The Effects of Needs for Security and Certainty on Economic Beliefs: The Role of Political Engagement and the Welfare State model

We suggest that the effects of needs for security and certainty (NSC) on economic beliefs result from potentially competing dispositional (political engagement) and contextual (the country-level political narrative around the welfare state) influences. An analysis of data from the 2016 European Social Survey (N = 40,870) showed that at low levels of political engagement, NSC is associated with left-wing beliefs. However, at high levels of political engagement, the NSC effects are conditional on a country’s welfare state model: NSC is related to right-wing beliefs in Liberal, Continental, and Southern types, but the effects are non-significant in the Nordic type and the reverse under the Eastern type. Analysis of 2018 round of the same survey (N = 45,575) corroborated the main findings (except the Southern type for which NSC effects were non-significant). This study advances knowledge on the psychological roots of economic beliefs and contributes to understanding of people’s political choices.