Thread by @DegenRolf

Contrary to a long-held assumption in political psychology, collective threats do not move people to the right. journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117… Although political orientations are generally stable, prominent theories of ideology suggest that threats push people towards conservatism (e.g., Jost et al., 2003). The conservative shift hypothesis posits that conservatism buffers against ecological threats because it is characterized by resistance to social change, and support for tradition and hierarchies. Recent attempts to establish the veracity of the conservative shift hypothesis have failed to find supportive evidence. In two studies, we build upon this work in two ways. First, we test the conservative shift hypothesis across five ecological threats: unemployment, immigration, racial diversity, COVID-19, and violent crime, more than has been examined previously. Second, we test whether, in line with political personality theories, openness to experience and conscientiousness predict who is likely to shift to the right in the face of threat and who is not. Both studies were appropriately powered and used nationally representative samples, in contrast to many studies supporting the theories we test. In one nationally representative panel study from the Netherlands (N = 11,189) and one nationally representative repeated cross-sectional study in the United States (N = 9,040), we find minimal support for the conservative shift hypothesis. In Study 1, slightly less than half of coefficients supported the conservative shift hypothesis, with liberal shifts occurring in about a quarter of cases. Both liberal and conservative shifts were small, suggesting that that their substantive implications are likely marginal. Study 2 showed no support for the hypothesis. Overall, the results suggest that ecological threats do not consistently push people towards conservatism, nor is their influence consistently moderated by openness or conscientiousness.