title: Preliminary support for a generalized arousal model of political conservatism.
abstract: It is widely held that negative emotions such as threat, anxiety, and disgust represent the core psychological factors that enhance conservative political beliefs. We put forward an alternative hypothesis: that conservatism is fundamentally motivated by arousal, and that, in this context, the effect of negative emotion is due to engaging intensely arousing states. Here we show that study participants agreed more with right but not left-wing political speeches after being exposed to positive as well as negative emotion-inducing film-clips. No such effect emerged for neutral-content videos. A follow-up study replicated and extended this effect. These results are consistent with the idea that emotional arousal, in general, and not negative valence, specifically, may underlie political conservatism.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
authors.forename: Shona M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Tritt
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, Canada.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Inzlicht
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
authors.forename: Jordan B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Peterson
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000818:Animals; D001143:Arousal; D003469:Culture; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009040:Motion Pictures; D011057:Politics; D013060:Speech