Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Folk theories guide behavior and shape how people make sense oftheir environment. We investigated whether folk economic beliefswould moderate the widely publicized finding that people show aconservative shift in their politics when their majority status insociety is threatened. Across three experiments, participants readabout either projected demographic changes (threat) or changes inonline dating (control), indicated whether they viewed the economyas a zero- or non-zero-sum system, and responded to measures ofsociopolitical attitudes. Compared to controls, participants in thethreat condition who conceptualized the economy in zero-sum termssupported more conservative policies. However, those whoconceptualized the economy in non-zero-sum terms actuallyendorsed more liberal positions in this condition. These effectsobtained only when participants expressed their economic viewsbefore their political attitudes. This suggests folk economic beliefsshape how people respond to threats to their majority status,provided those beliefs are first made explicit.