Title

The Resistance to Change-Beliefs Scale: Validation of a New Measure of Conservative Ideology

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2020

Publication Title

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

Volume

46

First Page

20

Last Page

35

Keywords

conservatism, motivated social cognition, political ideology, resistance to change

Abstract

© 2019 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc. The motivated social cognition (MSC) model of conservative ideology posits there are two core facets of conservative political ideology—endorsement of hierarchies and resistance to change. The present research tested the validity and reliability of a scale developed to measure resistance to change. Five studies support the validity, reliability, and factor structure of the Resistance to Change-Beliefs (RC-B) scale. Scores on the RC-B scale correlated with social and cognitive motivations as well as self-identified conservatism. RC-B also predicted more conservative stances on political issues and factor analyses supported the predicted internal structure of the RC-B scale. This provides the field with a validated instrument that avoids problems inherent in previous measures, can be used to test predictions from the MSC model, and has potential applications beyond political psychology.

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