Negativity bias, personality and political ideology.

Journal Article (Journal Article)

Research suggests that right-wing ideology is associated with negativity bias: a tendency to pay more attention and give more weight to negative versus positive stimuli. This work typically relies on either self-reported traits related to negativity bias in large, often-representative, samples or physiological and behavioural indicators of negativity bias in small convenience samples. We extend this literature and examine the relationship of negativity bias to political ideology using five distinct behavioural measures of negativity bias in four national samples of US residents with a total analytical sample size of about 4,000 respondents. We also examine the association of these behavioural measures to four of the most common self-report measures of personality in the literature on ideology. Across a wide range of tests, we find no consistent evidence for a relationship of negativity bias to either ideology or self-reported personality.

Full Text

Duke Authors

Cited Authors

  • Johnston, CD; Madson, GJ

Published Date

  • May 2022

Published In

Volume / Issue

  • 6 / 5

Start / End Page

  • 666 - 676

PubMed ID

  • 35534708

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 2397-3374

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 2397-3374

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

  • 10.1038/s41562-022-01327-5

Language

  • eng