Who is the Neoliberal? Exploring Neoliberal Beliefs across East and West

Research in political psychology has uncovered “elective affinities” between psychological traits and political ideology. Strong correlations have been found linking psychological variables to political‐economic beliefs in Western countries. These results suggest that people's psychological tra...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of social issues Vol. 75; no. 1; pp. 20 - 48
Main Authors Beattie, Peter, Bettache, Karim, Chong, Kristy Ching Yee
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.03.2019
Subjects
East and West
Ideology
Left wing politics
Neoliberalism
Political ideologies
Political psychology
Prescription drugs
Psychological aspects
Psychological development
Psychological research
Hong Kong China
United States > US
China
India
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Summary:Research in political psychology has uncovered “elective affinities” between psychological traits and political ideology. Strong correlations have been found linking psychological variables to political‐economic beliefs in Western countries. These results suggest that people's psychological traits influence the development of their ideology, making some ideas, explanations, prescriptions, and ways of understanding the world seem more convincing or satisfying than others. Most such investigations have focused on differences along the liberal‐conservative ideological spectrum in the United States, or the left–right divide in Europe and (the rest of) the Americas. Relatively little research has examined psychological elective affinities with neoliberal ideology in particular, and none to our knowledge has been done outside of the West (including Turkey), except for Israel. We report the results of a preliminary investigation into the psychological correlates of neoliberal ideology in Hong Kong, India, and the United States. Our U.S. results replicate earlier research introducing the Neoliberal Beliefs Index, whereas our Hong Kong and Indian results reveal similarities and differences in the psychological traits associated with neoliberal beliefs.
Bibliography:This article is part of the Special Issue “The Social Psychology of Neoliberalism,” Karim Bettache and Chi‐Yue Chiu (Special Issue Editors). For a full listing of Special Issue papers, see
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/josi.2019.75.issue-1/issuetoc
.
ISSN:0022-4537
1540-4560
DOI:10.1111/josi.12309