The self-control consequences of political ideology

Abstract

Evidence from three studies reveals a critical difference in self-control as a function of political ideology. Specifically, greater endorsement of political conservatism (versus liberalism) was associated with greater attention regulation and task persistence. Moreover, this relationship is shown to stem from varying beliefs in freewill; specifically, the association between political ideology and self-control is mediated by differences in the extent to which belief in freewill is endorsed, is independent of task performance or motivation, and is reversed when freewill is perceived to impede (rather than enhance) self-control. Collectively, these findings offer insight into the self-control consequences of political ideology by detailing conditions under which conservatives and liberals are better suited to engage in self-control and outlining the role of freewill beliefs in determining these conditions.

Keywords: freewill beliefs; individual differences; political ideology; self-control.

Fig. 1.

Path analysis in study 2. Values in parentheses indicate standardized beta coefficients before controlling for other variables in the model. *P < 0.05.

Fig. 2.

Persistence on the anagram task as a function of freewill theory and political ideology in study 3. Values reflect untransformed times in seconds and are plotted at ±1 SD on the political ideology scale.