In late 2003, Jost and colleagues received death threats for publishing a paper that said that being politically conservative served a number of ‘existential functions’, not all of which were positive… Both SDO and RWA were significant predictors…

 Right-Wing Authoritarianism  Social Dominance Orientation Here’s my take on this…

Consider (again) the correlations between Social Dominance, Authoritarianism, and Political Conservatism: Both SDO and RWA are significantly correlated with Conservatism, BUT they are also correlated with each other.

Controlling for.. RWASCALE S6O_SHOR SDOSCALE S6O_SHOR ( 0) ( 403) P=. P=.000 SDOSCALE ( 403) ( 0) P=.000 P=. Controlling for.. SDOSCALE S6O_SHOR RWASCALE S6O_SHOR ( 0) ( 403) P=. P=.000 RWASCALE ( 403) ( 0) P=.000 P=. So, the question is whether the variation that these two variables share with conservatism is unique (e.g., SDO and RWA explain different ‘parts’ of conservatism), or shared (e.g., they both explain the same bit)… Partial correlations can help:.65  .50

Controlling for.. S6O_SHOR RWASCALE SDOSCALE RWASCALE ( 0) ( 403) P=. P=.173 SDOSCALE ( 40) ( 0) P=.173 P=. And we can look at the relationship between RWA and SDO once we partial out Conservatism (the bit the two share with conservatism):.45 .07

So… what does this tell us? The major part of variance that SDO (and RWA) share with conservatism, is unique to SDO (and RWA) – the part of Conservatism that they explain does not overlap (much). The major part of the the variation that SDO and RWA share is also shared in common with Conservatism. Given the results of these analyses, what would you expect to find if you regressed Conservatism onto SDO and RWA?

EXCELLENT!… …as long as SDO, RWA, and conservatism are NOT the same thing! Remember – Jost et al., say that antiegalitarianism and resistance to change are defining characteristics of conservatism, not the psychological basis of it. If you EFA the SDO and RWA scales they seem to reduce fairly neatly into two, clearly distinguishable, factors, but… When you include the conservatism items it gets REALLY messy. What I need is a technique that will allow me to compare how good a one-factor model (SDO, RWA, Conservatism as all representing the same ‘latent’ construct) with a three factor (SDO, RWA and Conservatism as separate but correlated latent constructs). …Confirmatory Factor Analysis…

Here, we have the end result of a CFA that forces all the items (‘packeted’ together) into a one-factor solution:

And the results when we allow packets of items to ‘load’ onto their respective latent variable:

One-Factor model Χ 2 (90)=827.80, p<.001 GFI=.588 CFI=.595 RMR=.172 RMSEA=.176 Three factor model: Χ 2 (87)=182.92, p<.001 GFI=.912 CFI=.948 RMR=.044 RMSEA=.064 So, the question is whether the variation that these two variables share with conservatism is unique (e.g., SDO and RWA explain different ‘parts’ of conservatism), or shared (e.g., they both explain the same bit)… Partial correlations can help: The difference is Χ 2 (3)= (827.80–182.92) = , which is significant. This means that the data are a better fit for a model in which SDO, RWA, and conservatism are separate constructs, than if they are all parts of the same thing.

If I want to have a look at the relationship between Social Dominance, Authoritarianism, and Political Conservatism, I can do that using SEM: First, specify the paths… Then run the model

Do those unstandardised path coefficients (.35 for SDO to Conservatism and.28 for RWA to conservatism) look familiar? They should – they’re identical to the unstandardised regression coefficients we got from regressing conservatism scores onto SDO and RWA. In fact, for these examples, SEM does exactly the same thing as regression… But with SEM we can do SO much more!

Openness to Change vs Conservation Self-Transcendence vs Self-Enhancement DOMINANCE (Social Dominance Orientation) Conservatism SUBMISSION (Right-Wing Authoritarianism) Social Values → Beliefs about Subordination → Ideology Y’see – I have a theory… that political conservatism is founded on two sets of ‘deeper’ beliefs – about subordination (submission or RWA, and Domination or SDO) which are in turn founded on even more basic values – guiding principles in people’s lives.

And here it is – and it works, okayish… The fit indices are good, and the RMSEA is borderline satisfactory. If there’s one thing that looks dodgy it’s the non-significant path from openness to change to conservatism.

When I eliminate that path, the model improves…