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Familiarity Bias: Examining A Cognitive-Affective Mechanism Underlying Ideological Support For The Status Quo, John C. Blanchar
Familiarity Bias: Examining A Cognitive-Affective Mechanism Underlying Ideological Support For The Status Quo, John C. Blanchar
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
It is well established that people like familiarity over novelty. Because that which is most familiar is frequently indicative of the way things are, favoring familiarity should create a psychological advantage for the status quo. In two studies, I tested the hypothesis that familiarity bias—susceptibility to the mere-exposure effect whereby attitude objects receive increasingly favorable evaluations due to repeated sensory experience—is foundational to ideological support for the status quo. In Study 1, individual variation in familiarity bias predicted greater Right-Wing Authoritarianism. Existential threat was experimentally manipulated via the salience of international terrorism in Study 2, but was unsuccessful due to …