety and pro-environmental behavior. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs), multi-group CFAs (to calculate measurement invariance), multiple linear regressions, and moderations were performed. Results showed that pro-environmental behavior and climate change hope achieved the four assessed levels of invariance across different political orientations; climate change anxiety achieved the first three levels of invariance; and climate change perception and climate change despair achieved configural invariance. Climate change anxiety, personal experience with climate change, and climate change perception (total, reality, and consequences) presented higher values for the left political orientation than for the right or the center. Climate change anxiety variables contributed most to explaining pro-environmental behaviors. Hope, despair, and climate change perception (consequences) moderated the relationship between climate change anxiety and pro-environmental behavior. These results open up new avenues for investigation, specifically to understand why high levels of anxiety lead to more pro-environmental behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the COVID‐19 pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that Black and Latinx communities experienced a disproportionate burden of illness. The goal of this study is to investigate laypeople's attribution of these disparities. We hypothesized the following four potential attributions: external causes (e.g. systemic racism), internal causes (e.g. personal choices), cultural causes (e.g., being close knit), or genetic causes (e.g., being more vulnerable for genetic reasons). Data from 447 participants revealed that lay theories involving external factors were the most endorsed, whereas theories relating to genetic causes were the least endorsed. Our analyses further revealed that external attributions predicted broader COVID‐19 relevant outcomes (i.e., perceived threat of COVID‐19, adherence to CDC guidelines, and support for government policies in response to COVID‐19), even after controlling for political orientation, participant race, and other attributions. This research provides insight into how lay people's explanations for disparities can predict their reactions to the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Right‐wing movements across the globe call for system‐changing actions. This development contradicts the typically assumed resistance to change among the political right. Many of these movements use conspiracist rhetoric and, thus, we reasoned that conspiracy mentality might be associated with the striving for system change—especially on the political right. In four cross‐sectional studies in Germany (one nationally quota‐balanced, one preregistered; total N = 1539) we found that high conspiracy mentality was related to support for social change among the right and to support for reactionary social change among the left. Support for change among those high in conspiracy mentality was diminished when elected representatives (vs the population) were thought to drive social change. These results suggest that both right wingers and left wingers high in conspiracy mentality support change in ways that are seemingly incompatible with their political orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]