Citation

Petlach M, Ondruška M. Front. Psychol. 2023; 14: e1151226.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, Frontiers Research Foundation)

DOI

10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1151226

PMID

37275693

PMCID

PMC10235608

Abstract

The number of countries, identifying themselves as liberal democracies, have decreased recently after yielding to various forms of electoral authoritarianism due to the citizens' characteristics and political attitudes (Morse, 2012; Schedler, 2015; Freedom House, 2019). At the same time, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic also exacerbated the living conditions for democracy (Moscatelli et al., 2023). Therefore, natural sciences and psychology have gradually altered how political behavior is approached (Jost et al., 2014a). Consequently, biological science has become an indispensable fixture of political science (Smith et al., 2011; Hatemi and McDermott, 2012; Schreiber, 2017). New studies, originally arising from political science, have been expanded on by psychologists in the context of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The local studies then conclude that the democratic nature of given societies keeps dropping (Klicperová-Baker, 2021). Especially in the case of CEE, democratic backsliding has been recognized as the process of "de-consolidation" (Bochsler and Juon, 2020, pg. 167).

Consequently, the authors address the importance of physiology and physiological reactions within political psychology in two types of electrodiagnosis (EDX) experiments while the authors simultaneously recorded electrodermal activity (EDA), measuring the skin conductance responses (SCR), and the facial muscle activity via facial electromyography (fEMG). The authors attempt to (1) partially elaborate on the discrepancy between Amodio et al. (2007) and Kremláček et al. (2019) whose teams analyzed the role of political leanings with different conclusions, and (2) study non-democratic ideology and its potential devotees as their numbers snowball at an alarming rate. Whereas Amodio's study, based on event-related potentials (ERPs), gave evidence of political leaning (conservative or liberal) as a key variable linked to one's brain activity, Kremláček's EEG experiment suggested the opposite thereby identifying no relation between political leaning and the brain activity of their non-Western research participants. Another objective of this study is to call attention to EDX as an approach for studying long-term aspects of political behavior (Oxley et al., 2008), rather than only short-term ones (Klofstad, 2017). However, the tools and methods of EDX and the level they attest to the overall relevance to social science have neither been sufficiently analyzed nor confirmed, for instance, in the case of EDA (cf. Ravaja, 2009; Leiner et al., 2012; Horesh et al., 2021) or fEMG (cf. Jerritta et al., 2014; Isabella et al., 2015; Drimalla et al., 2019). The authors outline feasible trajectories of research in which self-identification and questionnaires would not be the only indicator (cf. Innes and Ahrens, 1994; Erisen et al., 2013).

Language: en

Keywords

education; ideology; EDA; electrodiagnosis (EDX); fEMG; political leaning