A Dual-Process Model of Ideology: Liberals and Conservatives Have More Similar Automatic than Controlled Processes in Response to Social and Moral Stimuli

Hundreds of studies have identified psychological and behavioral differences between liberals and conservatives. Many of these differences, however, shrink or vanish under conditions like cognitive load, heightened threat, and pharmacological interruptions of executive functioning. To explain why these “ideological shifts” occur, we offer a dual-process model of ideology. It postulates that liberals and conservatives have more similar automatic than controlled processes in response to social and moral stimuli. What unifies numerous ideological shift-inducing conditions is that they undermine the influence of relatively controlled processes or amplify that of relatively automatic processes. Under these conditions, outcomes are guided more by relatively automatic processes such as intuitions (e.g., ingroup favoritism, outgroup derogation) that are similar across the aisle, less by relatively controlled processes such as explicit ideological prescriptions (e.g., outgroup tolerance) that differ across the aisle. We illustrate our model’s explanatory power with multiple lines of research, from ideological shifts to moral foundations to implicit bias, which consistently reveal more similar responses between liberals and conservatives when relatively automatic processes prevail over controlled ones. Contrary to influential perspectives (e.g., Moral Foundations Theory), our model posits—and evidence supports—that many differences between liberals and conservatives are driven not by irreconcilable social intuitions, but by controlled processes for maintaining ideological concordance. Our model has theoretical, applied, methodological, and empirical implications. One of them is that liberals’ and conservatives’ similar automatic processes could be leveraged for both beneficial (e.g., reducing interpersonal friction in cross-aisle dialogue) and harmful outcomes (e.g., exacerbating outgroup prejudices).