The Impact of Uncertainty, Threat, and Political Identity on Support for Political Compromise

This work examines the impact of uncertainty and threat on support for political compromise. In Study 1, uncertainty, threat, and support for compromise were measured. Uncertainty increased support for compromise only when paired with positive or neutral affect. Studies 2 and 3 used an experimental design to examine the impact of incidental affect on support for political compromise as a function of political identification. Uncertainty was more likely to increase support for compromise in positive or neutral contexts and for political moderates and liberals. The combination of uncertainty and threat led conservatives to express reduced support for compromise. 1 digitalcommons.unl.edu 2 Ingrid J. Haas in Bas ic and Appl ied Social Psychology , 2016 Gregor, Zanna, Holmes, & Spencer, 2001; Proulx & Heine, 2008; Proulx, Heine, & Vohs, 2010; Van Den Bos, Poortvliet, Maas, Miedema, & Van Den Ham, 2005). Although much of the work demonstrating negative outcomes from uncertainty has examined uncertainty in the context of threat, other research in social psychology has shown that uncertainty can function differently when attached to positive versus negative emotions. For example, Wilson and colleagues have shown that uncertainty enhances both positive and negative emotions (BarAnan, Wilson, & Gilbert, 2009). The purpose of the present research was to investigate the impact of uncertainty and threat on support for political compromise, specifically. Past work has established a link between threat and decreased willingness to compromise (Halperin, Porat, & Wohl, 2013; Maoz & McCauley, 2009), but the effect of uncertainty on compromise remains unclear. Whereas threat represents the potential for harm and is clearly negative in valence, uncertainty signals a lack of information or confidence and must be interpreted in light of the surrounding context (Haas, 2012; Haas & Cunningham, 2014). Uncertainty can be attached to either negative (e.g., threatening) or positive (e.g., hopeful) affective states. From this perspective, the effect of uncertainty on compromise is likely to differ based on the valence (positive or negative) attached to that uncertainty. If uncertainty is associated with threat, it should be more likely to decrease support for compromise, but if uncertainty is associated with positive affect or emotion, it may actually be more likely to increase support for compromise. Indeed, work has shown that positive emotions with an element of uncertainty, such as hope, do have a positive effect on intergroup relations— increasing support for compromise in the context of diplomatic relations (Cohen-Chen, Halperin, Crisp, & Gross, 2013). When uncertainty is not associated with threat, it may be more likely that people consider new sources of information as a way to reduce uncertainty. If that is the case, uncertainty might also lead people to be willing to accept alternate viewpoints—potentially leading to compromise. To examine when uncertainty is more likely to lead to openversus closed-mindedness, some of our prior work has independently manipulated both uncertainty (certain vs. uncertain) and threat (low vs. high) and measured the impact of these affective states on political tolerance (Haas & Cunningham, 2014). Results showed that threat moderated the impact of uncertainty on tolerance. When participants felt uncertain in a safe or neutral context, uncertainty increased political tolerance. However, when participants felt uncertain and threatened, uncertainty decreased political tolerance. The goal of the present research was to extend these findings and attempt to offer insights as to why compromise about the ACA and the budget was so difficult to achieve in the fall of 2013. Uncertainty, threat, and political ideology Recent work in social and political psychology has suggested that political ideology may influence how people respond to uncertainty and threat. Much of this work has been consistent in arguing that political conservatives are more responsive to both uncertainty and threat (Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003) and show a general negativity bias (Hibbing, Smith, & Alford, 2014; Shook & Fazio, 2009). For example, Jost et al. (2007) examined the independent influence of both uncertainty and threat in a correlational design, showing that both predicted conservative political views. Hibbing and colleagues have presented individuals with a variety of negatively valenced emotional stimuli, finding support for the idea that conservatives show greater physiological reactivity to a variety of negative stimuli (Oxley et al., 2008; Smith, Oxley, Hibbing, Alford, & Hibbing, 2011). Some alternative perspectives have been introduced, such as the idea that conservatives may be sensitive to emotionally arousing stimuli, regardless of valence. In a recent set of studies, researchers found that both positive and negative video clips that were highly arousing led to endorsement of conservative political views (Tritt, Inzlicht, & Peterson, 2013). Although a growing body of work suggests that conservatives and liberals may respond differently to emotional or affectively laden stimuli, there is ongoing debate about the exact nature of these differences. Based on prior work, there is reason to expect that conservatives will be responsive to both uncertainty and threat. It remains unclear, however, whether conservatives are likely to be more responsive to uncertainty regardless of context, or uncertainty mainly in the context of threat. In other words, if we assume that uncertainty and threat can be viewed as distinct psychological constructs, it is important to understand not just how political ideology influences responses to each, but how ideology may influence responses to their interaction. Based on work by Jost and colleagues (Jost et al., 2003; Jost et al., 2007), we should expect to see conservatives responding more to both uncertainty and threat independently. If conservatives show a general negativity bias (Hibbing et al., 2014), we might expect conservatives to respond primarily to threat given that threat is more likely than uncertainty to be clearly negative in valence. The arousal hypothesis (Tritt et al., 2013) might suggest that conservatives would respond to uncertainty regardless of context (in both positive and negative situations), but it is worth noting that arousal and uncertainty are not necessarily the Uncerta inty , Threat , Pol it ical Identity and Pol it ical Compromise 3 same thing. Uncertainty could be associated with arousal in some contexts, but uncertainty about mundane issues or in neutral contexts is less likely to lead to physiological arousal. Each of these theories makes different predictions about how political ideology influences responses to uncertainty, threat, and the combination of the two. But none of these approaches makes a clear prediction about how ideology should influence responses to uncertainty in different contexts. If responses to uncertainty are context dependent, as we have suggested in prior work (Haas & Cunningham, 2014), it may be the case that the combination of uncertainty with threat is more likely to influence conservatives than uncertainty or threat alone. We have suggested that this combination feels especially bad, as it may signal some threat in the environment but also a lack of information about that threat or how to cope with it. From this perspective, one might expect conservatives to be negatively impacted by uncertain threats, specifically. Conservatives may also respond to uncertainty in the absence of threat, but given that much of the existing literature has looked at uncertainty mainly in the context of threat, this is still an open question. Overview of current work The primary goal of the current work was to investigate the impact of uncertainty on support for compromise and examine whether threat moderates this effect. A second goal was to examine whether these responses to uncertainty and threat differ as a function of political ideology—liberal versus conservative. Study 1 uses a correlational design to investigate these processes in the context of a real-world political event: the partial U.S. government shutdown in October 2013. Studies 2 and 3 use an experimental approach to examine the causal impact of uncertainty on support for compromise as a function of threat, political ideology, and ideological extremity.