Conservatives are more prone than liberals to engage in 'slippery slope' thinking .
[Slippery slope thinking is the belief that one initial, often small, action or event will inevitably set off a chain of events leading to a negative or undesirable extreme outcome.] To our knowledge, this research represents one of the first systematic empirical examinations of individual differences in the tendency toward slippery slope thinking. We center this investigation on the role of political ideologies in slippery slope thinking.
In 15 studies employing correlational, experimental, and natural language processing designs and with samples recruited from four countries, we tested three competing hypotheses derived from the literature.
We found consistent support only for the hypothesis that political conservatism would predict slippery slope thinking: More conservative individuals engaged in slippery slope thinking to a greater degree than more liberal individuals. These effects replicated across a variety of cultural, political, and linguistic contexts. We additionally find evidence of these ideological differences in social media behavior, and that slippery slope thinking has consequences for punitive attitudes.
Our studies identify an important new domain of ideological asymmetries, documenting differences in how liberals and conservatives evaluate arguments and make predictions of potentially negative events. Our results suggest that conservatives and liberals differ not just in what they believe (i.e., the content of their belief systems) but also in how they evaluate the likelihood of different future events given the same set of starting conditions. The greater tendency among conservatives to engage in slippery slope thinking may lead to a “catastrophizing” mind-set, whereby small societal changes seem more disastrous than they are.
[Slippery slope thinking is the belief that one initial, often small, action or event will inevitably set off a chain of events leading to a negative or undesirable extreme outcome.] To our knowledge, this research represents one of the first systematic empirical examinations of individual differences in the tendency toward slippery slope thinking. We center this investigation on the role of political ideologies in slippery slope thinking.
In 15 studies employing correlational, experimental, and natural language processing designs and with samples recruited from four countries, we tested three competing hypotheses derived from the literature.
We found consistent support only for the hypothesis that political conservatism would predict slippery slope thinking: More conservative individuals engaged in slippery slope thinking to a greater degree than more liberal individuals. These effects replicated across a variety of cultural, political, and linguistic contexts. We additionally find evidence of these ideological differences in social media behavior, and that slippery slope thinking has consequences for punitive attitudes.
Our studies identify an important new domain of ideological asymmetries, documenting differences in how liberals and conservatives evaluate arguments and make predictions of potentially negative events. Our results suggest that conservatives and liberals differ not just in what they believe (i.e., the content of their belief systems) but also in how they evaluate the likelihood of different future events given the same set of starting conditions. The greater tendency among conservatives to engage in slippery slope thinking may lead to a “catastrophizing” mind-set, whereby small societal changes seem more disastrous than they are.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
