A comparison of broad-bandwidth and frequency-specific measures of competitive and dangerous worldviews

We compare and contrast existing broad-bandwidth and frequency-specific worldview measures in the prediction of Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO). As expected, broad-bandwidth and frequency-specific measures of dangerous worldview predicted common variance in RWA, and competitive worldview measures predicted common variance in SDO. Only the broad-bandwidth measures retained a unique concurrent association with RWA and SDO (n = 347 New Zealand undergraduates). We argue that these alternative worldview measures share a common component reflecting schematic beliefs about the level of danger and threat in the social world (a descriptive belief component). The broad-bandwidth measure should be better suited for assessing a mixture of descriptive and prescriptive beliefs about how the social world ought to be, whereas the newer frequency-specific index is better suited for isolating the descriptive component of social worldview schemas. Directions for research examining heuristic biases that shape descriptive components of social worldview schemas are discussed.

► We compared existing broad-bandwidth and new frequency-specific social worldview measures.
► Both worldview measures predicted common variance in ideological attitude measures, RWA and SDO.
► Only the broad-bandwidth measure retained unique variance in RWA and SDO.
► New measure uniquely isolates descriptive worldview content (i.e., the common variance).