Lib/Con writeup

Most of the items correlated strongly and significantly with the total score made up of all the items in its cluster. This suggests that they all share something in common within their cluster (conservative or liberal). And the two cluster total scores correlate very highly and negatively with each other, -.82** (row 11a, column 5). The total scores for these two clusters of miscellaneous traits correlate substantially with conservative and liberal political preference (column b). These data collectively suggest that what the items within each of these two clusters have in common is a political worldview, conservatism and liberalism respectively.
Consider for example the items in the Miscellaneous Conservative scale and their corresponding correlations with conservative and liberal political orientation presented in Table 4. These are the items that most clearly differentiate conservatives from liberals. The content of these items provides an interesting insight into to worldview of conservatives. Note that several items seem to be related to the hypotheses about evolutionary origins of the conservative and liberal worldviews, e.g. on the themes of fear of diseases and interest in visiting foreign lands, which will be discussed in further detail below.
Table 4. Miscellaneous Conservative Endorsed Items and their Pearson Product Moment correlations with political orientation.

Items that conservatives tend to endorse and liberals tend not to endorse:	Conser-vatism	Liberal-ism
4. For me, God is important primarily as a protector.	.58**	-.44**
5. I believe Heaven is somewhere other than on earth.	.49**	-.36*
6. I believe that I will go there (Heaven) and live forever when I die.	.53**	-.33*
11. I tend not to think much about the past or about history.	.36*	-.33*
13. I trust God to take care of those things about which I tend not to worry.	.58**	-.31*
15. Being part of a tightly united group of people of faith is very important to me.	.50**	-.43**
16. I prefer to be part of a group of people who all believe in the same things and worship the same way.	.47**	-.55**
17. What my leaders tell me is the truth is the truth.	.43**	-.41**
18. Spiritual truth is more important than scientific truth.	.57**	-.38**
19. When there's a conflict between scientific facts and my religious beliefs, I prefer to ignore the scientific facts.	.54**	-.41**
20. The more people there are who believe something, the truer that belief is.	.37**	-.39**
24. Getting things for myself now in the present is more important to me than worrying about the future.	.39**	-.41**
25. It makes more sense to me to use natural resources like oil and iron ore to build security and wealth now than to worry about the environment.	.55**	-.47**
26. I worry about terrorist attacks	.39**	-.51**
27. I worry about diseases coming into our area from foreign places.	.42**	-.36**
28. I worry about military attacks against our nation.	.38**	-.44**
31. In international matters, I am motivated more by fear than by hope.	.32*	-.38**
32. People of different language, skin color or nationality are more likely to carry disease than people like me.	.46**	-.54**
33. Such people are more likely to be terrorists than I am.	.47**	-.55**
35. People living in foreign lands are more likely to carry infectious diseases than people in our nation.	.42**	-.31*
36. People in other states are more likely to carry infectious diseases than people in my state.	.56**	-.36*
37. People in other towns or cities are more likely to carry infectious diseases than people in my town or city.	.49**	-.45**
38. There may be times when we may need to take military action to keep groups of diseased people from invading our country.	.41**	-.43**
40. It is wise strategy for leaders of my preferred political party to keep those citizens away from the polls who might vote against us.	.38**	-.47**
41. It is okay for my political candidates to run down and discredit their opponents during campaigns for office.	.37**	-.35*
42. I see little point in learning new ways of doing things, as long as proven ways work.	.54**	-.58**
43. I see no value in research on how to improve government.	.47**	-.45**
45. There is a place for government run by my preferred politicians to help me get what I want.	.40**	-.30*
51. In business, as in sports, profit and winning is more important than sportsmanship or fairness.	.35**	-.34**
53. In political campaigns, winning justifies lying and conniving.	.37**	-.40**
54. In political campaigns, belittling your opponent, even with lying, is justified if it will help you win.	.33*	-.32*
55. In time of war, it is worthwhile to use propaganda to demonize enemies.	.34*	-.32*
56. Even in times of peace, it is more important to dominate other nations than to make friends with them.	.43**	-.42**
57. If scientists come up with facts that are contrary to my religious beliefs, I expect my religious leaders to explain why the claims of the scientists are false.	.53**	-.36*

The content of several of these items seems to support the theory of disease fear as a key element of conservatism (e.g. 27 and 32-38). Militarism, fear of foreigners, religious fundamentalism, blind trust of authority and political lying and conniving are additional themes suggested by these items.

Table 5 provides similar data for miscellaneous items that liberals tend to endorse more than conservatives do, providing insight into the liberal worldview.

Table 5. Miscellaneous Liberal Endorsed Items and their Pearson Product Moment correlations with political orientation.

Items that liberals tend to endorse and conservatives tend not to endorse:	Conserva-tism	Liberal-ism
2. I feel deep concern for the less fortunate citizens of my own nation.	-.34*	.50**
4. I feel a sense of obligation to help people in foreign lands who are less fortunate than we are.	-.34*	.39**
5. I worry about the welfare of future generations.	-.34*	.51**
6. I feel a sense of obligation to protect the environment for other species and for future generations of humans.	-.41**	.49**
7. I am seldom worried day to day about terrorists, invasions by other warring nations, or disease epidemics from other lands.	-.49**	.43**
8. I value friendships and experiences more than physical possessions.	-.32*	.49**
11. I enjoy traveling, visiting with strangers and learning about people different from myself.	-.45**	.37**
13. I believe scientists have much to teach us about how to improve our nation.	-.41**	.53**
14. I think government should fund research to figure out how to improve our nation and our government.	-.36*	.50**
15. I sometimes think about how our community and government could be much better.	-.45**	.35*
18. I am more inclined to trust rather than fear a stranger from a foreign land.	-.41**	.48**
22. I like stories and movies about overcoming injustice and being compassionate.	-.30*	.30*
23. I like stories and movies about exploring and discovery.	-.30*	.39**
24. In business, it is more important to cooperate, build trusting relationships and be fair rather than to compete, dominate and win however you can.	-.41**	.36*
26. Good sportsmanship is as important or more important than beating your opponent in sports.	-.39**	.32*
27. Candidates for political office should not degrade their opponents to make them look bad.	-.40**	.32*
29. Our nation should strive to help other nations be stronger and more successful.	-.53**	.50**
30. I am more interested in helping other nations fight disease than in avoiding contact with those nations.	-.51**	.39**
31. I like movies about helping unfortunate, helpless people to succeed.	-.40**	.31*
33. I like movies about cooperation, love and kindness.	-.36*	.41**

The content of the items in Table 5 tends to reflect the less fearful, trusting attitudes of liberals toward foreigners and disease and a more compassionate, caring attitude toward others in general.

Finally, the data in rows 12a and 12d of Table 3 reflects the information gained by the last 10 items of the study questionnaires. These items are presented at the end of Table 2. All of the 5 even-numbered items individually and collectively correlate positively with conservative politics endorsement, as indicated in column b. All of the odd items correlate similarly with the liberal orientation. This data is consistent with the theory that these two worldviews evolved to support primitive tribal in-group functions of protection and promotion respectively.
Using the five conservative tribal items to predict conservative political orientation as measured by the demographic item yields an R of .61, significant at the .001 level. Similarly, using the five liberal tribal items to predict liberal political orientation yields an R of .59, significant at the .05 level. Thus just five items of "tribal" attitudes, predict political orientation, conservative and liberal to a significant degree.
As several of the items in the miscellaneous groups appeared similar in content to the two tribal scales, correlations were run between these items and the scales. Thirteen of the 14 miscellaneous conservative items correlated significantly with the conservative tribal scale. Seven of the eight miscellaneous liberal items correlated significantly with the liberal tribal scale. These items were added to create two expanded scales, the Ctribe18 and Ltribe12 scales. These scales are more reliable than their shorter versions, as indicated in the last rows of Table 1.
The Ctribe18 scale correlates .67** with conservative political orientation and

-.57** with liberal orientation. It does not correlate significantly with age, gender, years of education, income or high school grades. The Ltribe12 scale correlates .59** with liberal political orientation and -.49** with conservative orientation. It correlates .36* with education but insignificantly with the other demographic variables.

Implications regarding all pro-trait item scales.
To explore the possible disadvantage of using scales with all pro-trait items, total scores based on all six trait scores across each of the ten dimensions was compared with the separate triads of scores of which each was composed. In effect, the total score constitutes a scale made up of half pro-trait items and half con-trait items, as the score consisted of the three liberal traits minus the reverse-scored three conservative traits. The correlations were run with conservatism, liberalism and a total score based on these two, the liberalism score minus the conservatism measure reverse-scored (the "libcon" score).
The results were virtually the same for all ten dimensions, with the six-trait measure slightly outperforming either of the three-trait measures. The all pro-trait measures were for all practical purposes as good as the half con-trait measures. For example, the conservative religion and liberal religion measures of division 1 correlated .66 and -.66 with conservatism and -.52 and .74 with liberalism. The corresponding six-trait measure correlated -.70 with conservatism (versus .66 and -.66), and .65 with liberalism (versus -.52 and .74).
Thus, in this study, it appears that trait measures consisting of all pro-trait items are not artificially higher than they would have been had they had half con-trait items. And all pro-trait measures are not seriously lower in validity than they would have been had they had half con-trait items of good quality. The rationale for using scales of all pro-trait items seems justified by this data.
The 6-trait measure of each of the ten primary psychological divisions, and divisions 11 and 12, tended to provide the highest overall correlation with political preference measured as the lib-con score made up of both the liberalism and reverse-scored conservatism measures. All were significant at the .000 level. These correlations are 1. Religion .73, 2. Group belongingness .65, 3. Government type preference .48, 4. Gender attitudes .68, 5. Foreign policy .73, 6. Economic/money/tax policy .67, 7. Domestic/civilian violence management .64, 8. Group relations .64, 9. Locus of government authority .67, 10. Environment/resource management .64, 11. Miscellaneous items .62, and 12. Tribal worldview .60.
Exploring factor structure.

As mentioned in the introduction, there has been discussion of whether liberalism and conservatism are separate factors or different poles of the same factor, with data suggesting the presence of two factors.

To explore this issue with the present data, factor analysis was performed with Varimax rotation. Only two factors emerged with eignen values of 1 or greater, as documented in Table 6.
Table 6. Factor analysis of triad scores (a, b and c, d, e and f) with Varimax rotation.

Triad score	Factor 1 (69.3% of variance)	Factor 2 (6.3% of variance)
Religion, conservative (scales 1a, b and c)	-.33	.77
Religion, liberal (scales 1d, e and f)	.63	-.57
Group belongingness (conservative)	-.48	.76
Group belongingness (liberal)	.75	-.52
Gender attitudes (masc.)	-.45	.63
Gender attitudes (femin.)	.80	-.31
Foreign policy (conserv.)	-.57	.75
Foreign policy (liberal)	.84	-.42
Economic policy (conserv.)	-.63	.65
Econ. Policy (liberal)	.84	-.32
Domestic violence (conser.)	-.41	.70
Domestic violence (liberal)	.86	-.28
Social group relations (con)	-.46	.76
Social group relations (lib)	.83	-.26
Locus of govt control (con)	-.29	.81
Locus of govt control (lib)	.80	-.46
Environment policy (con)	-.74	.52
Environment policy (lib)	.76	-.48
Miscellaneous conserv.	-.45	.82
Miscellaneous liberal	.72	-.48
Tribal worldview (conserv)	-.15	.75
Tribal worldview (liberal)	.67	-.34

The first factor appears to be a liberal worldview factor, as it has substantial positive loadings on all of the liberal traits. The second factor appears to be a conservative worldview factor, with substantial positive loadings on all of the conservative traits. Each of the worldviews tends to have negative loadings on its counterpart scales. This suggests that psychologically there are two separate conservative and liberal worldviews. It also suggests that persons high on one are somewhat likely to be low on the other, but not necessarily, consistent with observations that persons can be conservative on some issues and liberal on other issues.

Indeed, in the present data are individuals who identify primarily with conservatism as measured by the demographic items but endorse some liberal dimensions strongly. For example, one such person who had a lib/con score of 1.5, reflecting conservative leanings, had liberal-leaning scores on dimensions 7. Violence management (4.24), 8. Social group relations (3.86), and 9. Locus of government authority (3.93). Another person high on liberalism, with a lib/con score of 4.5, rather strongly endorsed gender attitudes for males (3.83), dimension 3, Gender attitudes.