Conservatives are influenced more by threats than liberals
- Liberals are more likely to ignore negative statements than conservatives
- This means politicians’ alarmist statements affect voters differently
- Conservatives are more susceptible to ‘negative bias’ than liberals, study says
Harry Pettit For Mailonline
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In recent years there has been more interest in whether conservatives and liberals have measurably different personalities and values.
A new study suggests that US conservatives are influenced more by fake news than liberals.
The authors also suggest that conservatives are more susceptible to negative news and threats.
This, they claim, means that politicians’ provocative and alarmist statements will affect voters differently.
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A new study suggests that US conservatives are influenced more by negative news and threats than liberals. Pictured is Barack Obama and Donald Trump as they met for the first time after President Trump’s surprise election win in November
WHY IS THIS?
The strength of a person’s negativity bias likely reflects how dangerous they believe the world is, according to the researchers.
It also reflects what strategies they think are necessary to protect against those dangers.
‘Conservatives tend to side with authority and tradition to ward off danger, liberals with diversity and change.
This means conservatives are likely to have a greater negativity bias.
Liberals are more likely to ignore negative statements from politicians while conservatives are more likely to believe them.
‘There is a widespread psychological bias to attend more to negative messages than positive ones,’ University of Bath psychologist Dr Nathalia Gjersoe, who was not involved in the study, wrote in the Guardian.
‘They capture more attention, elicit stronger emotions and are more memorable.’
But some individuals are more susceptible to negativity bias than others, Dr Gjersoe says.
Scientists at the University of California studied whether negativity bias might be linked to voting behaviour in the US.
They identified the political leaning of 948 people, mostly white men and women, by asking them a series of social and political questions.
Subjects were then asked to rate a series of plausible but false statements on a scale from 1 – ‘I am absolutely certain this claim is false’ – to 7: ‘I am absolutely certain that this claim is true’.
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Half of these statements concerned a positive statement or benefit, for instance, ‘eating carrots will improve your vision’.
The other half concerned a negative or ‘hazardous’ statement, for instance, ‘Kale contains thallium, a toxic heavy metal, that the plant absorbs from soil’.
This, the authors suggest, means that politicians’ provocative and alarmist statements will affect voters differently. Pictured is Donald Trump sitting with UK Prime Minister Theresa May as they attended this month’s Nato summit
When looking at the benefit statements, liberals and conservatives were found to have no difference in their likeliness to believe statements.
But when it came to the negative statements, conservative respondents were more likely to believe a hazardous statement than than the liberal ones.
Based on their results, the researchers claim that provocative statements made by politicians will affect voter groups differently.
‘The strength of a person’s negativity bias likely reflects how dangerous they believe the world is and what strategies they think are necessary to protect against those dangers,’ Dr Gjersoe said
‘Conservatives tend to side with authority and tradition to ward off danger, liberals with diversity and change.’
The psychologist stressed that the study was performed on US audiences, and that conservative supporters in the US differ from those in the UK in several important ways.
As such, the study’s results cannot be used to infer much about UK voters’ behaviour and psychology.
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