Motivational and cognitive antecedents of political beliefs

The study explores the relationship between need for closure, cognitive conservatism and political beliefs. It was hypothesized that need for closure as well as cognitive conservatism treated as a formal aspect of political beliefs could manifest in different ideology content: both left-wing and right-wing beliefs. However, the results of two different studies do not confirm the above expectations: need for closure and cognitive conservatism are associated with right-wing beliefs and this relationship is linear. In addition, the results show that the cognitive conservatism mediates the influence of need for closure on political beliefs. The implications of these findings for the concept of cognitive conservatism as formal characteristics of political beliefs are discussed.