Preliminary Studies

Sensitivity to interpersonal social threats

Are conservatives and liberals sensitive to different threats? Does tolerance of misbehaviour as a child explain differences in sensitivity to interpersonal social threats?

I hypothesised the following;

1. misbehaviour tolerated as a child would negatively correlate with sensitivity to interpersonal social threats;
r = -0.190, df = 86, p = .077, 95% CI [-0.38 0.02]

2. there would be a political orientation difference in both misbehavior tolerated as a child, and sensitivity to interpersonal social threats;
No difference was observed:
misbehaviour tolerated; t(86) = .65 p = .516
Conservative misbehaviour tolerated M=3.20/SD=1.20/N=40, Liberal misbehaviour tolerated M=3.04/SD=1.07/N=48
social exclusion; t(86) = -.62, p = .536
Conservative social exclusion M=4.45/SD=1.45/N=40, Liberal social exclusion M=4.63/SD=1.20/N=48.

3. there would be a gender difference in sensitivity to interpersonal social threats;
t(86) = -1.953, p = .054
Male M=4.22/SD=1.27/N=36, Female M=4.77/SD=1.31/N=52

Survey details: 100 participants were surveyed. 50 seconds min completion time enforced. 15 cents paid per contributor. The used measures are crude approximations of the constructs (for example; the political orientation measure is not testing RWA or any of the other formal concepts). The following questions were asked;

1. How much misbehavior were you allowed to 'get away with' as a child?
2. How bad is it for a person to socially exclude another person?
3. How good is it for a person to rob a bank? [dummy variable check]
4. Do you consider yourself to be more liberal or more conservative?
5. gender [optional]

Copyright © 2018, Richard Baxter