Liberals Think More Analytically (More “WEIRD”) Than Conservatives
- 1University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA
- 2New York University, New York City, USA
- 3Beijing Normal University, China
- 4China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou, China
- Thomas Talhelm, Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, P.O. Box 400400, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4400, USA. Email: tat8dc{at}virginia.edu
Abstract
Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan summarized cultural differences in psychology and argued that people from one particular culture are outliers: people from societies that are Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD). This study shows that liberals think WEIRDer than conservatives. In five studies with more than 5,000 participants, we found that liberals think more analytically (an element of WEIRD thought) than moderates and conservatives. Study 3 replicates this finding in the very different political culture of China, although it held only for people in more modernized urban centers. These results suggest that liberals and conservatives in the same country think as if they were from different cultures. Studies 4 to 5 show that briefly training people to think analytically causes them to form more liberal opinions, whereas training them to think holistically causes shifts to more conservative opinions.
Article Notes
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Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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Funding The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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Supplemental Material The online supplemental material is available at http://pspb.sagepub.com/supplemental.
- Received October 7, 2013.
- Accepted November 17, 2014.
- © 2014 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc
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