Dispositional Fear and Political Attitudes
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Dispositional Fear and Political Attitudes Peter K. Hatemi 1
& Rose
McDermott 2
Accepted: 5 November 2020/ # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Previous work proposes that dispositional fear exists predominantly among political conservatives, generating the appearance that fears align strictly along party lines. This view obscures evolutionary dynamics because fear evolved to protect against myriad threats, not merely those in the political realm. We suggest prior work in this area has been biased by selection on the dependent variable, resulting from an examination of exclusively politically oriented fears that privilege conservative values. Because the adaptation regulating fear should be based upon both universal and ancestral-specific selection pressures combined with developmental and individual differences, the elicitation of it should prove variable across the ideological continuum dependent upon specific combinations of fear and value domains. In a sample of ~ 1,600 Australians assessed with a subset of the Fear Survey Schedule II, we find fears not infused with political content are differentially influential across the political spectrum. Specifically, those who are more fearful of sharp objects, graveyards, and urinating in public are more socially conservative and less supportive of gay rights. Those who are more fearful of death are more supportive of gay rights. Those who are more fearful of suffocating and swimming alone are more concerned about emissions controls and immigration, while those who are more fearful of thunderstorms are also more antiimmigration. Contrary to existing research, both liberals and conservatives are more fearful of different circumstances, and the role of dispositional fears are attitudespecific. Keywords Disposition . Fear . Politics . Ideology . Evolution . Attitudes
* Rose McDermott [email protected] Peter K. Hatemi [email protected]
1
Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, USA
2
Brown University, Providence, RI, USA
Human Nature
Scholarship in the fields of political science and social psychology, the disciplines most preoccupied with studying political values, argues that conservatives appear more sensitive to threat and fear messages than liberals (e.g., Jost et al. 2007; Lilienfeld and Latzman 2014; Oxley et al. 2008). A great deal of this research has focused on situational factors and examined how specific events, such as terrorism or immigration, activate fear responses through real or perceived threats to physical safety, social identity, access to mates, or economic well-being (e.g., Fearon and Laitin 2000; Fritsche and Jugert 2017; Jost et al. 2017; Kinder and Sears 1981; Lerner et al. 2003; van Prooijen et al. 2015). From this threat-sensitivity perspective, some people are assumed to become more conservative and authoritarian once they feel threatened (Doty et al. 1991; Greenberg et al. 1992; Harnish et al. 2018; Jost et al. 2003; McCann 2008; Napier et al. 2018; Norris and Inglehart 2019;
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