Preregistered Replication of “Feeling superior is a bipartisan issue: Extremity (not direction) of political views predicts perceived belief superiority”

Abstract

There is currently a debate in political psychology about whether dogmatism and belief superiority are symmetric or asymmetric across the ideological spectrum. One study found that dogmatism was higher amongst conservatives than liberals, but both conservatives and liberals with extreme attitudes reported higher perceived belief superiority (Toner, Leary, Asher & Jongman-Sereno, 2013). Our goal was to conduct a pre-registered direct and conceptual replication of this previous research using a larger and more nationally representative sample. Consistent with prior research, we found that conservatives had higher dogmatism scores than liberals while both conservatives and liberals with extreme attitudes were associated with higher belief superiority compared to those with more moderate attitudes. Moreover, whether conservative or liberal attitudes were associated with higher belief superiority was topic dependent. Different from prior research, we found that ideologically extreme individuals had higher dogmatism. We discuss the implications of these results for theoretical debates in political psychology.