Public Opinion and the Psychologies of Threat
Please arrive 5 minutes before event begins.
A growing body of evidence suggests a strong association between perceptions of threat and conservatism, yet little work specifies the precise psychological mechanisms connecting the two. Integrating perspectives from across the psychological sciences, we argue that conservative responses emerge from intuitive processes geared towards solving evolutionary problems associated with particular kinds of threats and, hence, vary systematically from one threat to another. We label this learned threat management. In addition, we also identify the simultaneous operations of an intuitive threat-management process, which leads to support for any policy that ostensibly offers protection, whether this policy can reasonably be designated as liberal or conservative. We test these predictions in survey experiments in the United States and Denmark using realistic news stimuli about disease and crime threats. Our findings support the simultaneous existence of threat-general and threat-specific processes underlying public opinion when reacting to threats.
Date: 20 November 2020, 16:00 (Friday, 6th week, Michaelmas 2020)
Venue: Colloquium to be hosted on Zoom
Speaker: David Hendry (London School of Economics)
Organising department: Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR)
Organisers: Petra Schleiter (DPIR), Nelson Ruiz (University of Oxford)
Part of: Politics Research Colloquium
Booking required?: Not required
Booking email: events@politics.ox.ac.uk
Audience: This colloquium is usually a closed event to members of Oxford, but this Michaelmas Term, we are delighted to be able to open this event to external attendees. Please email events@politics.ox.ac.uk to book your place using your official University email address. (If you are a member of Oxford, email us, and you can be added to the Politics Research Colloquium mailing list, you do not need to book your place and joining details will be emailed to you).
Editor: Hannah Vinten