Political Ideology, Cooperation, and Conformity in Parents and Children

• In Event: Poster Session 05
  In Poster Session: PS 05 Topic - Social Cognition

Abstract

Cooperation and conformity are human adaptations to group living that emerge early in development, with young children readily sharing resources and enforcing group-wide social norms. Recent evolutionary theory predicts that these two key social drives are fundamentally related to the two dimensions of political ideology in humans: economic and social conservatism, respectively. While research in behavioural economics has supported this prediction by linking behaviour in incentivised economic games to political ideology, this work is limited in its focus on human adults, ignoring the developmental origins of cooperative and conformist phenotypes. Here, we use two waves of behavioural data from an ongoing longitudinal study (N = 247) to explore the relationships between preschool-aged children’s cooperative and conformist behaviour and parents’ political ideology. We measure cooperative behaviour using a Dictator Game paradigm, in which 3-year-old children are given the opportunity to share stickers with another child, and conformist behaviour using the “Froggy task”, in which we assess children’s reactions to conventional and moral norm violations from a puppet. We measure parents’ political ideology with self-reported Social Dominance Orientation and Right Wing Authoritarianism questionnaires (widely-used measures of economic and social conservatism). Data collection has been completed for this project and coding, which was stalled by the ongoing pandemic, is in progress. Once coding is complete, we will conduct statistical analyses to explore the following hypotheses. First, we hypothesise that the cooperation variables (e.g. the number of stickers given in Dictator Games) and the conformity variables (e.g. verbal protests, tattling, preventions, and corrections in response to norm violations in the Froggy task) will load onto two distinct latent variables in a confirmatory factor model: (1) cooperation, and (2) conformity. Second, we hypothesise that parents’ Social Dominance Orientation scores will negatively predict variation in the children’s cooperation latent variable. Third, we hypothesise that parents’ Right-Wing Authoritarianism scores will positively predict variation in the children's conformity latent variable. We will test the first hypothesis by reporting fit statistics and factor loadings from a two-factor confirmatory factor model, and we will test the second and third hypotheses by reporting regression paths (from political ideology to behavioural latent variables; p < 0.05) in a structural equation model, while controlling for a host of demographic covariates. If these hypotheses are supported, this study will provide evidence for recent evolutionary theories of political ideology by linking political attitudes with the early emergence of cooperative and conformist drives in human development.

Authors

• Scott Claessens, University of Auckland
  Presenting Author

• Nichole Breeland, University of Auckland
  Non-Presenting Author

• Quentin D. Atkinson, University of Auckland
  Non-Presenting Author

• Annette M. E. Henderson, University of Auckland
  Non-Presenting Author