Exploring the Cognitive Diversity of Political Concepts

Prior research has shown that people vary considerably in how they interpret political concepts, a variability often attributed to liberal–conservative differences underlying political polarization. In this study, rather than focusing on the liberal–conservative dichotomy, we considered personality and morality variables as possible predictors of cognitive diversity in subjects' interpretation of political concepts. Participants completed brief personality (HEXACO) and morality (MAC) assessments, followed by a series of association ratings for the concepts of freedom, justice, and authority. We found that certain personality traits and moral dimensions correlate with higher associations between probe concepts. Furthermore, clustering of political inclination on morality dimensions and concept ratings suggested that the latter made a limited contribution to political diversity, only raising the number of clusters from 2 to 3. Keywords: personality; morality; conceptual diversity; freedom; justice; authority