Feeling superior is a bipartisan issue: extremity (not direction) of political views predicts perceived belief superiority.
Abstract
Accusations of entrenched political partisanship have been launched against both conservatives
and liberals. But is feeling superior about one's beliefs a partisan issue? Two competing
hypotheses exist: the rigidity-of-the-right hypothesis (i.e., conservatives are dogmatic)
and the ideological-extremism hypothesis (i.e., extreme views on both sides predict
dogmatism). We measured 527 Americans' attitudes about nine contentious political
issues, the degree to which they thought their beliefs were superior to other people's,
and their level of dogmatism. Dogmatism was higher for people endorsing conservative
views than for people endorsing liberal views, which replicates the rigidity-of-the-right
hypothesis. However, curvilinear effects of ideological attitude on belief superiority
(i.e., belief that one's position is more correct than another's) supported the ideological-extremism
hypothesis. Furthermore, responses reflecting the greatest belief superiority were
obtained on conservative attitudes for three issues and liberal attitudes for another
three issues. These findings capture nuances in the relationship between political
beliefs and attitude entrenchment that have not been revealed previously.
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/23968Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1177/0956797613494848Publication Info
Toner, Kaitlin; Leary, Mark R; Asher, Michael W; & Jongman-Sereno, Katrina P (2013). Feeling superior is a bipartisan issue: extremity (not direction) of political views
predicts perceived belief superiority. Psychological science, 24(12). pp. 2454-2462. 10.1177/0956797613494848. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/23968.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Mark R. Leary
Garonzik Family Distinguished Professor Emeritus
Mark Leary is Garonzik Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University.
He earned his bachelor’s degree in Psychology from West Virginia Wesleyan College
and his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Florida. He taught previously
at Denison University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Wake Forest University.
Leary has published 14 books and more than 250 scholarly articles and chapters on
topics dealing with social motivation, emotion, a

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