Brown, GDA, Walasek, L, Mullett, TL et al. (4 more authors) (2024) Political Attitudes and Disease Threat: Regional Pathogen Stress Is Associated With Conservative Ideology Only for Older Individuals. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 50 (11). pp. 1581-1595. ISSN 0146-1672
Abstract
What environmental factors are associated with individual differences in political ideology, and do such associations change over time? We examine whether reductions in pathogen prevalence in U.S. states over the past 60 years are associated with reduced associations between parasite stress and conservatism. We report a positive association between infection levels and conservative ideology in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. However, this correlation reduces from the 1980s onwards. These results suggest that the ecological influence of infectious diseases may be larger for older people who grew up (or whose parents grew up) during earlier time periods. We test this hypothesis by analyzing the political affiliation of 45,000 Facebook users, and find a positive association between self-reported political affiliation and regional pathogen stress for older (>40 years) but not younger individuals. It is concluded that the influence of environmental pathogen stress on ideology may have reduced over time.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2023 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | pathogen stress, infection, ideology, conservatism |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Business (Leeds) > Management Division (LUBS) (Leeds) > Management Division Decision Research (LUBS) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 19 Jun 2023 16:29 |
Last Modified: | 15 Nov 2024 17:51 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | SAGE |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/01461672231183199 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:200099 |