Lerninhalte |
Political conservatives and people who hold right-wing political beliefs are thought to be more authoritarian, prejudiced, fearful and susceptible to conspiracy beliefs than liberals. However, there is evidence that people who hold left-wing beliefs are equally authoritarian, prejudiced and fearful as conservatives. Although researchers generally agree that there are psychological similarities and differences between leftists and rightists, the origins and sources of these differences remains a subject of debate. Why is this the case? What are the origins of these psychological differences and similarities? Are the differences between conservatives are liberals genetically and neurologically hard-wired? Is there a conspiracy among (liberal) academics to portray conservatives and right-wingers in a bad light and associate negative traits and attributes to them? Or are the supposed psychological differences between conservatives and liberals just a product of the stimuli, materials and procedure used to assess individual differences? In this seminar, we shall dig deeper into these issues in the hopes of understanding the antecedents and consequences of left and right-wing ideological belief systems. |