Abstract
Research on adult populations has widely investigated the deep differences that characterize individuals who embrace either conservative or liberal views of the world. More recently, research has started to investigate these differences at very early stages of life. One major goal is to explore how parental political ideology may influence children's characteristics that are known to be associated to different ideological positions. In the present work, we further investigate the relations between parents' ideology and children cognitive processing strategies within the framework of political ideology as motivated social cognition (Jost et al., 2003) and the dual process model of political ideology (Duckitt et al., 2002). Specifically, epistemic (implicit attitudes toward order vs. chaos), existential (negativity and threat bias), and relational needs (conformity measure) were assessed in pre-school children (N = 106; 4–6 years). For each child at least one parent completed both the Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) and the Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) measures. Interestingly, results indicated that mothers' and fathers' responses had unique associations with children's socio-cognitive motivations, and different findings emerged in relation to the two facets of parental authoritarianism, namely dominance (i.e., SDO) and submission (i.e., RWA). More specifically, children's existential needs appeared to be more related to mothers' RWA scores, whereas children's epistemic needs appeared to be more related to fathers' SDO. Finally, parents' RWA and SDO scores appeared to have opposite effects on children's relational needs: children's conformity increased at increasing levels of mothers' RWA and decreased at increasing levels of fathers' SDO. Overall, however, results were relatively weak and several links between the responses of parents and their children were not significant, suggesting caution in drawing strong conclusions about the impact of parents' ideology. Limitations and future developments will be discussed.
Highlights
In the last decade, there has been a renewed interest in the study of political ideology from the psychological perspective (e.g., Jost et al, 2008b)
The coefficients suggest that parents share some similarity in their political ideology and that the overlap is only partial, highlighting the importance of analyzing the influence of each parent on children’s responses while controlling for the potential influence of the other parent
The present study explored the general hypothesis that 4–6 years old children might differ in their socio-cognitive motivations as a function of parental ideology, differentiating between two facets of ideology, namely authoritarian submission (i.e., Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA)) and authoritarian dominance (i.e., Social Dominance Orientation (SDO))
Summary
There has been a renewed interest in the study of political ideology from the psychological perspective (e.g., Jost et al, 2008b). The key message of these studies is that political ideology goes beyond the political field in a strict sense, and it may be reflected in several aspects of everyday life, such as nonverbal behavior in the context of social interaction and characteristics of living and working spaces (Carney et al, 2008). For this reason, it is important and interesting to investigate when and how these differences may start to emerge in very young children and what their likely determinants are. The aim of the present investigation is to examine these differences in young children (4–6 years), in relation to their parents’ political attitudes, within the framework of political ideology as motivated social cognition (Jost et al, 2003) and of the dual process model of ideology and prejudice (DPM; Duckitt, 2001).
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
