126
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      Understanding Libertarian Morality: The Psychological Dispositions of Self-Identified Libertarians

      research-article

      Read this article at

      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Libertarians are an increasingly prominent ideological group in U.S. politics, yet they have been largely unstudied. Across 16 measures in a large web-based sample that included 11,994 self-identified libertarians, we sought to understand the moral and psychological characteristics of self-described libertarians. Based on an intuitionist view of moral judgment, we focused on the underlying affective and cognitive dispositions that accompany this unique worldview. Compared to self-identified liberals and conservatives, libertarians showed 1) stronger endorsement of individual liberty as their foremost guiding principle, and weaker endorsement of all other moral principles; 2) a relatively cerebral as opposed to emotional cognitive style; and 3) lower interdependence and social relatedness. As predicted by intuitionist theories concerning the origins of moral reasoning, libertarian values showed convergent relationships with libertarian emotional dispositions and social preferences. Our findings add to a growing recognition of the role of personality differences in the organization of political attitudes.

          Related collections

          Most cited references12

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: not found

          The efficient assessment of need for cognition.

          A short form for assessing individual differences in need for cognition is described.
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: found
            • Article: not found

            A new Big Five: fundamental principles for an integrative science of personality.

            Despite impressive advances in recent years with respect to theory and research, personality psychology has yet to articulate clearly a comprehensive framework for understanding the whole person. In an effort to achieve that aim, the current article draws on the most promising empirical and theoretical trends in personality psychology today to articulate 5 big principles for an integrative science of the whole person. Personality is conceived as (a) an individual's unique variation on the general evolutionary design for human nature, expressed as a developing pattern of (b) dispositional traits, (c) characteristic adaptations, and (d) self-defining life narratives, complexly and differentially situated (e) in culture and social context. The 5 principles suggest a framework for integrating the Big Five model of personality traits with those self-defining features of psychological individuality constructed in response to situated social tasks and the human need to make meaning in culture. 2006 APA, all rights reserved
              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: found
              • Article: not found

              The psychology of the unthinkable: taboo trade-offs, forbidden base rates, and heretical counterfactuals.

              Five studies explored cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses to proscribed forms of social cognition. Experiments 1 and 2 revealed that people responded to taboo trade-offs that monetized sacred values with moral outrage and cleansing. Experiments 3 and 4 revealed that racial egalitarians were least likely to use, and angriest at those who did use, race-tainted base rates and that egalitarians who inadvertently used such base rates tried to reaffirm their fair-mindedness. Experiment 5 revealed that Christian fundamentalists were most likely to reject heretical counterfactuals that applied everyday causal schemata to Biblical narratives and to engage in moral cleansing after merely contemplating such possibilities. Although the results fit the sacred-value-protection model (SVPM) better than rival formulations, the SVPM must draw on cross-cultural taxonomies of relational schemata to specify normative boundaries on thought.
                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, USA )
                1932-6203
                2012
                21 August 2012
                : 7
                : 8
                : e42366
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, United States of America
                [2 ]Department of Psychology and Social Behavior, Irvine, California, United States of America
                [3 ]Department of Psychology, Charlottesville, Virginia, United States of America
                Boston College, United States of America
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have read the journal's policy and have the following conflicts: This study was partly funded by Siemer & Associates. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

                Conceived and designed the experiments: RI SK JG PD JH. Performed the experiments: RI SK JG PD JH. Analyzed the data: RI SK JG PD JH. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: RI JG JH. Wrote the paper: RI SK JG PD JH.

                Article
                PONE-D-12-05438
                10.1371/journal.pone.0042366
                3424229
                22927928
                aaa8faad-cb21-479c-88cf-3ad5f9c69000
                Copyright @ 2012

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 7 February 2012
                : 5 July 2012
                Page count
                Pages: 23
                Funding
                During the time the study was completed, general funding for the first author was provided by The John Templeton Foundation http://www.templeton.org/), Siemer and Associates ( http://www.siemer.com/), and an Oakley Fellowship from University of Southern California ( http://www.usc.edu). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
                Research Article
                Medicine
                Mental Health
                Psychology
                Personality
                Social Psychology
                Social and Behavioral Sciences
                Political Science
                Public Opinion
                Psychology
                Behavior
                Emotions
                Personality
                Social Psychology

                Uncategorized
                Uncategorized

                Comments

                Comment on this article