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How different are cultural and economic ideology?
Christopher D Johnston and Trent Ollerenshaw
While a single left-right dimension is often used for elites, many
scholars have found it useful to distinguish mass political
ideology along two dimensions: an ‘economic’ dimension
concerning issues of redistribution, regulation, and social
insurance, and a ‘cultural’ (or ‘social’) dimension concerning
issues of national boundaries and traditional morality. While
economic and cultural ideology do not reduce to a single left-
right dimension, they are often moderately — and sometimes
strongly — correlated. These correlations vary in magnitude
and direction across individuals and countries. The association
of these dimensions is due, in part, to shared antecedents in
psychological needs for security and certainty. However, these
needs explain more variance in cultural than economic
ideology, and their relationship with the latter varies across
individuals and countries. Traits related to empathy,
compassion, and agreeableness are an additional source of
variation in mass ideology and are especially important to
orientations toward inequality and thus to economic ideology.
Address
Duke University, United States
Corresponding author: Johnston, Christopher D (cdj19@duke.edu)
Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 2020, 34:94–101
This review comes from a themed issue on Emotion, motivation,
personality and social sciences *Political Ideologies*
Edited by John T Jost, Eran Halperin and Kristin Laurin
For a complete overview see the Issue and the Editorial
Available online 13th February 2020
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2020.01.008
2352-1546/ã 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction
Scholars often describe mass political ideology along two
dimensions: an ‘economic’ dimension concerning issues
of redistribution, regulation, and social insurance, and a
‘cultural’ (or ‘social’) dimension concerning issues of
national boundaries and traditional morality. Ideology
is what is latent, or shared, among the preferences within
each domain, and thus the source of the covariance among
them. But is this as far as mass political ideology extends
or is it useful to posit a superordinate left-right dimension
that binds cultural and economic preferences together?
How different are cultural and economic ideology?
Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 2020, 34:94–101
In this paper, we review recent research on the extent to
which cultural and economic ideology can be distin-
guished within the mass public. We address this question
in two, related ways. First, we examine the empirical
association between cultural and economic ideology in
public opinion data. How strong (and in what direction) is
the correlation between these dimensions in the mass
public?1 Second, we consider the extent to which cultural
and economic ideology share common psychological
antecedents. How much overlap is there in the psycho-
logical sources of preference structure within each
domain?2
The recent literature suggests there is no single answer
to either of these questions that is accurate for all people
in all places. Rather, the relationship of cultural to
economic ideology, as well as the determinants of orien-
tations along these two dimensions, is conditioned by the
characteristics of citizens and the contexts in which they
reside.
Shared and unshared variance in economic
and cultural ideology
We begin with a review of the association between
economic and cultural ideology in the mass public. It is
important at the outset to emphasize that our concern is
with ideology,such as it is, and not specific policy prefer-
ences. Consistent with seminal work on public opinion,
recent research finds modest correlations among policy
preferences (r < 0.20, on average), and instability in these
preferences across time (r < 0.50 over a four year period),
though both consistency and stability increase as a func-
tion of political sophistication [1].
We see little conflict between these findings and the
research we review below. First, political sophistication
is indeed a crucial moderator of the association between
economic and cultural ideology. Second, our concern is
not with specific policy preferences, but with the more
1
We refer to correlations between economic and cultural ideology as
‘positive’ when preferences align with contemporary U.S. liberalism-
conservatism (i.e. anti-redistributive preferences positively correlate
with traditional values) and ‘negative’ in the opposite case (i.e. anti-
redistributive preferences negatively correlate with traditional values).
2
It is important to note at the outset that we do not review the
literature on estimating (and interpreting) the dimensionality of mass
ideology empirically. While this is an interesting and important issue,
space limitations require a narrower focus. This article assumes that it is
useful to talk about a subset of mass preferences in terms of latent
‘economic’ and ‘cultural’ orientations. This assumption can (and should)
be critically evaluated, but it is not our charge to do so in this short
article.
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 How different are cultural and economic ideology? Johnston and Ollerenshaw 95
abstract orientations that link them within domains. Even
if policy preferences are rather modestly correlated, there
is still some structure that needs to be explained. Our
review concerns the relationship between, and the deter-
minants of, the broader orientations that give rise to the
structure that we do observe. It is also important to
remember that the question of ideological constraint —
the extent to which specific preferences are shaped by
broader ideological orientations — is distinct from the
question of correlation among ideological dimensions.
For example, recent work in China finds that overall
levels of ideological constraint are lower than in the U.
S. and Europe, but the three latent dimensions of ideol-
ogy that provide this minimal structure are correlated at
nearly 1.0 [2].
Turning to the focal question, recent work suggests that
there is a great deal of variation in the size and the nature
of the association of economic and cultural ideology [e.g.
Refs. 2,3,4,5]. If we consider the several dozen nations
with available data in the World Values Survey, the
average within-nation correlation between indicators of
economic and cultural ideology is close to zero [5]. Yet
the mean obscures many statistically significant, small to
moderate correlations within nations and these are
roughly equally distributed in terms of direction.3,4 That
is, with a diverse set of countries, negative correlations
between cultural and economic views are about as likely
as positive correlations. In studies of the United States —
the most closely examined context — the estimated
correlation between these two dimensions in recent dec-
ades is positive in sign and typically moderate to large in
magnitude [6,7,8,9,10]. A recent study also finds a large,
positive relationship between these dimensions in the
United Kingdom [7].
Several factors appear to be influential in shaping the size
and direction of the relationship between economic and
cultural ideology across countries. In nations not under
communist rule during the Cold War, with high levels of
human development, and with low levels of traditional
sexual morality, leftist economic ideology tends to be
positively correlated with cultural liberalism. However, in
post-communist nations, and those with lower levels of
development and higher levels of traditional morality, the
correlation tends to reverse direction [2,5]. Within-
country factors may also matter. In the U.S. case, for
3
This research relies on the limited number of indicators available in
the World Values Survey and does not combine them into scales of
economic and cultural conservatism. Unreliable measures of the dimen-
sions may attenuate the size of the relationship within countries toward
zero (from either the positive or negative direction). More comparative
research is needed on this question.
4
When using qualitative terms to discuss magnitudes, we refer to
correlations as ‘low’, ‘small’, or ‘weak’ when they are less than 0.20;
‘medium’ or ‘moderate’ when they are between 0.20 and 0.50; and ‘high’
or ‘large’ when they are greater than or equal to 0.50.
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example, cross-domain constraint is increasing from the
mid-20th Century to the present [11]. This is likely due,
in part, to the growing clarity of elite cues as a result of
party polarization during this period [12–14].
Recent research also finds moderators at the individual
level. A particularly robust finding in the Western context
is that the association between cultural and economic
ideology increases as a function of political engagement.
Citizens who know and care about politics display stron-
ger correlations than citizens who largely tune out [8,11
,15,16]; though some recent work suggests this engage-
ment gap is smaller for self-placements on economic and
cultural dimensions, for which the correlation is generally
large [7,17]. At the highest levels of engagement, ide-
ology may effectively collapse to a single dimension.
Among delegates to U.S. major party conventions, for
example, correlations between economic and cultural
preferences are close to 1.0 [9], and for Western European
parties there is a strong relationship between expert
placements on the economic and cultural (‘TAN-GAL’)
dimensions [18].
There are at least two mechanisms that account for the
moderating role of political engagement. First, citizens
whose preferences better align with the structure of
elite conflict at a given point in time may feel stronger
about their political options and thus participate at
higher rates [19–23]. Second, engaged citizens may
change their issue positions to better match those of
their favored party and politicians [24,25]. It is likely
that both are operative to at least some degree [26–28].
For example, Layman et al. find that policy activists who
become committed partisans tend to bring preferences
less central to their political identity into alignment
with their party’s platform [29].
To summarize, economic and cultural forms of ideology
are clearly distinguishable in the mass public. At the same
time, they are correlated at substantively important levels
in many places and one recent study with a diverse set of
countries suggests that within-country correlations are
about as likely to be negative as positive. This suggests
common factors shaping ideology across dimensions, but
also that the specific factors in play — or perhaps the way
in which these factors operate — varies across citizens and
contexts.
Psychological determinants of cultural and
economic ideology
In this section we first review recent work that explains
the shared variance between cultural and economic ide-
ology: why are they correlated to the extent, and in the
way, that they are? We then examine research that
explains the unshared variance: why do economic and
cultural ideology move, in part, independently?
Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 2020, 34:94–101
96 Emotion, motivation, personality and social sciences *Political Ideologies*
Explanations for shared variance between economic
and cultural ideology
Perhaps the most influential framework for understanding
the covariation of economic and cultural ideology is Jost
et al.’ theory of political conservatism as motivated social
cognition [30,31]. They argue that rightist views on both
dimensions are rooted in psychological needs for security
and certainty because both are system-justifying ideologies.
That is, both economic and cultural conservatisms ratio-
nalize status quo values, institutions, and socioeconomic
hierarchies and thus provide stability in one’s environ-
ment and closure on normative questions [7,31,32]. In
turn, these needs drive not only cultural traditionalism,
but also an ideology that justifies market economies and
the inequalities they produce [7] (though with impor-
tant exceptions [e.g. Eastern Europe; 33]). For example,
Azevedo et al. find that economic conservatism is moder-
ately correlated with both right-wing authoritarianism and
general system justification tendencies in the U.S. and the
U.K. [7]. A very large literature has accumulated since
Jost et al.’ seminal paper in 2003, and this work is sum-
marized in several recent meta-analyses [32,34,35]. Over-
all, these find strong support for the claim that epistemic
and existential needs promote rightist ideology.
However, these meta-analyses largely sidestep the ques-
tion of whether epistemic and existential needs shape
ideology in similar ways across the economic and cultural
domains. Recent reviews that more directly address this
question find that needs for security and certainty (and
related variables) have, on average, a stronger relationship
to cultural ideology than economic ideology [36
,37,38,39]. Recent empirical examples illustrating this
asymmetry include the effects of feelings of physical
safety [40], need for cognitive closure [8,41,42], openness
to experience [43], disgust sensitivity [44], need for
cognition [8], and analytic cognitive style [42,45–48].
Moreover, research is mixed with respect to the direction
of the relationship in the economic domain. Some
research finds that epistemic and existential needs (and
related variables) promote leftist economic views [49–58]
while other work finds such needs promote rightist views
[59–65].
Recent research also finds substantial variation in the rela-
tionship of security and certainty needs with economic
ideology across individual-level and country-level vari-
ables. At the individual level, political engagement is par-
ticularly influential. In several recent studies, mostly with
data from the U.S., needs for certainty and security consis-
tently promote rightist economic ideology among politi-
cally interested and knowledgeable citizens [39,66,67]. As
political engagement decreases, however, this association
moves toward zero and, in many cases, eventually flips sign
such that needs for certainty and security promote leftist
economic views at the lowest levels of engagement. To-
date, however, there are relatively few empirical
Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 2020, 34:94–101
examinations of this interaction and more research is
needed, especially in contexts outside the U.S.
One of the few comparative projects in the literature finds
that, averaging across a diverse set of countries, needs for
security and certainty weakly promote left-wing eco-
nomic views. However, the relationship varies substan-
tially at the country level and political context may
explain some of this variation [68]. What the authors term
country-level ‘ideological constraint’ — the extent to
which economic and cultural ideology are positively
related within a given country — reduces the size of
the relationship between needs and leftist economic
views. At the highest levels of ideological constraint, this
relationship flips sign such that needs for certainty and
security promote rightist economic ideology. Further,
context interacts with individual-level political engage-
ment such that security and certainty needs promote
rightist economic ideology primarily among engaged citi-
zens in ideologically constrained countries. While an
important initial contribution, much more comparative
research is needed on this topic as this work uses only a
single, relatively unreliable measure of epistemic and
existential needs.
One possible explanation for this pattern is that, in
countries with high levels of ideological constraint, elite
discourse constructs the meaning of the economic domain
in a way that ties it more closely to cultural ideology, but
politically engaged citizens are more likely to be exposed
to such discourse. For example, this might involve fram-
ing rightist economic policy in system-justifying terms or
simply pairing rightist economic views with symbols that
strongly resonate with needs for security and certainty for
cultural reasons, such as ‘conservative’ or ‘Republican’ in
the U.S. [39,69]. Indeed, recent experimental work
demonstrates that partisan and cultural cues strengthen
the relationship between needs for certainty and security
and economic ideology in the U.S. [39,70].
In sum, while there is strong support for the hypothesis
that needs for security and certainty are related to rightist
ideology in a general sense, a growing body of work
suggests the relationship is stronger for cultural than
economic ideology. Moreover, recent studies find varia-
tion in the relationship with economic ideology across
both political engagement and political context. Overall,
however, there is a dearth of comparative research and
this is an area ripe for further investigation.
Explanations for unshared variance between cultural
and economic ideology
Even in countries where there is a moderate to strong
association of cultural and economic ideology, most of the
variance in these two orientations is unshared — that is,
despite substantively meaningful associations between
dimensions, mass ideology remains multidimensional.
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 How different are cultural and economic ideology? Johnston and Ollerenshaw 97
Interestingly, much work in psychology suggests that (at
least) two dimensions are useful in explaining the
psychological antecedents of sociopolitical attitudes:
‘One dimension has been labeled authoritarianism, social
conservatism, or traditionalism, at one pole, versus open-
ness, autonomy, liberalism, or personal freedom at the
other pole. The other has been labeled economic conser-
vatism, power, hierarchy, and inequality at one pole,
versus egalitarianism, humanitarianism, social welfare,
and social concern at the other pole’ [71; see also Ref. 72].
Duckitt et al.’ dual-process model of ideology and preju-
dice attempts to unify this body of work within a single
theory [73,74]. They argue for two primary dimensions
underpinning sociopolitical attitudes: right-wing authori-
tarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation
(SDO). While RWA and SDO are typically moderately,
positively correlated, Duckitt et al. argue that they are
primarily rooted in distinct psychological antecedents.
Low dispositional openness, and a view that the world
is a threatening and dangerous place, drive an ideology
emphasizing traditionalism, submission to established
authority, and aggression toward social deviants (i.e. high
RWA). In contrast, low levels of dispositional agreeable-
ness, compassion, and empathy, and a view that the world
is a zero-sum ‘competitive jungle,’ drive an ideology
seeking advantageous inequality for the self and the
in-group (i.e. high SDO).
RWA and SDO are not intended to be conceptually
equivalent to cultural and economic ideology, respec-
tively. Nevertheless, concerns with traditional values
and social deviance are more relevant to cultural than
economic issues, which suggests that threat sensitivity
and openness should be more powerful in explaining
cultural than economic ideology. This is supported by
research reviewed in the previous section. In contrast,
concerns with equality and inequality are more relevant
to economic debates. This suggests that agreeableness,
compassion, and empathy may be more important in
explaining economic than cultural ideology. Recent
research provides some support for this prediction. Agree-
ableness has a weak-to-moderate relationship with leftist
economic preferences (especially in highly developed
countries), while its relationship to cultural views is less
consistent and often (though not always) weaker
[43,59,62,75,76,77]. While there is less research on the
topic, empathy may promote leftist economic preferences
under some conditions, though recent work suggests it
interacts with citizens’ political predispositions in com-
plex ways [78,79,80]. Overall, the relationship of these
traits to economic versus cultural ideology is a topic that
requires additional research.
Also consistent with the dual-process framework, SDO is
moderately (negatively) related to concerns with caring
for others and ensuring fair outcomes, but only weakly to
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moderately associated with concerns with maintaining
social order. Conversely, RWA is moderately to strongly
related to concerns with maintaining social order, but
only weakly (negatively) associated with care and fairness
[81–84].5 Research also demonstrates that both SDO and
low levels of agreeableness explain unique variance
(above and beyond RWA and other personality traits)
in support for politicians and parties that cross-cut the
traditional left-right cleavage, such as Donald Trump in
the United States and populist parties in Western Europe
[85–88], though one study suggests the relationship of
agreeableness to populist attitudes may actually be posi-
tive [89].
Research on core human values and ideology, in the
context of Schwartz value theory (SVT) [90], also sup-
ports the dual-process approach. Within SVT, basic
values can be mapped to a two-dimensional space. The
first dimension is anchored by ‘self-transcendence’ (e.g.
benevolence and universalism) at one end and ‘self-
enhancement’ (e.g. power and achievement) at the other,
while the second dimension is anchored by ‘conservation’
(e.g. tradition, conformity, and security) at one end and
‘openness to change’ (e.g. self-direction and stimulation)
at the other. These two dimensions are moderately cor-
related with SDO and RWA, respectively [71,91] and
research finds that the ‘self-transcendence’ dimension is
more closely tied to economic ideology, while the
‘conservation’ dimension is more closely tied to cultural
ideology [92–94].6
In sum, a large body of research suggests two dimensions
are useful for capturing the psychological antecedents of
sociopolitical attitudes: a dimension related to agreeable-
ness, compassion, and empathy is primarily associated
with orientations toward equality and inequality, while a
dimension related to threat sensitivity and uncertainty
aversion is primarily associated with orientations toward
traditionalism and social deviance. Consistent with this
framework, recent work suggests that the latter variables
are more important in explaining cultural ideology, while
the former are more important to economic ideology.
Thus, the dual-process framework provides a plausible
psychological basis for the multidimensional structure of
mass ideology.
Conclusion
Economic and cultural ideology do not reduce to a single
left-right dimension, but they are not orthogonal. This
suggests both shared psychological antecedents as well as
differences in the roots of ideology across dimensions.
5
This asymmetry is even more pronounced in multiple regression and
structural equation models where RWA and SDO are included
simultaneously.
6
Though this research also suggests that in non-post-communist
Western nations political values show a tendency to collapse toward a
single left-right dimension.
Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 2020, 34:94–101
98 Emotion, motivation, personality and social sciences *Political Ideologies*
Consistent with seminal work in the field, variables
related to needs for security and certainty partly explain
the positive association of rightist cultural and economic
ideology in the U.S. and Western Europe. Moreover, the
impact of these needs is larger for politically engaged
citizens — especially in the economic domain — which
tracks the more general finding that economic and cul-
tural ideology are correlated more strongly among politi-
cally active citizens. Importantly, however, these two
forms of ideology are sometimes negatively correlated
and needs for certainty and security may help to explain
this pattern as well. While these needs consistently
promote rightist cultural preferences, they often promote
leftist economic preferences, and this is particularly true of
politically unengaged citizens and countries with less
ideologically constrained political systems.
Finally, much variance in cultural and economic ideology
remains unshared and this is reflected in research that
finds asymmetries in the predictive power of psychologi-
cal antecedents across dimensions. Variables related to
security and certainty needs are more influential in shap-
ing cultural ideology than economic ideology. Variables
related to agreeableness, compassion, and empathy, by
contrast, appear more powerful in the economic domain,
though more research is needed on this question. This
pattern mirrors to some extent long-standing work in
psychology that identifies two broad dimensions under-
pinning sociopolitical attitudes, one related to orienta-
tions toward social deviance and traditional morality and
the other orientations toward equality and inequality.
Conflict of interest statement
Nothing declared.
References and recommended reading
Papers of particular interest, published within the period of review,
have been highlighted as:
 of special interest
 of outstanding interest
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Christopher D Johnston: Conceptualization, Investiga-
tion, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing.
Trent Ollerenshaw: Conceptualization, Investigation,
Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing.
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 How different are cultural and economic ideology? Johnston and Ollerenshaw 99
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 How different are cultural and economic ideology? Johnston and Ollerenshaw 101
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