Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Numerous studies have indicated that the need for closure predicts political preferences. We examined a potential moderator of this relationship: political-identity centrality, or the extent to which individuals’ political preferences are central to their self-concept. We tested three hypotheses. First, we predicted that need for closure would be more strongly related to political identity (symbolic ideology and party identification; Hypothesis 1) and issue positions (operational ideology; Hypothesis 2) among individuals who see their political preferences as more self-central. Then we predicted that the stronger relationship between need for closure and issue positions among individuals high in centrality would be accounted for by stronger relationships between need for closure and political identity and between political identity and issue positions (Hypothesis 3). Data from a nationally representative survey provide evidence for these hypotheses, suggesting that the relationship between epistemic needs and political preferences differs as a function of how self-relevant politics is.

Keywords

political psychology need for closure ideology identity open data

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Abramowitz

A. I.

(2010). The disappearing center: Engaged citizens, polarization, and American democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

American National Election Studies. (n.d.). The ANES guide to public opinion and electoral behavior. Retrieved from http://www.electionstudies.org/nesguide/nesguide.htm

Baguley

(2009). Standardized or simple effect size: What should be reported? British Journal of Psychology, 100, 603–617. doi:10.1348/000712608X377117

Campbell

Converse

P. E.

Miller

W. E.

Stokes

D. E.

(1960). The American voter. New York, NY: Wiley.

Chang

Krosnick

J. A.

(2009). National surveys via RDD telephone interviewing versus the Internet: Comparing sample representativeness and response quality. Public Opinion Quarterly, 73, 641–678.

Cohen

G. L.

(2003). Party over policy: The dominating impact of group influence on political beliefs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 808–822.

Converse

P. E.

Markus

G. B.

(1979). Plus ça change . . .: The new CPS election study panel. American Political Science Review, 73, 32–49.

Delli Carpini

M. X.

Keeter

. (1996). What Americans know about politics and why it matters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Devine

C. J.

(2015). Ideological social identity: Psychological attachment to ideological in-groups as a political phenomenon and a behavioral influence. Political Behavior, 37, 509–535.

10.

Ellis

Stimson

J. A.

(2012). Ideology in America. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

11.

Federico

C. M.

Deason

Fisher

E. L.

(2012). Ideological asymmetry in the relationship between epistemic motivation and political attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103, 381–398. doi:10.1037/a0029063

12.

Federico

C. M.

Fisher

E. L.

Deason

(2011). Expertise and the ideological consequences of the authoritarian predisposition. Public Opinion Quarterly, 75, 686–708.

13.

Federico

C. M.

Goren

(2009). Motivated social cognition and ideology: Is attention to elite discourse a prerequisite for epistemically motivated political affinities? In Jost

J. T.

Kay

A. C.

Thorisdottir

(Eds.), Social and psychological bases of ideology and system justification (pp. 267–291). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

14.

Gerber

A. S.

Huber

G. A.

Doherty

Dowling

C. M.

(2011). The Big Five personality traits in the political arena. Annual Review of Political Science, 14, 265–287.

15.

Goren

(2005, April). Ideological identification and core political values. Paper presented at the annual meeting of Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL.

16.

Hayes

A. F.

(2013). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach. New York, NY: Guilford.

17.

Huddy

Mason

Aarøe

(2015). Expressive partisanship: Campaign involvement, political emotion, and partisan identity. American Political Science Review, 109, 1–17.

18.

Iyengar

Sood

Lelkes

(2012). Affect, not ideology: A social identity perspective on polarization. Public Opinion Quarterly, 76, 405–431.

19.

Johnston

C. D.

Lavine

H. G.

Federico

C. M.

(2017). Open versus closed: Personality, identity, and the politics of redistribution. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

20.

Jost

J. T.

Federico

C. M.

Napier

J. L.

(2009). Political ideology: Its structure, functions, and elective affinities. Annual Review of Psychology, 60, 307–333.

21.

Jost

J. T.

Federico

C. M.

Napier

J. L.

(2013). Political ideologies and their social psychological functions. In Freeden

Sargent

L. T.

Stears

(Eds.), The Oxford handbook of political ideologies (pp. 232–250). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

22.

Jost

J. T.

Glaser

Kruglanski

A. W.

Sulloway

(2003). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 339–375.

23.

Kahan

D. M.

(2015). Climate-science communication and the measurement problem. Advances in Political Psychology, 36, 1–43.

24.

Katz

(1960). The functional approach to the study of attitudes. Public Opinion Quarterly, 24, 163–204.

25.

Lenz

G. S.

(2012). Follow the leader? How voters respond to politicians’ policies and performance. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

26.

Long

J. S.

Ervin

L. H.

(2000). Using heteroscedasticity consistent standard errors in the linear regression model. American Statistician, 54, 217–234.

27.

Luhtanen

Crocker

(1992). A Collective Self-Esteem Scale: Self-evaluation of one’s social identity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 18, 302–318.

28.

Lupia

(2015). Uninformed: Why people seem to know so little about politics and what we can do about it. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

29.

Malka

Lelkes

(2010). More than ideology: Conservative–liberal identity and receptivity to political cues. Social Justice Research, 23, 156–188.

30.

Malka

Soto

C. J.

Inzlicht

Lelkes

(2014). Do needs for security and certainty predict cultural and economic conservatism? A cross-national analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106, 1031–1051.

31.

Muller

Judd

C. M.

Yzerbyt

V. Y.

(2005). When moderation is mediated and mediation is moderated. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 852–863.

32.

Muthén

L. K.

Muthén

B. O.

(2017). Mplus user’s guide (8th ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Author.

33.

O’Brien

R. M.

(2007). A caution regarding rules of thumb for variance inflation factors. Quality & Quantity, 41, 673–690.

34.

Pierro

Kruglanski

A. W.

(2006). [Validation of a revised Need for Cognitive Closure scale]. Unpublished data.

35.

Sears

D. O.

(1993). Symbolic politics: A socio-psychological theory. In Iyengar

McGuire

W. J.

(Eds.), Explorations in political psychology (pp. 113–149). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

36.

Shavitt

(1989). Operationalizing functional theories of attitude. Attitude Structure and Function, 3, 311–337.

37.

Smith

M. B.

Bruner

J. S.

White

R. W.

(1956). Opinions and personality. Oxford, England: Wiley.

38.

Thoemmes

(2015). Reversing arrows in mediation models does not distinguish plausible models. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 37, 226–234.

39.

Webster

D. M.

Kruglanski

A. W.

(1994). Individual differences in need for cognitive closure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 1049–1062.

40.

Zaller

(1992). The nature and origins of mass opinion. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.77 MB

0.33 MB

The Political Self: How Identity Aligns Preferences With Epistemic Needs

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References

Supplementary Material