by Choices regarding political candidates and issues are inherently limited and imperfect, leaving many people with mixed feelings, and even conflicting opinions, about their preferred candidate or position.
In general, being ambivalent reduces political participation. For example, the more ambivalent a person is about candidates in an election, the less likely that person will vote.
We are social psychologists who study how people’s beliefs influence their behaviour.
In a new article in the journal Science Advances, we find something that goes against that trend of disaffected ambivalence: The more ambivalent a person is about a political issue, the more likely they are to support violence and other extreme acts related to it. that matter. .
Ambivalent people are more supportive of extreme actions
In one study in a series we conducted, we measured the opinions of thousands of people across several surveys on one of many topics, such as abortion, gun control or COVID-19 policies. We also measured how ambivalent they were about that opinion. We then asked them about their willingness to engage in various activities to support their views. Some of the actions were routine, such as voting for candidates that the participants agreed with, donating money or volunteering. Other actions were more extreme, such as engaging in violence against partisan opponents.
In other studies, we examined national data collected by researchers at the Democracy Fund’s Voter Study Group and the Collaborative Election Study that included similar questions.
When we analyzed the links between people’s ambivalence and their willingness to engage in or support each behavior, we found that the results of all the studies depended on the extreme of the behavior. As expected, more ambivalent people were less willing to support or engage in moderate activities, such as voting. But contrary to our initial expectations, people who felt more ambivalent were also more willing to support or engage in the extreme actions, especially if they felt strongly about the issue.
Handling discomfort
In subsequent studies, we tried to understand why ambivalent people show more support for extreme political actions, from fighting political opponents or campaigning to break them to even more extreme actions, including violence.
We thought that the psychological discomfort experienced by ambivalent people might be one factor: When people feel uncomfortable about their beliefs, they often look for ways to compensate through strong signaling. For example, when their beliefs are challenged, people sometimes respond by supporting them even more strongly.
Likewise, we hypothesized that ambivalent people may support extreme actions because they feel uneasy and want to express clarity and conviction about their beliefs.
Our findings were consistent with this idea that people may compensate for their discomfort by supporting extreme actions: When we asked how uncomfortable participants felt about their views on the issue, more ambivalent people reported that they were not as comfortable with their views, which was also concerning. supporting more extreme behaviors for them.
Extreme actions with real promises
However, these are hypothetical behaviours. Are more ambivalent people really more willing to take extreme actions?
We tested this by asking people about specific actions that had real consequences. We gave participants the opportunity to allocate money to environmental organizations that are known for their radical ideologies and measures, such as sabotaging energy infrastructure and blocking traffic – JustStopOil and EarthFirst! Alternatively, participants could choose a chance to win some or all of the money themselves.
We found that people who were ambivalent about environmentalism allocated more money to JustStopOil and EarthFirst! nor people who were ambivalent, especially if they felt strongly about environmental issues. And this was specific to the radical charities. When given the same opportunity to donate to mainstream organizations – the Sierra Club and The Nature Conservancy – ambivalent people did not allocate more money than non-ambivalent people.
We did not directly test why people would strongly support the environment despite being ambivalent about environmental issues. But those concerned about climate change may also be concerned about the economic consequences of tackling it. Or people who struggle to make environmentally friendly choices and feel they are not living up to their own standards. Or perhaps people with more general political ambivalence, who believe that even good policies have trade-offs.
A bigger picture
The link between ambivalence and extreme support activities in our study was one of correlation – where two items are linked but the cause of that link has not been determined. So we cannot be sure that the reason for that support is ambiguity. Maybe the relationship goes the other way, and supporting extreme activities makes people more ambivalent. Or maybe there is some other factor that we both overlooked.
But when we looked for evidence for these alternative explanations, we didn’t find much. For example, changing whether we asked about ambivalence before or after asking about support for the extreme actions did not affect the results. And while extreme behavior is associated with other factors, such as a tendency towards aggression, even when we compared people who were equal on those other factors, the ambiguity was still important. However, we do not know everything about the relationship between ambivalence and realism.
The psychology of extreme behavior is complex. To explain why, many studies show that certain people are particularly susceptible to extremism, including those who struggle to control their emotions. Our research suggests another possibility: that certain beliefs themselves have characteristics – particularly ambivalence – that foster support for extremist activities.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a non-profit, independent news organization that brings you reliable facts and analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Joseph Siev, University of Virginia and Richard Petty, The Ohio State University
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Richard Petty receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the Ohio State University Office of Research.
Joseph Siev does not work for, consult with, or own shares in, or receive funding from, any company or organization that would benefit from this article this, and has not disclosed any relevant connections beyond their academic appointment.
