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TABLE OF CONTENTS |
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7 A Contextual Analysis of the System Justification Motive and Its Societal Consequences / 158
Aaron C. Kay and Mark P. Zanna
IV. EPISTEMIC AND EXISTENTIAL MOTIVES
8The Social Psychology of Uncertainty Management and System Justification / 185
Kees van den Bos
9Political Ideology in the 21st Century: A Terror Management Perspective on Maintenance
and Change of the Status Quo / 210
Jacqueline Anson, Tom Pyszczynski, Sheldon Solomon, and Jeff Greenberg
10No Atheists in Foxholes: Motivated Reasoning and Religious Belief / 241
Robb Willer
V. PERSONALITY AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
11Motivated Social Cognition and Ideology: Is Attention to Elite Discourse a Prerequisite for Epistemically
Motivated Political Affinities? / 267
Christopher M. Federico and Paul Goren
12A Dual Process Motivational Model of Ideological Attitudes and System Justification / 292
John Duckitt and Chris G. Sibley
13Statewide Differences in Personality Predict Voting
Patterns in 1996–2004 U.S. Presidential Elections / 314
Peter J. Rentfrow, John T. Jost, Samuel D. Gosling, and Jeffrey Potter
VI. PERSPECTIVES ON JUSTICE AND MORALITY
14Procedural Justice and System-Justifying Motivations / 351
Irina Feygina and Tom R. Tyler
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Planet of the Durkheimians, Where Community, Authority, |
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and Sacredness Are Foundations of Morality |
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Jonathan Haidt and Jesse Graham |
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Ideology of the Good Old Days: Exaggerated Perceptions |
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of Moral Decline and Conservative Politics / |
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Richard P. Eibach and Lisa K. Libby
VII. IMPLICATIONS FOR SELF, GROUP, AND SOCIETY
17Group Status and Feelings of Personal Entitlement: The Roles of Social Comparison and System-Justifying Beliefs / 427
Laurie T. O’Brien and Brenda Major
18Ambivalent Sexism at Home and at Work: How Attitudes Toward Women in Relationships Foster Exclusion in the Public Sphere / 444
Mina Cikara, Tiane L. Lee, Susan T. Fiske, and Peter Glick
19 Acknowledging and Redressing Historical Injustices / 463
Katherine B. Starzyk, Craig W. Blatz, and Michael Ross
20 The Politics of Intergroup Attitudes / 480
Brian A. Nosek, Mahzarin R. Banaji, and John T. Jost
Name Index / 507
Subject Index / 513
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FOREWORD
Why Political Psychology Is Important
The knowledge of our own minds can be put to no better use than in understanding our social and political lives. That is why political psychology matters. Political psychology applies an important branch of the cognitive and brain sciences—experimental psychology, including social and cognitive psychology—to politics. Although the methodologies may be limited to the techniques of one or more subfields, the results nonetheless contribute substantially to the overall picture: Political thought is not what it appears to be. It is much deeper, as we strive to show in Social and Psychological Bases of Ideology and System Justification.
Over the past three decades, the cognitive and brain sciences have utterly changed our understanding of the mind and how it works. The results are startling to most people, including academics in most fields and political professionals. Perhaps most startling is the concept that ideas are not abstract; they are physical structures in the brain—and once there, they don’t change easily. A widely accepted view of the mind assumes that reason is conscious, literal (it can directly fit the world), logical, dispassionate, universal, disembodied (independent of perception and bodily movement), and serving of self-interest, so much so that it is seen to be irrational to act against one’s own interests.
We now know from scientific studies of the brain and mind that all of these commonplace views of reason are false. Reason is mostly unconscious, automatic, and effortless. We make inevitable use of conceptual framing and metaphor to understand and reason about reality. Thus reason does not fit the world directly—in most politically important cases, it’s not even close. Our “logic” is frameand metaphor-based; it is not the logic of logicians and mathematicians. Reason is anything but dispassionate. The reverse is true. If brain damage (say from a stroke or an accident) has eliminated your emotional capacities, you would not know what to want or how anyone else would want you to act: loss of emotion makes the use of reason virtually impossible.
Reason is anything but universal: even conservatives and progressives in the same country do not use the same forms of thought. Since you think with your brains, and since concepts arise from the body, reason is anything but disembodied. Moreover, mirror neuron studies indicate that we are born
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with a natural capacity for empathy and cooperation, and do not use reason simply in the service of self-interest.
Viewed through the lens of my field, cognitive linguistics, the political environment is not what the TV pundits tell you. Conservatives and progressives don’t just have different beliefs; they have different views of the world and different modes of reasoning—mostly unconscious. The central difference arises from a commonplace metaphorical understanding of the nation as family, with conflicting ideas of what an ideal family should be, either strict or nurturant. Many Americans are biconceptual; they have both worldviews and modes of thought, but apply them in different arenas of life—say, conservative on foreign policy and progressive on domestic matters, or the reverse. Foundational concepts, like freedom, fairness, equality, and democracy don’t have just one meaning. They are essentially contested; they will inevitably have multiple incompatible meanings, reflecting the multiple differences in worldview. Most people will be unaware of all this because thought is mostly unconscious. Similarly, they will be unaware that we all normally think in terms of conceptual frames and metaphors.
Why should we care that our main political modes of thought operate below the radar screen? Because conservatives, through their think tanks, have taken advantage of the situation, framing just about every issue in public discussion their way via conservative messages filling the airways. Our political discourse is disastrously out of balance. To remedy the situation, we need to understand more about how our minds are linked to our politics.
This book will take you on a grand tour of political psychology. What justifies systems of hierarchical power and vastly unequal wealth? Why does the status quo have an advantage over change? How do people manage uncertainty and terror, and what are the consequences? How do personality types line up with political ideologies? Why do so many people think the world is getting worse? Why do people tend to care more about injustices done to others by outsiders, than about injustices done to others by their own group members?
Read on.
George Lakoff
Berkeley, CA April 2008
CONTRIBUTORS
Jacqueline Anson
Doctoral Student
University of Rochester
Rochester, NY
Mahzarin R. Banaji
Professor of Psychology
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA
John A. Bargh
Professor of Psychology
Yale University
New Haven, CT
Craig W. Blatz
SSHRC Post-Doctoral Fellow
Simon Fraser University
Vancouver, BC
Canada
Travis J. Carter
Doctoral Student
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY
Becky L. Choma
Post-Doctoral Fellow
York University
Toronto, ON
Canada
Mina Cikara
Doctoral Student
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ
Chris Crandall
Professor of Psychology
University of Kansas
Lawrence, KS
John Duckitt
Professor of Psychology
The University
of Auckland
Auckland, NZ
Richard P. Eibach
Assistant Professor
Yale University
New Haven, CT
Scott Eidelman
Assistant Professor
University of Arkansas
Fayetteville, AR
Christopher M. Federico
Associate Professor
University of
Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN
Melissa J. Ferguson
Associate Professor
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY
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CONTRIBUTORS |
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Irina Feygina
Doctoral Student
New York University
New York, NY
Susan T. Fiske
Professor of Psychology
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ
Paul Goren
Associate Professor
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN
Sam Gosling
Associate Professor
University of Texas, Austin
Austin, TX
Jesse Graham
Doctoral Student
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA
Jeff Greenberg
Professor of Psychology
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ
Carolyn L. Hafer
Professor of Psychology
Brock University
St. Catharines, ON
Canada
Jonathan Haidt
Associate Professor
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA
Ran R. Hassin
Professor of Psychology
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Jerusalem, Israel
John T. Jost
Professor of Psychology
New York University
New York, NY
Aaron C. Kay
Assistant Professor
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, ON
Canada
George Lakoff
Professor of Linguistics and
Cognitive Science
University of California
Berkeley, CA
Tiane L. Lee
Doctoral Student
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ
Lisa K. Libby
Assistant Professor
Ohio State University
Columbus, OH
Brenda Major
Professor of Psychology
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA
Gregory Mitchell
Professor of Law
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA
Contributors |
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Brian Nosek
Associate Professor
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA
Laurie T. O’Brien
Assistant Professor
Tulane University
New Orleans, LA
T. Andrew Poehlman
Assistant Professor
Southern Methodist University
Dallas, TX
Tom Pyszczynski
Professor of Psychology
University of Colorado,
Colorado Springs
Colorado Springs, CO
Peter J. Rentfrow
Lecturer
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, UK
Mike Ross
Professor of Psychology
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, ON
Canada
Chris G. Sibley
Lecturer
The University of Auckland
Auckland, NZ
Sheldon Solomon
Professor of Psychology
Skidmore College
Saratoga Springs, NY
Katherine B. Starzyk
Assistant Professor
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, MB
Canada
Philip E. Tetlock
Professor of Organizational
Behavior
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA
Hulda Thorisdottir
Postdoctoral Fellow
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ
Tom R. Tyler
Professor of Psychology
New York University
New York, NY
Eric Luis Uhlmann
Postdoctoral Fellow
Northwestern University
Evanston, IL
Kees van den Bos
Professor of Psychology
Utrecht University
The Netherlands
Robb Willer
Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA
Mark Zanna
Professor of Psychology
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, ON
Canada
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P A R T I
Introduction