The Effect of Type of Threat on Political Ideology

Abstract

There is currently no consensus about the relationship between threat and political ideology in the literature. While conservatism as motivated social cognition account (MSC) suggests that when people are under threat, they become more politically conservative, the Terror Management Theory (TMT) argues that threat leads people to support their existing worldviews. On the other hand, the Issue Ownership Model suggests that some parties or leaders might seem more compatible in solving certain problems. Therefore, different types of threats might result in various types of shifts in political ideology. To clarify the controversy, in this research, we examined the relationship between the type of threat and political ideology in a Turkish context. We investigated whether the type of threat might produce different effects on political ideology. Participants read one of the three articles, and then responded to the political ideology measures. Two articles (terror threat – climate threat) served as manipulations (intended to elicit a conservative shift or liberal shift) while the other one served as a control condition. Our main hypotheses were that (1) participants in the terror threat condition would score higher on the conservatism scale compared to other conditions, (2) participants in the climate threat condition would score lower on the conservatism scale compared to other conditions, and (3) participants in the threat conditions will display more negative mood assessment compared to control conditions. We found no support for our main hypotheses; on the other hand, our exploratory analyses yield significant results for future studies to take into account.