People vary greatly in their desire for, willingness to care for, and emotions toward children. This variation in “parenting motivation” predicts a range of cognition and behavior. Strategic perspectives on political attitudes suggest that parenting motivation should be associated with more socially conservative attitudes, since these attitudes prioritize self-protection norms. Across three studies, we found that parenthood mediated age-related increases in social conservatism. Study 1 found that an experimental child interaction prime increased social conservatism in parents but not in nonparents. Study 2 (preregistered, n = 803) found a main effect of the prime, while Study 3 (preregistered, n = 763) found no experimental effect. Study 3 also found that the relationship between parenting motivation and social conservatism was mediated by both sexual attitudes and perceived threats. These findings attest to the important relationship between parenthood and social conservatism but also suggest that “parenting” primes have either inconsistent or trivial implications within online samples.
AarøeL.PetersenM. B. (2013). Hunger games: Fluctuations in blood glucose levels influence support for social welfare. Psychological Science, 24, 2550–2556.
2.
AltemeyerB. (1988). Enemies of freedom: Understanding right-wing authoritarianism. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
3.
BeallA. T.SchallerM. (2019). Evolution, motivation, and the mating/parenting trade-off. Self and Identity, 18, 39–59. doi:10.1080/15298868.2017.1356366
4.
BuckelsE. E.BeallA. T.HoferM. K.LinE. Y.ZhouZ.SchallerM. (2015). Individual differences in activation of the parental care motivational system: Assessment, prediction, and implications. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108, 497–514. doi:10.1037/pspp0000023
5.
CornelisI.Van HielA.RoetsA.KossowskaM. (2009). Age differences in conservatism: Evidence on the mediating effects of personality and cognitive style. Journal of Personality, 77, 51–88. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.2008.00538.x
6.
CrawfordJ. T. (2017). Are conservatives more sensitive to threat than liberals? It depends on how we define threat and conservatism. Social Cognition, 35, 354–373.
7.
Del GiudiceM.GangestadS. W.KaplanH. S. (2016). Life history theory and evolutionary psychology. In BussD. M. (Ed.), The handbook of evolutionary psychology (2nd ed., Vol. 1, pp. 88–114). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
8.
EibachR. P.LibbyL. K.EhrlingerJ. (2009). Priming family values: How being a parent affects moral evaluations of harmless but offensive acts. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 1160–1163. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2009.06.017
9.
EibachR. P.MockS. E. (2011). The vigilant parent: Parental role salience affects parents’ risk perceptions, risk-aversion, and trust in strangers. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 694–697. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2010.12.009
10.
EverettJ. A. (2013). The 12 item social and economic conservatism scale (SECS). PLoS One, 8, e82131.
11.
FeldmanS.StennerK. (1997). Perceived threat and authoritarianism. Political Psychology, 18, 741–770. doi:10.1111/0162-895x.00077
FraleyR. C.GriffinB. N.BelskyJ.RoismanG. I. (2012). Developmental antecedents of political ideology: A longitudinal investigation from birth to age 18 years. Psychological Science, 23, 1425–1431. doi:10.1177/0956797612440102
14.
GileadM.LibermanN. (2014). We take care of our own: Caregiving salience increases out-group bias in response to out-group threat. Psychological Science, 25, 1380–1387. doi:10.1177/0956797614531439
15.
GouveiaV. V.VioneK. C.MilfontT. L.FischerR. (2015). Patterns of value change during the life span: Some evidence from a functional approach to values. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41, 1276–1290. doi:10.1177/0146167215594189
16.
HenriksenT. H. (2001). The rise and decline of rogue states. Journal of International Affairs, 54, 349–373.
17.
HoferM. K.BuckelsE. E.WhiteC. J.BeallA. T.SchallerM. (2018). Individual differences in activation of the parental care motivational system: An empirical distinction between protection and nurturance. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 9, 907–916.
18.
JacksonJ. J.KirkpatrickL. A. (2007). The structure and measurement of human mating strategies: Toward a multidimensional model of sociosexuality. Evolution and Human Behavior, 28, 382–391.
19.
JostJ. T.GlaserJ.KruglanskiA. W.SullowayF. J. (2003). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 339–375. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.129.3.339
20.
JostJ. T.SternC.RuleN. O.SterlingJ. (2017). The politics of fear: Is there an ideological asymmetry in existential motivation?Social Cognition, 35, 324–353. doi:10.1521/soco.2017.35.4.324
21.
KerryN.MurrayD. R. (2018). Conservative parenting: Investigating the relationships between parenthood, moral judgment, and social conservatism. Personality and Individual Differences, 134, 88–96. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2018.05.045
22.
KurzbanR.DukesA.WeedenJ. (2010). Sex, drugs and moral goals: Reproductive strategies and views about recreational drugs. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 277, 3501–3508. doi:10.1098/rspb.2010.0608
23.
MartinJ. A.HamiltonB. E.OstermanM.DriscollA. K.MatthewsT. J. (2017). Births: Final data for 2015. National Vital Statistics Reports, 66. Retrieved fromwww.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr66/nvsr66_01.pdf
24.
MurrayD. R.SchallerM.SuedfeldP. (2013). Pathogens and politics: Further evidence that parasite prevalence predicts authoritarianism. PLoS One, 8, e62275. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0062275
25.
PinsofD.HaseltonM. (2016). The political divide over same-sex marriage: Mating strategies in conflict?Psychological Science, 27, 435–442. doi:10.1177/0956797615621719
26.
PinsofD.HaseltonM. G. (2017). The effect of the promiscuity stereotype on opposition to gay rights. PLoS One, 12, e0178534. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0178534
27.
QuintelierK. J.IshiiK.WeedenJ.KurzbanR.BraeckmanJ. (2013). Individual differences in reproductive strategy are related to views about recreational drug use in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Japan. Human Nature, 24, 196–217. doi:10.1007/s12110-013-9165-0
28.
SchallerM. (2018). The parental care motivational system and why it matters (for everyone). Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27, 295–301.
TriversR. L. (1972) Parental investment and sexual selection. In CampbellB. (Ed.), Sexual Selection and the Descent of Man, 1871–1971 (pp. 136–179). Chicago, IL: Aldine.
31.
TruettK. R. (1993). Age differences in conservatism. Personality and Individual Differences, 14, 405–411. doi:10.1016/0191-8869(93)90309-q
32.
Van LeeuwenF.ParkJ. H. (2009). Perceptions of social dangers, moral foundations, and political orientation. Personality and Individual Differences, 47, 169–173. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2009.02.017
33.
WeedenJ.KurzbanR. (2014). The hidden agenda of the political mind: How self-interest shapes our opinions and why we won't admit it. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
34.
WhiteC. J.SchallerM. (2018). Are children perceived to be morally exceptional? Different sets of psychological variables predict adults’ moral judgments about adults and young children. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44, 1147–1162. doi:10.1177/0146167218760800.
35.
ZebrowitzL. A.MontepareJ. M. (2008). Social psychological face perception: Why appearance matters. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2, 1497–1517. doi:10.1111/j.1751-9004.2008.00109.x
36.
ZilioliS.PonziD.HenryA.KubickiK.NickelsN.WilsonM. C.MaestripieriD. (2016). Interest in babies negatively predicts testosterone responses to sexual visual stimuli among heterosexual young men. Psychological Science, 27, 114–118.
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.
