How pandemic-related changes in global attitudes toward the scientific community shape "post-pandemic" environmental opinion.

Low public concern about anthropogenic climate change (ACC)-due in part to distrust in the scientific community-may decrease demand for policies aimed at mitigating its deleterious effects. Encouragingly, though, recent research finds that experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic has elevated trust in scientific expertise worldwide. We explore the possibility that positive attitudes toward the medical community are "spilling over" to increase ACC acceptance via globally representative survey data from 107 countries (N = 119,088) conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. We show that trust in medical experts' handling of the COVID-19 pandemic is associated with increased ACC acceptance, worldwide. Problematically, though, we also show that the effects of trust in medical professionals is strongest in countries experiencing the most positive change in attitudes toward the scientific community, which tend to be disproportionately wealthy, and less likely to bear the unequal effects of climate change.

Who is in the middle: Social class, core values, and identities in India

This article examines how middle-class identity is experienced and employed by traditional and neo-middle-class identifiers in India. The economically and socially heterogeneous middle-class identifiers vote similarly, but we know very little about what they want out of politics. We focus on the subjective experiences of middle-class identifiers, we theorize the expressive function of middle-class identities, and we examine the socially and personally focused core values of traditional middle-class identifiers and neo-middle aspirers. We introduce the "Class as Social Identity" scale and analyze qualitative interviews with strong middle-class identifiers (Study 1) and the 2006, 2012, and 2014 World Values Survey India segments (Study 2). The interviews show that upper middle class and lower middle class identifiers express similar socially focused values but different personally focused values. The WVS analyses show convergence of upper-middle-class and lower-middle-class identifiers on conservation and self-transcendence in line with dominant political narratives and divergence on materialism, hedonism, and stimulation in line with their rising differences in income and every-day life pressures. We discuss the significance of these findings for the understanding of the political function of middle-class identities in India in the context of heightened Hindu nationalism and recent socioeconomic challenges aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Is the myth of left-wing authoritarianism itself a myth?

Is left-wing authoritarianism (LWA) closer to a myth or a reality? Twelve studies test the empirical existence and theoretical relevance of LWA. Study 1 reveals that both conservative and liberal Americans identify a large number of left-wing authoritarians in their lives. In Study 2, participants explicitly rate items from a recently-developed LWA measure as valid measurements of authoritarianism. Studies 3-11 show that persons who score high on this same LWA scale possess the traits associated with models of authoritarianism: LWA is positively related to threat sensitivity across multiple areas, including general ecological threats (Study 3), COVID disease threat (Study 4), Belief in a Dangerous World (Study 5), and Trump threat (Study 6). Further, high-LWA persons show more support for restrictive political correctness norms (Study 7), rate African-Americans and Jews more negatively (Studies 8-9), and show more cognitive rigidity (Studies 10 and 11). These effects hold when controlling for political ideology and when looking only within liberals, and further are similar in magnitude to comparable effects for right-wing authoritarianism. Study 12 uses the World Values Survey to provide cross-cultural evidence of Left-Wing Authoritarianism around the globe. Taken in total, this large array of triangulating evidence from 12 studies comprised of over 8,000 participants from the U.S. and over 66,000 participants world-wide strongly suggests that left-wing authoritarianism is much closer to a reality than a myth.

The Conditional Effects of Authoritarianism on COVID-19 Pandemic Health Behaviors and Policy Preferences.

A large literature contends that conservatives differ from liberals in their dispositional sensitivity to threat and needs for social order and security. Thus, a puzzle emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic when American conservatives, despite their purported threat sensitivity, responded to the pandemic in ways that evinced little concern toward the risks posed by COVID-19. Threat tolerant liberals present an equally interesting case, having fervently masked, isolated, and advocated for stringent public health restrictions when facing down COVID-19. Why did so many Americans adopt health behaviors and policy preferences at odds with their dispositional orientations toward threat and needs for security during the COVID-19 pandemic? In this paper, I analyze three national surveys to evaluate how psychological dispositions affected Americans' responses to COVID-19. I find that authoritarianism, a common measure of dispositional threat sensitivity and needs for security, conditionally affected Americans' responses to the pandemic. Directly, authoritarianism was associated with greater concern over COVID-19 and, in turn, increased willingness to engage in protective health behaviors, support restrictive public health measures, and support economic interventions amidst the pandemic-induced downturn. Indirectly, however, authoritarianism promoted identification with and cue-taking from right-wing elites who frequently downplayed the severity of COVID-19; attention to such rhetoric reduced politically engaged authoritarians' concern over COVID-19 and, in turn, their willingness to adopt protective health behaviors and support public health restrictions or economic interventionism. Attention to political discourse thus appears to have countervailed Americans' dispositional orientations toward threat and security during the COVID-19 pandemic. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11109-022-09828-9.

Sociotropic and Personal Threats and Authoritarian Reactions During COVID-19.

The authoritarianism literature is divided over whether perceived threats to normative social order (sociotropic threats) or threats to the individual's well-being (personal threats) activate authoritarian predispositions. In addition, while some approaches claim that perceived threats primarily trigger those high in authoritarianism, others claim that those who are low in authoritarianism are more sensitive to threats. Given the centrality of authoritarianism and threat on support for extraordinary policies in the context of COVID-19, this article sought to test to what extent different types of threats moderated the effect of authoritarianism on support for tough law and order policies and harsh punishments to contain the spread of coronavirus. Data from two preregistered survey experiments indicates that those high in authoritarianism were more willing to support tough law and order policies when primed with sociotropic threats while those low in authoritarianism became more willing to support such policies when primed with personal threats.

The Psychology of Political Polarization ( New York: Routledge, 2021 ). 180 pages. ISBN: 9780367487164. Paperback $37.56

According to Federico, the literature suggests that needs for security and certainty are less related to opinions in the economic domain than in the social domain because of the greater difficultly of comprehending economic issues compared with social issues. According to these authors, these social pressures may generate superficial consensuses in the short term but also have the potential to create broader political divisions in the long term. The book makes an important and timely contribution to research on political polarization. Because of its sophisticated use of psychological terminology and experimental methods, I would recommend this book for an audience familiar with political psychology.

Vitam instituere

If I had to name the task that the coronavirus entrusts us with, I would use the ancient Latin expression vitam instituere. Without retracing its history-it is a passage from Demosthenes, quoted by the Roman jurist Marcianus in the Digest-we may focus on its most current meaning. At a time when human life appears to be threatened and overpowered by death, our common effort can only be that of 'establishing' it again and again. What else, after all, is life if not this continuous 'establishment', the capacity to create ever new meanings. It is in this sense that Hannah Arendt, and before her Augustine, said that we, mankind, constitute a beginning because our first action is to come into the world, starting something that was not before. This first beginning was followed by another, a further founding act, constituted by language-the French psychoanalyst Pierre Legendre called it a second birth. It is from this birth that the city and political life originate, providing biological life with a historical horizon. This horizon is not in contrast with the world of nature, rather it traverses it in all its extension. The space of logos, and then of nomos, however autonomous in its wealth of configurations, has never become separate from that of bios. On the contrary, their relationship has become increasingly closer, to the point it is impossible to talk about politics by removing it from the sphere in which life is generated. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

The Italian laboratory: Rethinking debt in viral times

Once again Italy has become the testing ground for processes and experiences that have become global. The coronavirus has given rise to a completely novel phenomenon, which is not just a political or economic event in itself but a pandemic whose ferocity and rapid transmission requires extraordinary measures. Italy has become the avant-garde of the West, the first to be fully implicated after the initial outbreak in China. Italy is the "laboratory" of the West. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Political psychology data from a 26-wave yearlong longitudinal study (2019-2020)

Data was collected from 552 people from the United States every two weeks for one year for a 26-wave panel study. Participants recruited on Prolific completed measures of political attitudes, political identification, perceived threat, perceived stress, and social distance at every wave. They completed demographic measures at the first wave. They completed political behaviour intentions (e.g., voting, signing a petition) in four waves spread over the last half of the study. They completed items related to COVID-19 for the last four waves. Data is stored on the Open Science Framework. It can be used to study longitudinal associations between politically-relevant variables, assess stability overtime, and test for the influence of discrete events on attitudes during the course of the study. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

The psychology of democracy

What is a democracy? Why do we form democratic systems? Can democracy survive in an age of distrust and polarisation? The Psychology of Democracy explains the psychological underpinnings behind why people engage with and participate in politics. Covering the influence that political campaigns and media play, the book analyses topical and real-world political events including the Arab Spring, Brexit, Black Lives Matter, the US 2020 elections and the Covid-19 pandemic. Lilleker and Ozgul take the reader on a journey to explore the cognitive processes at play when engaging with a political news item all the way through to taking to the streets to protest government policy and action. In an age of post-truth and populism, The Psychology of Democracy shows us how a strong and healthy democracy depends upon the feelings and emotions of its citizens, including trust, belonging, empowerment and representation, as much as on electoral processes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

The Political Psychology of COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to unprecedented and extraordinary conditions. It represents a profound threat to health and political and economic stability globally. It is the pressing issue of the current historical moment and is likely to have far-reaching social and political implications over the next decade. Political psychology can inform our preparedness for the next phase of the pandemic as well as our planning for a post COVID-19 world. We hope that this special issue will play its part in helping us to think how we manage and live with COVID-19 over the coming decade. In this editorial, we review the key themes arising from the contributions to our special issue and, alongside existing knowledge highlight the relevance of political psychology to finding solutions during this time of crisis. The contributions to this special issue and the pandemic raise many classic topics of central interest to political psychology: leadership, solidarity and division, nationalism, equality, racism, and international and intergroup relations. In our editorial, we offer an analysis that highlights three key themes. First, the importance of sociopolitical factors in shaping behavior during this pandemic. Second, the relevance of political leadership and rhetoric to collective efforts to tackle SARS-COV-2. And third, how sociopolitical cohesion and division has become increasingly relevant during this time of threat and crisis.

The behavioral immune system and conservatism as predictors of disease-avoidant attitudes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique opportunity to explore the relationships between the behavioral immune system (BIS), Political Ideology, and disease avoidant attitudes (e.g., attitudes toward vaccination and attitudes about COVID-19). The BIS (e.g., disgust) is believed to be the first line of defense against pathogens and has been linked to socially conservative values. Ironically, however, the BIS has also been associated with anti-vaccination attitudes. In the current study, American participants (N = 139) completed an online survey with self-report measures of the BIS (e.g., disgust sensitivity and perceived infectability), political ideology, COVID-19 attitudes, and anti-vaccination attitudes. Disgust sensitivity was positively correlated with anti-vaccination attitudes but not significantly correlated with attitudes toward COVID-19. Perceived infectability, however, was negatively correlated with anti-vaccination attitudes and positively correlated with anxiety and knowledge about COVID-19. Right-wing authoritarianism and support for Trump were negatively correlated with knowledge and anxiety about COVID-19 and positively correlated with anti-vaccination attitudes.

Your health vs. my liberty: Philosophical beliefs dominated reflection and identifiable victim effects when predicting public health recommendation compliance during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In response to crises, people sometimes prioritize fewer specific identifiable victims over many unspecified statistical victims. How other factors can explain this bias remains unclear. So two experiments investigated how complying with public health recommendations during the COVID19 pandemic depended on victim portrayal, reflection, and philosophical beliefs (Total N = 998). Only one experiment found that messaging about individual victims increased compliance compared to messaging about statistical victims-i.e., "flatten the curve" graphs-an effect that was undetected after controlling for other factors. However, messaging about flu (vs. COVID19) indirectly reduced compliance by reducing perceived threat of the pandemic. Nevertheless, moral beliefs predicted compliance better than messaging and reflection in both experiments. The second experiment's additional measures revealed that religiosity, political preferences, and beliefs about science also predicted compliance. This suggests that flouting public health recommendations may be less about ineffective messaging or reasoning than philosophical differences.