Values about inequality and social control are related to economic and social conservatism in complex ways

Distinct values about inequality and social control are widely thought to explain why some people hold political attitudes that are economically or socially conservative. However, existing research relies on psychological scales that do not directly measure values about inequality and social control, and which blur the boundary between values and attitudes. Here, we combine an online American sample (N=893), the new Dual Foundations Scale of political values, and multilevel Bayesian analysis to show that values of inequality and social control each show the expected positive relationship with either conservative economic or social attitudes, respectively. However, we also find diversity in these values’ effects across individual items. Furthermore, social control values predict social conservatism less strongly than do inequality values and having a religious identity. Exploratory follow-up analyses indicate this is because social control – as measured by both DFS Social Control and RWA Submission and Aggression – is distinct from social conservativism and RWA Traditionalism. Our findings support a role for inequality and social control values in understanding conservative ideology, but reveal that social conservatism cannot be directly equated with social control values.