Advances in Political Psychology

In sum, our work highlights some of the components of the context or social environments that revised models call for, pushing for work to more fully update understanding of how psychological dispositions shape political ideology in the contemporary U.S.

"This in turn makes it increasingly important to more explicitly consider the potentially powerful role of partisanship."

"We argue that because of growing policy divides between Democratic and Republican politicians, more individuals possess consistent beliefs and there is less room to observe the combination of conservative social positions and liberal economic preferences that the IAH predicts."

They summarize their ideas as follows: "Though informative, the classical ideological asymmetry model (IAH) differs from more standard political science accounts of ideology in that it tends to sidestep arguments about the formation and existence of coherent belief systems in the general public."

More news from Advances: Also commenting on Arceneaux, Bakker, Fasching, and Lelkes, Elizabeth Simas and Sebastian Ege use their article, titled "Psychological Dispositions and Political Attitudes in a Hyperpartisan Context," to draw attention to partisan polarization.

We furthermore urge researchers to consider shifts over time in the substantive political meaning assigned to the conservative and liberal labels and to incorporate this factor into their theories and methods.

In this vein, we recommend greater attention to the distinction between relationships rooted in motivation to view oneself in a particular way and those rooted in actual substantive links between dispositions and political preferences.

The key problem this literature faces is no longer one of describing which dispositions predict which political preferences and when, but rather one of unpacking the causal processes that account for why psychological dispositions and political preferences are associated with each other.

An extensive body of research provides evidence along these lines, but shows reliable patterns that are more qualified and conditional than a simple version of the ideological asymmetry hypothesis would suggest.

Their summary of the research: Most research on the link between psychological dispositions and political preferences flows from an 'ideological asymmetry hypothesis' suggesting that high (versus low) needs for security and certainty lead to right-leaning (versus left-leaning) political views.

News from Advances: Responding to Arceneaux, Bakker, Fasching and Lelkes, Christopher Federico and Ariel Malka wrote "From “what” and “when” to “how” and “why”: Moving the study of psychological dispositions and political preferences forward."

(3) Bottom line: we need better theory and stronger designs—experiments, panels, lifespan data, and predictive ML.

(2) Many findings come from small, nonrepresentative samples and confounded designs. he authors argue simple correlations won’t settle the debate. They propose a more complex, bidirectional model where personality and ideology influence each other, moderated by engagement, geography, and threat.

In Advances 2025: (1) New review by Arceneaux et al. challenges the idea that conservatives and liberals differ in stable psychological traits, arguing the evidence for the “ideological asymmetry hypothesis” is weak and plagued by measurement, sampling, and causal-inference problems.

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