For liberals and conservatives, 'belief superiority' is bipartisan

Duke study finds people with extreme views feel most superior about their beliefs

2013-10-07

(Press-News.org) DURHAM, N.C. -- As the budget crisis drags on, at least conservatives and liberals have something in common: both believe their views on certain issues are not only correct but all other views are inferior.

A study from Duke University examined whether one end of the American political spectrum believes more strongly than the other in the superiority of its principles and positions. It found both sides have elements of "belief superiority," depending on the issue.

When asked about nine hot-button issues, conservatives feel most superior about their views on voter identification laws, taxes and affirmative action. Liberals feel most superior about their views on government aid for the needy, torture and not basing laws on religion.

The study, now posted in the online edition of Psychological Science, questioned 527 adults, (289 men, 238 women), ages 18-67, about the issues. It examined whether those who endorse the extremes of conservative and liberal viewpoints demonstrate greater belief superiority than those who hold moderate views.

The study asked participants to not only report their attitudes on the nine topics, but also how superior they feel about their viewpoint for each issue.

Researchers found that those at the extremes of the political spectrum on particular issues felt most superior about their beliefs. Dogmatism -- defined as an arrogant assertion of opinions as truths -- was also greater among those who said their views were superior.

"These findings help to explain why politicians with more extreme views can't reach across the aisle," said Kaitlin Toner, who recently completed her Ph.D. at Duke University and was lead author of the study. "As more extreme candidates get elected to Congress, compromise becomes more difficult and deadlocks increase because those with more extreme views are more certain that they are right."

Dr. Mark Leary, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke who supervised the research, added that the findings capture nuances in the relationship between political beliefs and attitude entrenchment that previous research has not shown. "We are not talking here about one political party being more entrenched and dogmatic than the other," Leary said. "Instead, people on both sides who hold extreme beliefs are more certain that they are right."

The participants answered online questionnaires, with the first one measuring belief superiority on nine political issues on which conservatives and liberals tend to disagree:

health care (the degree to which health care should be covered by the government or by private insurance);

illegal immigration (the degree to which people who enter the country illegally should be dealt with more strictly or more leniently than at present);

abortion (the conditions under which abortion should be legal);

how large of a role the government should play in helping people in need;

voter identification (whether people should be required to show personal identification in order to vote);

the degree to which income taxes are too high;

the conditions under which torture should be used to obtain information from terrorists;

affirmative action;

the degree to which national and state laws should be based on religious beliefs.

"The tendency for people with extreme views to be overly confident is not limited to politics," said Leary. "Any time people hold an extreme position, even on a trivial issue, they seem to think that their views are better than anyone else's."

### Other authors of the study were Michael Asher, an undergraduate, and Katrina Jongman-Sereno, a graduate student, both in Duke's Department of Psychology & Neuroscience.

CITATION: "Feeling Superior is a Bipartisan Issue: Extremity (Not Direction) of Political Views Predicts Perceived Belief Superiority," Kaitlin Toner, Mark R. Leary, and Michael Asher, Duke University. Psychological Science, October 2013; DOI: 10.1177/0956797613494848

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Boston University researchers test effectiveness of treatments for alcoholism and anxiety

2013-10-07

Domenic Ciraulo, MD, chair of psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and David H. Barlow, PhD, professor of psychology at Boston University (BU), have collaborated to study the effect of behavioral and medication treatments on patients with alcoholism and anxiety. The findings, published in the journal Behaviour Research and Therapy, suggest that Transdiagnostic cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) was more effective in reducing heavy drinking in anxious alcoholics than progressive muscle relaxation therapy (PMR). They also found that the addition of ...

How do stress hormones during pregnancy predict adult nicotine addiction?

2013-10-07

(PROVIDENCE, R.I.) -- Adult women whose mothers had increased levels of stress hormones while they were pregnant are at greater risk of becoming addicted to nicotine, according to a new study led by a Miriam Hospital researcher. The 40-year longitudinal study provides the first evidence that prenatal exposure to the class of stress hormones known as glucocorticoids predicts nicotine dependence later in life – but only for daughters. It also confirms previous research that babies born to moms who smoked when pregnant have an increased risk of nicotine addiction in adulthood. ...

Numerically identifying pollen grains improves on conventional ID method

2013-10-07

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Researchers have developed a new quantitative – rather than qualitative – method of identifying pollen grains that is certainly nothing to sneeze at. The research appears in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. Since the invention of the earliest light microscopes, the classification and identification of pollen and spores has been a highly subjective venture for those who use these tiny particles to study vegetation in their field, palynology. However, according to the lead author of the study, Luke Mander, a former ...

Scientists unlock secret of cattle ticks' resistance to pesticide

2013-10-07

Scientists have discovered how a tick which transmits devastating diseases to cattle has developed resistance to one of the main pesticides used to kill it. Approximately 80% of cattle around the world, mostly in the tropics and sub-tropics, are exposed to the cattle tick – Rhipicephalis microplus – which can cause anaemia, reduced rate of growth and death, resulting in a major economic impact on farmers. Prevention of disease is through frequent treatment of cattle with acarides –pesticides for ticks and mites – mainly amitraz, ivermectins and pyrethroids, but ticks ...

Infanticide linked to wet-nursing in meerkats

2013-10-07

Subordinate female meerkats who try to breed often lose their offspring to infanticide by the dominant female or are evicted from the group. These recently bereaved or ostracised mothers may then become wet-nurses for the dominant female, an activity that may be a form of "rent" that allows them to remain in the community. Wet-nursing another mother's offspring – called allolactation – occurs across a variety of mammals and is thought to provide survival benefits to the nursed offspring and to the mother of the pups. However, little has been definitively known of why ...

Study: Lance Armstrong failed social media, too

2013-10-07

CLEMSON, S.C. — Lance Armstrong used Twitter to employ image-repair strategies in a way that cultivated followers and countered media reports. However, he neglected to enact any image-repair tweets following his admission to using performance-enhancing drugs in a nationally staged interview with Oprah Winfrey, researchers say. Clemson University communication studies assistant professor Jimmy Sanderson said traditional media like television and newspapers have been a staple of image repair, but with the rise of social media, athletes now have an additional avenue for ...

South Africa reverses mortality trend in children under 5

2013-10-07

Philadelphia, Pa. (October 7, 2013) – Over the past decade, South Africa has made a dramatic reversal in child survival—mainly because of improvements in HIV/AIDS care, reports a study in AIDS, official journal of the International AIDS Society. AIDS is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. "After years of rising mortality rates, the mortality picture for South Africa's children has shifted drastically," according to the report by Kate Kerber, MPH, of University of the Western Cape, Belleville, South Africa, supported by the global ...

How JC Polyomavirus invades cells

2013-10-07

For more than a decade the research group of Brown University Professor Walter Atwood has doggedly pursued the workings of the JC polyomavirus, which causes a disease called PML that fatally degrades the central nervous system of patients with weakened immune systems. In a study published online Oct. 2 in the Journal of Virology, his team describes how it gains entry into cells: It breaks in via certain receptors of the neurotransmitter serotonin called 5-HT2 receptors. Atwood, lead author and graduate student Benedetta Assetta and their co-authors showed this by inserting ...

Facial recognition is more accurate in photos showing whole person

2013-10-07

Subtle body cues allow people to identify others with surprising accuracy when faces are difficult to differentiate. This skill may help researchers improve person-recognition software and expand their understanding of how humans recognize each other. A study published in Psychological Science by researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas demonstrates that humans rely on non-facial cues, such as body shape and build, to identify people in challenging viewing conditions, such as poor lighting. "Psychologists and computer scientists have concentrated almost exclusively ...

Where in the world are young people using the internet?

2013-10-07

According to a common myth, today's young people are all glued to the Internet. But in fact, only 30 percent of the world's youth population between the ages of 15 and 24 years old has been active online for at least five years. In South Korea, 99.6 percent of young people are active, the highest percentage in the world. The least? The Asian island of Timor Leste with less than 1 percent. Those are among the many findings in a study from the Georgia Institute of Technology and International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The study is the first attempt to measure, by ...

Inhibition of cyclooxygenase-2 upregulates the nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 signaling pathway to mitigate hepatocyte ferroptosis in chronic liver injury

For liberals and conservatives, 'belief superiority' is bipartisan

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: