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Okay, maybe you see this as: “Really, you needed a study to prove THIS?”

Alright. I get it. But it is always good to have our beliefs and attitudes backed up by evidence.

That is exactly what some scholars in Belgium set out to do. In a recent study published in the journal Emotion, these researchers took a look at whether there are psychological attributes that go along with political ideology.

That is, these researchers wanted to know if the psychological characteristics are different for those who espouse left-wing versus right-wing political viewpoints.

In two studies, the researchers assessed the emotional abilities and political ideology of 983 Belgian undergraduate students. The second study also examined the participants’ cognitive ability. Emotional ability was measured with three tests: The Situational Test of Emotional Understanding, the Situational Test of Emotion Management, and the Geneva Emotion Recognition Test.

The researchers found that individuals with weaker emotional abilities — particularly emotional understanding and management — tended to score higher on a measure of right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation. Right-wing authoritarianism is a personality trait that describes the tendency to submit to political authority and be hostile towards other groups. Social dominance orientation is a measure of a person’s preference for inequality among social groups.

We all know about the power of positive thinking. If you think positive thoughts, you will be healthier and happier. We all agree about that, right? Don’t we?

Maybe not.

As has been said by many people recently, we live in a time of a racial pandemic. Race and policing are a critical aspect of the racial issues that in some respects are both dividing and uniting our society.

More specifically, it is the use of excessive – sometimes – lethal force by the police that has caused weeks of protests and a sudden unifying of diverse groups in our country. Everyone, in one way or another, is dealing with the fallout from years of police use of force and young people (for the most part) who are fed up and crying out for justice for Black people who, it seems based on media reports, to be on the victim side of excessive use of force. Not only is
everyone thinking about these issues, which are by no means new or suddenly recognized, but they are being discussed. If you are going to be thinking and talking about racism and excessive use of force, then you need to have as many facts as possible at your disposable.