Can anything stop America’s savage gun epidemic? By Mark Morford

[Bernardo de La Paz]

15. authoritarianism, dogmatism, intolerance of ambiguity, terror management, social dominance ...

Psychological Bulletin 2003, Vol. 129, No. 3, 339—375 Copyright
2003 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.
0033-2909/03/$12.OO DOt: l0.1037/0033-2909.129.3,339

Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition

John T. Jost, Stanford University; Arie W. Kruglanski, University
of Maryland at College Park; Jack Glaser, University of California,
Berkeley; Frank J. Sulloway, University of California, Berkeley

Analyzing political conservatism as motivated social cognition
integrates theories of personality (authoritarianism,
dogmatism—intolerance of ambiguity), epistemic and existential needs
(for closure, regulatory focus, terror management), and ideological
rationalization (social dominance, system justification). A
meta-analysis (88 samples, 12 countries, 22,818 cases) confirms that
several psychological variables predict political conservatism: death
anxiety (weighted mean r = .50); system instability (.47);
dogmatism—intolerance of ambiguity (.34); openness to experience
(—.32); uncertainty tolerance (—.27); needs for order, structure, and
closure (.26); integrative complexity (—.20); fear of threat and loss
(.18); and self-esteem (—.09). The core ideology of conservatism
stresses resistance to change and justification of inequality and is
motivated by needs that vary situationally and dispositionally to
manage uncertainty and threat.

http://www.sulloway.org/PoliticalConservatism%282003%29.pdf