The psychology of personal worldviews
An individual’s personal worldview consists of his or her most basic values, beliefs, and narratives about the world. This worldview is a central aspect of the person’s individuality. Yet its role has long been neglected in personality psychological theory, which has instead focused predominantly on dispositional traits (e.g., “extraversion” or “openness”). Previous empirical research on specific aspects of worldviews is also highly fragmented and disorganized. The overarching purpose of the proposed research project is therefore to present a unified framework for the study of personal worldviews from a personality psychological point of view. The project consists of three parts. The purpose of each part respectively is to: (1) conceptualize, clarify and organize the study of personal worldviews, illuminate weaknesses of past research, and present an agenda for future research; (2) present a new personality theory, based on contemporary philosophy of mind, that situates personal worldviews within personality; (3) present a new integrative empirical model that divides basic beliefs about the world into six dimensions: belief in a higher reality, human agency, the knowability of the world, the goodness of the world, the simplicity of the world, and importance of the environment for human beings. The project duration is one year, including a two month stay at the University of Oregon. The project will result in a series of publications in scientific journals.
Final report
This sabbatical was completed between July 2022 and July 2023. It included a stay at the University of Oregon, in February and March 2023. Apart from participation in seminars and lab meetings, this stay included regular meetings (formal and informal) with Professor Gerard Saucier, who is a world leading researcher on both personal worldviews and dispositional personality traits with extensive expertise on personality measurement. This provided ample opportunity for learning, discussion, and critical feedback, which yielded invaluable insight, inspiration, and understanding of the history of the field. In addition to this, the sabbatical included a stay at Villa Martinsson, which is affiliated with Gothenburg University, in December 2022. This provided optimal conditions for focused writing.
The sabbatical yielded two comprehensive article manuscripts, which together integrate and organize the study of personal worldviews in psychology, along with a number of papers that address more specific issues.
The first of the two comprehensive articles ("Toward a personality psychological science of personal worldviews") is a theoretical article that shows how the study of personal worldviews can contribute to a richer and more comprehensive science of personality. It includes three parts: a conceptual framework that defines personal worldviews and describes their key components (divided into descriptive, normative, and organizational aspects) based on previous research; a discussion of similarities and differences between worldview characteristics and traditional dispositional traits both theoretically, in terms of ontology and epistemology, and empirically, in terms of universality, stability, and origins; and an agenda for future research that encompasses the development of taxonomy, the study of individuals, and the study of causal transactions between worldview components, the environment, life outcomes, and other personality characteristics.
The second of the more comprehensive papers ("The structure of basic beliefs about the world"), which is written together with Professor Martin Bäckström at Lund University, presents the results of a large-scale empirical project focusing on basic beliefs. This project is divided into four phases: a cross-disciplinary review of past theoretical and empirical models; development of self-report measures through state-of-the-art psychometric methods; analyses of superordinate factors; and analysis of temporal stability and associations with other personality characteristics. Apart from yielding measurement instruments for around 60 distinct dimensions of basic belief, the project has generated plenty of important theoretical insights. Among other things, it identifies numerous basic beliefs that previously been neglected (particularly concerning epistemology) and a number of particularly fundamental superordinate factors, including belief in a higher reality, goodness, a simple world, and the ability of humans to know and control their world. Furthermore, the results suggest that basic beliefs are approximately as stable as other personality characteristics, such as traits and values, in spite of being weakly associated with these characteristics. In other words, they appear to make up a genuinely independent source of stable variation in personality.
During the stay at the University of Oregon, I also started working on a third article together with Professor Gerard Saucier. This article argues that personality psychology has been shaped by a strong from of reductionism, including the assumption that personality can be completely reduced to a small number of universal elements that are cut into the joints of nature and amenable solely to the sorts of explanation that are used in the natural sciences. Although this reductionism has started to lose ground in recent years, this article illuminates its continuing impact on research, for example in that the field still does not properly acknowledge the role of personal worldviews, high-dimensional structures, cultural factors, and intentional explanations in personality psychology.
Another article ("Misperceptions in a post-truth world: Effects of subjectivism and cultural relativism on bullshit receptivity and conspiracist ideation", published open access in Journal of Research in Personality) and an article manuscript ("Politically motivated bullshit receptivity: Ideology, epistemology, and receptivity to pseudo-profound bullshit across domains"), both of which are authored together with colleagues at Linköping University, are biproducts of the empirical project described above. They report research findings that illustrate the role beliefs about knowledge and the truth play in why people fall (or do not fall) for misinformation. In other words, they provide clear examples of important effects of basic beliefs on our lives.
Yet another article that focuses on antidemocratic tendencies and political ideology ("Antidemocratic tendencies on the left, the right, and beyond: A critical review of theory and research on left-wing authoritarianism", published open access in the journal Political Psychology) was a more serendipitous consequence of having time for theoretical and philosophical reflection during the sabbatical. Furthermore, the theoretical work on worldviews generated a new research project during the sabbatical, namely the development of instruments to measure diverse aspects of meaning-making and structural features of worldviews (e.g., life-story narration, intellectual reflection, coherence, autonomous meaning-making). This will hopefully counteract the tendency in the field to reduce all meaning-making to life story narration.
Results from the main empirical research project were presented at the European Conference of Personality in Madrid (July 13, 2022), University of Oregon (February 7 and 15, 2023), and the University of Lausanne (March 27, 2023) as a part of the sabbatical, and this provided me with plenty of valuable feedback. Additional presentations of the research took place after the sabbatical was completed at the Subjective Probability, Utility, and Decision-Making Conference in Vienna (August 21, 2023) and at Uppsala University (November 10, 2023). The completed empirical project will also be presented at the World Conference of Personality in Curaçao, in April 2024. Research was disseminated to the public mainly through a personal webpage (arturnilsson.se) and research blog (blog.arturnilsson.se).
The sabbatical yielded two comprehensive article manuscripts, which together integrate and organize the study of personal worldviews in psychology, along with a number of papers that address more specific issues.
The first of the two comprehensive articles ("Toward a personality psychological science of personal worldviews") is a theoretical article that shows how the study of personal worldviews can contribute to a richer and more comprehensive science of personality. It includes three parts: a conceptual framework that defines personal worldviews and describes their key components (divided into descriptive, normative, and organizational aspects) based on previous research; a discussion of similarities and differences between worldview characteristics and traditional dispositional traits both theoretically, in terms of ontology and epistemology, and empirically, in terms of universality, stability, and origins; and an agenda for future research that encompasses the development of taxonomy, the study of individuals, and the study of causal transactions between worldview components, the environment, life outcomes, and other personality characteristics.
The second of the more comprehensive papers ("The structure of basic beliefs about the world"), which is written together with Professor Martin Bäckström at Lund University, presents the results of a large-scale empirical project focusing on basic beliefs. This project is divided into four phases: a cross-disciplinary review of past theoretical and empirical models; development of self-report measures through state-of-the-art psychometric methods; analyses of superordinate factors; and analysis of temporal stability and associations with other personality characteristics. Apart from yielding measurement instruments for around 60 distinct dimensions of basic belief, the project has generated plenty of important theoretical insights. Among other things, it identifies numerous basic beliefs that previously been neglected (particularly concerning epistemology) and a number of particularly fundamental superordinate factors, including belief in a higher reality, goodness, a simple world, and the ability of humans to know and control their world. Furthermore, the results suggest that basic beliefs are approximately as stable as other personality characteristics, such as traits and values, in spite of being weakly associated with these characteristics. In other words, they appear to make up a genuinely independent source of stable variation in personality.
During the stay at the University of Oregon, I also started working on a third article together with Professor Gerard Saucier. This article argues that personality psychology has been shaped by a strong from of reductionism, including the assumption that personality can be completely reduced to a small number of universal elements that are cut into the joints of nature and amenable solely to the sorts of explanation that are used in the natural sciences. Although this reductionism has started to lose ground in recent years, this article illuminates its continuing impact on research, for example in that the field still does not properly acknowledge the role of personal worldviews, high-dimensional structures, cultural factors, and intentional explanations in personality psychology.
Another article ("Misperceptions in a post-truth world: Effects of subjectivism and cultural relativism on bullshit receptivity and conspiracist ideation", published open access in Journal of Research in Personality) and an article manuscript ("Politically motivated bullshit receptivity: Ideology, epistemology, and receptivity to pseudo-profound bullshit across domains"), both of which are authored together with colleagues at Linköping University, are biproducts of the empirical project described above. They report research findings that illustrate the role beliefs about knowledge and the truth play in why people fall (or do not fall) for misinformation. In other words, they provide clear examples of important effects of basic beliefs on our lives.
Yet another article that focuses on antidemocratic tendencies and political ideology ("Antidemocratic tendencies on the left, the right, and beyond: A critical review of theory and research on left-wing authoritarianism", published open access in the journal Political Psychology) was a more serendipitous consequence of having time for theoretical and philosophical reflection during the sabbatical. Furthermore, the theoretical work on worldviews generated a new research project during the sabbatical, namely the development of instruments to measure diverse aspects of meaning-making and structural features of worldviews (e.g., life-story narration, intellectual reflection, coherence, autonomous meaning-making). This will hopefully counteract the tendency in the field to reduce all meaning-making to life story narration.
Results from the main empirical research project were presented at the European Conference of Personality in Madrid (July 13, 2022), University of Oregon (February 7 and 15, 2023), and the University of Lausanne (March 27, 2023) as a part of the sabbatical, and this provided me with plenty of valuable feedback. Additional presentations of the research took place after the sabbatical was completed at the Subjective Probability, Utility, and Decision-Making Conference in Vienna (August 21, 2023) and at Uppsala University (November 10, 2023). The completed empirical project will also be presented at the World Conference of Personality in Curaçao, in April 2024. Research was disseminated to the public mainly through a personal webpage (arturnilsson.se) and research blog (blog.arturnilsson.se).