New Psychology Research Reframes Fundamental Differences in Conservative, Liberal Worldviews

The psychology behind political beliefs has long challenged and fascinated professionals and hobbyists alike. Lots of explanations have been put forward– from upbringing to fear responses to brain chemistry— but the puzzle of conservatism vs liberalism is still missing a pretty big piece.

Until, possibly, now.

Jer Clifton, who holds a doctorate in psychology, recently published some of the preliminary findings of his ongoing research on “primal world beliefs,” or “primals.” He arrived at a list of 26 of these basic, fundamental worldviews through an exhaustive, five-year-long research project in which they ” combed hundreds of the most influential texts in world history, 80,000 tweets that began with phrases like ‘The world is. . .,’ hundreds of the most-used adjectives in English, and much more, to identify a comprehensive set of primal world beliefs people could hold.”

Clifton and his team then surveyed people on their primal world beliefs and took a look at what correlations they could find, expecting their research to further confirm psychology’s long-held belief in the relationship between conservatism and fear. As it turned out, though, what they found was. . . not that at all.

“At that point, having made what most researchers would agree is a more rigorous measure of dangerous world belief, we thought that we’d now find even bigger correlations showing conservatives see the world as more dangerous. It was, after all, well-established. Instead, correlations dropped to almost nothing.

. . .

The problem was that, of the seven facets of dangerous world belief, the old measure overlooked three ways in which liberals and conservatives agree about how dangerous the world is. It emphasized only the three ways that conservatives see the world as slightly more dangerous (competitive, declining, and physically hazardous) and neglected the one really big way liberals see the world as more dangerous (rife with unfairness).”

So if fear doesn’t dictate political views, what does? According to Clifton’s research, the answer relies much more heavily on some very different primals– most significantly “hierarchal world belief,” or the idea “that almost everything in the world can be ranked from better to worse.” Conservatives, they found, tend to highly favor this belief; liberals, not so much.

The hierarchal world belief interacts interestingly with some other primals to create a sort of profile of the average conservative’s worldview versus that of a liberal. Clifton sums them up as follows:

“Conservatives tend to see the world as a place where, like it or not, observable differences reflect real underlying value (high Hierarchical world belief) that is somehow meant to be (high Intentional world belief) where station and attention received are usually deserved (high Just world belief, low belief that the world is Worth Exploring). Therefore, most hierarchies that emerge are best left as they are (high Acceptable world belief). However, unfortunately, change is slowly eroding the world’s hierarchies (low Progressing world belief). Therefore, constraining change and accepting inequality (the textbook two-part definition of conservatism that researchers use) is just common sense.

Liberals tend to see the world as a place where observable differences are superficial, rarely reflecting actual value (low Hierarchical world belief), cosmic purpose or intent (low Intentional world belief), deserved status (low Just world belief), or attention received (high Worth Exploring). Therefore, most hierarchies require reform (low Acceptable world belief). Fortunately, however, the world is getting better and change is taking us in the right direction (high Progressing world belief). Therefore, embracing change and rejecting inequality (the textbook definition of liberalism) is just common sense.”

Sounds pretty convincing, doesn’t it? Obviously there’s still decades’ worth of research that can be done on this front, but Clifton seems to have stumbled upon something pretty profound.

You can take a survey to find your own primal world views and compare them with the descriptions above. I found that mine agree pretty much with the liberal premises (low hierarchical, intentional, and world beliefs, high worth exploring belief), but land pretty definitively with conservative conclusions (high-ish acceptable world belief, low-ish progressing world belief). Riddle me that, Clifton.

Also, my funny world belief was 5.0 out of 5.0, which is comically on brand.

Anyway, share your results below! Not only is it a fun self-reflective exercise and engaging discussion, but you’ll also help advance the field of psychology. YAY PROGRESS