Elites are people, too: The effects of threat sensitivity on policymakers’ spending priorities

Recent research suggests that psychological needs can influence the political attitudes of ordinary citizens, often outside of their conscious awareness. In this paper, we investigate whether psychological needs also shape the spending priorities of political elites in the US. Most models of policym...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in	PloS one Vol. 13; no. 4; p. e0193781
Main Authors	Arceneaux, Kevin, Dunaway, Johanna, Soroka, Stuart
Format	Journal Article
Language	English
Published	United States Public Library of Science 10.04.2018 Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Subjects	Attitudes Beliefs, opinions and attitudes Biology and Life Sciences Brain research Citizens Computer and Information Sciences Conductance Conservatism Constituents Data processing Democracy Environmental policy Expenditures Higher education Humanities and Social Sciences Ideology Information processing Neurosciences People and Places Physiology Policy making Policy scientists Political attitudes Political elites Political science Politics Priorities Psychological aspects Psychology Research and Analysis Methods Resistance Sensitivity Skin Social Sciences State budgets Studies Threats United States United States > US Texas
Online Access	Get full text
ISSN	1932-6203 1932-6203
DOI	10.1371/journal.pone.0193781

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Summary:	Recent research suggests that psychological needs can influence the political attitudes of ordinary citizens, often outside of their conscious awareness. In this paper, we investigate whether psychological needs also shape the spending priorities of political elites in the US. Most models of policymaking assume that political elites respond to information in relatively homogeneous ways. We suggest otherwise, and explore one source of difference in information processing, namely, threat sensitivity, which previous research links to increased support for conservative policy attitudes. Drawing on a sample of state-level policymakers, we measure their spending priorities using a survey and their level of threat sensitivity using a standard psychophysiological measure (skin conductance). We find that, like ordinary citizens, threat sensitivity leads even state-level policymakers to prioritize spending on government polices that are designed to minimize threats.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 14 content type line 23 PMCID: PMC5892868 Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
ISSN:	1932-6203 1932-6203
DOI:	10.1371/journal.pone.0193781