About This Project

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What is the context of this research?

Most studies look at gun rights support as a simple outcome of political orientation, such as being a Republican or Democrat. We look at how the effect of these orientations critically depends on whether gun rights are framed as serving the interests of dominant or subordinate groups.

A first study, completed in August of this year (n = 301), was a correlational study aiming to find personality traits that predicted support for attitudes related to aggression. We discovered that social dominance orientation (SDO) - support for inequality between social groups - was a strong predictor of positive attitudes towards violence and a propensity toward committing acts of violence.

A second study, also completed in August of this year (n = 205), found that Pro/Anti-dominance framing moderates the relationship between social dominance orientation and support for gun control. Normally, those who are higher in SDO have greater support for gun rights. However, once we framed gun rights as a way for low status groups (such as African Americans) to defend themselves against high status groups, the relationship turned in the opposite direction: in this case the more one supports inequality between groups, the less one supports gun rights.

The above data have been accepted for presentation at the annual convention of the Association of Psychological Science.

What is the significance of this project?

This project applies the theory and methods of social and political psychology to understand the underpinnings of gun rights sentiment in American society and peoples propensity to commit violent acts.

Understanding the reasons why a person who would traditionally support gun rights changes their mind when the group-based power dynamics of the issue change would add a new dimension to the gun rights/control debate in American political discourse. It is also critical to see how these attitudes relate to attitudes toward violence and aggression more generally, to help combat their escalation in society at large.

What are the goals of the project?

Funds are needed to expand the research started. It is critical to connect the results of the first two studies, bringing gun rights support together with aggression-related attitudes. Crucially examining how peoples attitudes change over time, and using survey experiments, enables us too understand the causal relationships between our variables. Specifically, two additional studies have been created, a longitudinal study (study three) and a more comprehensive social traits and gun rights study (study four).

Study three is an attempt to validate the data collected from the first study (correlational), and to establish predictive power over time through a longitudinal design. This study will also identify additional personality traits that may help to predict violence as an outcome of SDO.

Study four is an attempt to dig into the political psychology underlying attitudes toward aggression, violence and guns. We wish to test a hypothesis about the relationship between social dominance orientation, right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and political dispositions that are playing an increasingly important role in the American political landscape. Specifically, we predict that libertarianism, of the kind espoused by the Tea Party, is a product of high SDO and low RWA.

Research design for both studies is complete and currently under review at the Harvard University Insitutional Review Board.

From the data collected from this project a paper will be written and submitted to peer reviewed journals and made publicly available.