Keywords
Social psychology; Political psychology; Personality psychology; Belief updating; Political polarization; American politics
Abstract
Belief updating is a research area investigating how individuals refine or fail to refine their preexisting beliefs when confronted with corrective sources. Understanding the various drivers of poor belief updating in a political context is essential to maintaining an informed democracy, as the ideal voter in a democratic nation updates political misconceptions and false beliefs when presented with corrective sources. Despite the importance of this topic, the literature examining potential factors that could contribute to poor belief updating in a political context remains particularly limited. I aimed to address this limitation by recruiting undergraduates from the University of Central Florida’s Psychology Department via SONA to complete an online survey. This survey investigated misplaced certainty, right-wing authoritarianism, belief in a just world, Machiavellianism, subclinical narcissism, and external locus of control as novel predictors of belief updating in a political context. Regarding past literature examining these personality variables in general belief updating and general political contexts, I hypothesized that participants who scored higher on these various personality measures would be less likely to learn from corrective sources and revise their misconceptions and false beliefs in a politically centered feedback-learning task. Overall, the data did not support this hypothesis, as only misplaced certainty, right-wing authoritarianism, and subclinical narcissism significantly predicted poor belief updating. Further, right-wing authoritarianism was the only unique predictor when controlling all variables, and it had a particularly weak linear relationship with belief updating. These results indicate that the mechanisms contributing to belief updating in a political context are too complex to be adequately predicted by personality factors alone.
Thesis Completion Year
2024
Thesis Completion Semester
Fall
Thesis Chair
Hubertz, Martha
College
College of Sciences
Department
Psychology
Thesis Discipline
Psychology
Language
English
Access Status
Open Access
Length of Campus Access
None
Campus Location
Orlando (Main) Campus
STARS Citation
Haseman, Eric E. Jr, "Investigating Various Personality Factors As Predictors Of Poor Belief Updating Regarding Controversial Political Issues" (2024). Honors Undergraduate Theses. 200.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/hut2024/200
Included in
American Politics Commons, Personality and Social Contexts Commons, Social Psychology Commons
Rights Statement
