Whose Fault Is it Anyway? Political Orientation, Attributions of Responsibility, and Support for the War in Iraq

Political orientation has been shown to be a strong predictor of attitudes toward war. Specifically, political conservatism has been associated with increased support for war and with decreased attribution of responsibility for war to one's own government. The present research aims to test whether the relationship between political orientation and support for the war in Iraq is mediated by attributions of government responsibility. In Study 1, survey data showed that the relationship between political orientation and support for the Iraq war was mediated by beliefs about the US government's motivations for the war. Study 2 provided a conceptual replication of the proposed mediation model and extended the findings from beliefs about US government motivations to perceived threat from the pre-war Iraqi government. Study 3 used an experimental paradigm to manipulate perceived threat to show that such beliefs directly affected support for the war. Implications and directions for future research are discusse

Passion for a Cause, Passion for a Creed : On Idealogical Passion, Identity Threat, and Extremism

ABSTRACT Passion energizes and directs both peaceful and violent ideologically inspired movements. The type of ideological passion that underlies people’s political or religious commitment was proposed to moderate the effect of social identity–threatening circumstances on their choice of activist tactics. Ideological passion was defined as a strong inclination toward a loved, valued, and self-defining cause, ideology, or group in which people invest considerable time and energy. Harmonious ideological passion was expected to promote peaceful activism and nonviolence partly because it is anchored in a strong and secure sense of identity—one that facilitates nondefensiveness in identity-threatening circumstances. Obsessive ideological passion, in contrast, was expected to engender hatred and aggressive extremism in identity-threatening circumstances partly because it is anchored in a strong, but insecure, sense of identity. Results from 2 studies, conducted with nationalist activists (N = 114) and devout Muslims (N = 111), supported these hypotheses. Implications for the motivation/passion and intergroup literatures are discussed. This article is based on the first author’s doctoral dissertation. Its preparation was facilitated by doctoral fellowships from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Fonds Québécois de la Recherche sur la Société et la Culture (FQRSC) to the first author and by grants from both SSHRC and FQRSC to the second author. The first author would like to thank her parents, Rahel and Branko Rip, and her husband, Nicolas Petrosky-Nadeau. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Blanka Rip

When winning is everything: On passion, identity, and aggression in sport

Objectives: To examine the interplay between harmonious and obsessive passion and aggressive behavior in sports. It was hypothesized that players who are obsessively-passionate about basketball should report higher levels of aggressive behaviors than harmoniously-passionate players in general, and especially under self threat. Methods: Using the Dualistic Model of Passion (Vallerand et al. (2003), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 756–767) as a guiding framework, basketball players indicated their level of passion and aggression during typical basketball situations using a self-reported questionnaire. Results: In Study 1, results demonstrated that athletes with a predominant obsessive passion for basketball reported higher levels of aggression on an aggression scale than athletes with a harmonious passion. In Study 2, harmoniously-passionate and obsessively-passionate athletes were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: self-threat and self-affirmation. We predicted that under self-threat, obsessively-passionate players should report higher levels of aggressive behavior than harmoniously-passionate players. However, no differences were expected between obsessively and harmoniously-passionate players in the self-affirmation condition. These hypotheses were supported. Conclusions: The present findings reveal that having an obsessive passion is associated with aggressive behavior, especially under identity threat. Thus, the love for one's sport may lead to some maladaptive interpersonal behavior, especially if such love is rooted in a sense of identity that is contingent on doing well in that sport

Attachment Style and Political Ideology: A Review of Contradictory Findings

Relational attachment style—a lifespan factor whose first manifestation at the age of 6 months continues into old age—has recently been theoretically and empirically linked to political ideology. A review of the literature that links these two constructs reveals a conflicting pattern. Secure attachment is predominantly associated with liberalism and its covariates, although the relationship is not robust, and there are some exceptions. Insecure avoidant attachment is associated with both liberalism and conservatism, along with their respective covariates. Finally, insecure anxious-ambivalent attachment is associated with covariates of conservatism. We propose a tentative distinction between motivational conceptualizations of attachment as a relational need and of attachment as a relational habit, which may help to clarify the relationship between attachment style and political ideology