IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0239259.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Political correctness and the alt-right: The development of extreme political attitudes

Author

Listed:
  • Jordan T Moss
  • Peter J O’Connor

Abstract

Recent studies have documented a shift from moderate political attitudes to more extreme attitudes at the ends of the political spectrum. This can be seen in Political Correctness (PC) on the left, and white identitarian (WI) attitudes on the ‘Alt-Right’ (AR). While highly covered in mainstream media, limited academic research has investigated their possible antecedents and psychological correlates. The current study investigated the prevalence and psychological predictors of these attitudes. Utilising a quota-based sample of 512 U.S. participants, we found that extreme political attitudes were associated with various personality traits, social media use, and upbringing. PC attitudes were associated with agreeableness, black-white thinking, social-media use, and perceived overprotective parenting. WI attitudes were associated with low agreeableness and openness, and high black-white thinking. Our results show that extreme left and right attitudes are separated by individual differences, and that authoritarianism can be seen on both the left and the right.

Suggested Citation

  • Jordan T Moss & Peter J O’Connor, 2020. "Political correctness and the alt-right: The development of extreme political attitudes," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(10), pages 1-22, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0239259
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0239259
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0239259
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0239259&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0239259?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0239259. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.