Lucian Gideon Conway
Biographic Data
| ID | 653831 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lucian Gideon Conway |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lucian Gideon |
| FAMILY NAME | Conway |
| SIGNATURE | CONWAY L G |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Montana |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6919-4320 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 48 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 361 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 48 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Authoritarianism and Threat in 59 Nations
OBJECTIVE: Most prominent theories of authoritarianism maintain that it is deeply tied to threat, and yet few large-scale cross-cultural tests have evaluated this link. Furthermore, there are ongoing debates about (a) the degree that realistic (versus symbolic) threats predict authoritarianism and (b) the degree that the threat-authoritarianism link occurs across the political spectrum. METHOD: To fill in these gaps, the present study evaluated t…
Moving beyond the progressive idol of the cavern in modern islamophobia research
The good, the bad, and the complex
Unpacking the complexity of immigrant stereotypes
An adversarial collaboration on the rigidity‐of‐the‐right, symmetry thesis, or rigidity‐of‐extremes
In an adversarial collaboration, two preregistered U.S.‐based studies (total N = 6181) tested three hypotheses regarding the relationship between political ideology and belief rigidity (operationalized as less evidence‐based belief updating): rigidity‐of‐the‐right, symmetry, and rigidity‐of‐extremes. Across both studies, general and social conservatism were weakly associated with rigidity (|b| ~ .05), and conservatives were more rigid than libera…
Enriching Psychology by Zooming Out to General Mindsets and Practices in Natural Habitats
Psychology has been “zooming in” on individuals, dyads, and groups with a narrow lens to the exclusion of “zooming out,” which involves placing the targeted phenomena within more distal layers of influential context. Here, we plea for a paradigm shift. Specifically, we showcase largely hidden scientific benefits of zooming out by discussing worldwide evidence on inhabitants’ habitual adaptations to colder-than-temperate and hotter-than-temperate …
Insights into the accuracy of social scientists' forecasts of societal change
The geography of literacy
Asian social psychology has often focused on East/West comparisons. However, a latitudinal psychology perspective suggests that cultures will vary in predictable ways along north/south (latitudinal) gradients, rather than along east/west (longitudinal) gradients. We apply this perspective to better understand the geographical placement of literacy rates across the world. We find across 206 nations that latitude shows no linear relationship with w…
Authoritarian attitudes in Russia
The study of authoritarianism has a long history in the field of psychology; however, much of this research focuses on Western countries, especially the United States. In effort to better understand authoritarianism cross‐culturally, we explore the current state of authoritarianism in an important cultural context: Russia. Thus, the current paper reports on large‐scale research of right‐wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation in th…
Does Perceived Governance Quality Improve Toward the North and South Poles for Eco-Cultural Reasons
Good government is vital to human society. But what proximal and distal factors influence this collective goodness perception? Here, we investigate how and why multi-component evaluations by many institutional observers of public governance vary along the north-south rather than east-west axis of the Earth. Across 190 countries, we show that governance quality improves from the equator toward the North and South Poles in both the Eastern and West…
Are U.S. Presidents Becoming Less Rhetorically Complex? Evaluating the Integrative Complexity of Joe Biden and Donald Trump in Historical Context
Are U.S. political leaders becoming simpler in their rhetoric? To evaluate, we place the two most recent Presidents’ integrative complexity against a historical context for three different types of comparable materials. Results reveal that both Biden and Trump are simple when compared to the typical President. Further, segmented regression analyses reveal Biden's and Trump's low complexity is partially the continuation of an ongoing historical de…
The curious case of left‐wing authoritarianism
Left-wing authoritarianism (LWA) has a controversial history in psychology. Some researchers have expressed skepticism about the existence of LWA, whereas others have argued that LWA is a valid construct. In the present article, we offer a framework to reconcile these two perspectives by proposing that ideologically based authoritarian norms are sometimes in conflict with the processes that create authoritarian individuals. In Western political c…
Understanding the Role of Linguistic Complexity in Famous Trial Outcomes
Famous trials not only generate immense popularity and intrigue, they also have the power to change history. Surprisingly, little research examines the use of complex language during these culturally-significant trial outcomes. In the present study, we helped fill in this gap by evaluating the relationship between attorneys’ use of integratively complex language and trial outcomes. Using the well-validated Automated Integrative Complexity scoring…
Proximal versus distal ecological stress
Previous work from a socio-ecological perspective reveals that ecological stress has important effects on political, cultural, and psychological outcomes. However, that work has been limited by (1) a focus on distal forms of ecological stress that are hard for societies to control, and (2) a lack of large-scale conceptual replications. The present study aims to fill in these gaps by simultaneously testing the effects of both more distal ecologica…
Social Psychological Measurements of Covid-19
Major journals have sounded the call for social psychologists to do research on the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19). Such research is only as good as the measurements used. Across three studies (total n = 984), we developed a battery of social psychology-relevant questionnaires to measure COVID-19 phenomena: (1) Perceived Coronavirus Threat Questionnaire, (2) Governmental Response to Coronavirus Questionnaire, (3) Coronavirus Impacts Questionnaire, …
Validating automated integrative complexity
Computer algorithms that analyze language (natural language processing systems) have seen a great increase in usage recently. While use of these systems to score key constructs in social and political psychology has many advantages, it is also dangerous if we do not fully evaluate the validity of these systems. In the present article, we evaluate a natural language processing system for one particular construct that has implications for solving k…
Strategic Communication and the Integrative Complexity‐Ideology Relationship
Research on the relationship between political conservatism and integrative complexity has yielded contradictory results, and little effort has been made to place these mixed results in a theoretical context. The present article considers this issue through a strategic model of language that suggests different psychological processes apply to public politicians versus private citizens. We use a methodologically precise meta‐analytic test of the r…
When Beliefs Lead to (Im)Moral Action
Does believing in torture's effectiveness shape the endorsements of its use? Using a multimethod approach across six studies, we provide converging evidence that efficacy beliefs can help increase understanding of individual differences and situational influences on torture support. Studies 1a and 1b found that torture opinions contained more efficacy‐based language than other types of harm and that people relied more on torture efficacy than tor…
Political Contamination of Social Psychology
An Integrative Complexity Analysis of Religious and Irreligious Thinking
Stereotypical views cast religious believers as closed-minded, unthinking individuals, and irreligious persons as comparatively more intellectual and complex. But are these perceptions accurate? To investigate, three studies assessed differences between religious and irreligious thinking on Integrative Complexity (IC). In Study 1, six atheist-Christian opponents were selected for IC. Findings revealed that Christians were significantly more compl…
The Strategic Manipulation of Linguistic Complexity
To what degree is complex language driven by personal cognitive factors versus strategic self-presentation? Studies teasing apart these two influences on complexity are hard to design and evidence bearing on the question is not abundant. To fill this gap, the present studies explored two models relevant to a form of communication full of strategic implications: deception. The cognitive strain model suggests that because lies are cognitively drain…
Autocratic Government Moderates the Relationship Between Culture and Legal Restriction
Laws that restrict citizens exist in every form of government. Although previous research has shown that legal restriction is tied to culture-level variables such as collectivism, we propose and test a novel interactive model specifying that the culture-legal restriction relationship will depend on the level of democracy or autocracy present in the government. Specifically, legal restrictions in democracies should show more consistent relationshi…
Donald Trump as a cultural revolt against perceived communication restriction
Donald Trump has consistently performed better politically than his negative polling indicators suggested he would. Although there is a tendency to think of Trump support as reflecting ideological conservatism, we argue that part of his support during the election came from a non-ideological source: The preponderant salience of norms restricting communication (Political Correctness – or PC – norms). This perspective suggests that these norms, whi…
The cognitive complexity of Miss Piggy and Osama Bin Laden
Finding the Loch Ness Monster
Although past research suggests authoritarianism may be a uniquely right-wing phenomenon, the present two studies tested the hypothesis that authoritarianism exists in both right-wing and left-wing contexts in essentially equal degrees. Across two studies, university (n = 475) and Mechanical Turk (n = 298) participants completed either the RWA (right-wing authoritarianism) scale or a newly developed (and parallel) LWA (left-wing authoritarianism)…
Finding the Loch Ness Monster
Although past research suggests authoritarianism may be a uniquely right-wing phenomenon, the present two studies tested the hypothesis that authoritarianism exists in both right-wing and left-wing contexts in essentially equal degrees. Across two studies, university (n = 475) and Mechanical Turk (n = 298) participants completed either the RWA (right-wing authoritarianism) scale or a newly developed (and parallel) LWA (left-wing authoritarianism)…
Integrative Complexity of 41 U.S. Presidents
Although U.S. presidents are one of the most studied groups of political figures and integrative complexity is one of the most widely used constructs in political psychology, no study to date has fully examined the integrative complexity of all U.S. presidents. The present study helps fill in that gap by scoring 41 U.S. presidents' first four State of the Union speeches for integrative complexity and then comparing these scores with a large range…
Ethos of independence across regions in the United States
Contemporary U.S. culture has a highly individualistic ethos. Nevertheless, exactly how this ethos was historically fostered remains unanalyzed. A new model of dynamic cultural change maintains that sparsely populated, novel environments that impose major threats to survival, such as the Western frontier in the United States during the 18th and 19th centuries, breed strong values of independence, which in turn guide the production of new practice…
Does Complex or Simple Rhetoric Win Elections? An Integrative Complexity Analysis of U.S. Presidential Campaigns
Research suggests that the integrative complexity of political rhetoric tends to drop during election season, but little research to date directly addresses if this drop in complexity serves to increase or decrease electoral success. The two present studies help fill this gap. Study 1 demonstrates that, during the Democratic Party primary debates in 2003–2004, the eventual winners of the party nomination showed a steeper drop in integrative compl…
Are Conservatives Really More Simple‐Minded than Liberals? The Domain Specificity of Complex Thinking
Prior research suggests that liberals are more complex than conservatives. However, it may be that liberals are not more complex in general, but rather only more complex on certain topic domains (while conservatives are more complex in other domains). Four studies (comprised of over 2,500 participants) evaluated this idea. Study 1 involves the domain specificity of a self‐report questionnaire related to complexity (dogmatism). By making only smal…
Automated Integrative Complexity
Integrative complexity is a conceptually unique and very popular measurement of the complexity of human thought. We believe, however, that it is currently being underutilized because it takes quite a bit of time to score. More time‐efficient computer‐based measurements of complexity that are currently available are correlated with integrative complexity at fairly low levels. To help fill in this gap, we developed a novelautomated integrative comp…
The language of violence
This study examined whether quantitative content analysis of the value references, motive imagery, and integrative complexity expressed in the documents of two terrorist groups and two nonterrorist comparison groups could distinguish the violent groups from their nonviolent counterparts. The two terrorist groups were Central al Qa'ida and al Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula. For each, a comparison group that operated in the same context and had a …
Two ways to be complex and why they matter
Integrative complexity broadly measures the structural complexity of statements. This breadth, although beneficial in multiple ways, can potentially hamper the development of specific theories. In response, the authors developed a model of complex thinking, focusing on 2 different ways that people can be complex within the integrative complexity system and subsequently developed measurements of each of these 2 routes: Dialectical complexity focus…
Automated Integrative Complexity
Automating integrative complexity is fraught with many challenges. To address these challenges, we discuss the tension between a specificity approach and a more flexible multiple‐pass approach, the multifaceted nature of the complexity construct, the gold standard for complexity measurement, the difficulty of human scoring and its consequences for automation, and some ways forward for creating the best complexity measurements. In so doing, we pre…
The terrorist rhetorical style and its consequences for understanding terrorist violence
The linguistic content analyses systems used in the present special issue covered a large range of conceptual and methodological approaches from many of the major researchers in the field. Taking a broad view of this massive set of results, what can we learn about terrorist groups' rhetoric? We present here a summary set of analyses that suggests terrorist rhetoric (compared to non-terrorist control groups) was more social in nature, contained mo…
Selective pressures on the once and future contents of ethnic stereotypes
Donald Trump as a cultural revolt against perceived communication restriction
Donald Trump has consistently performed better politically than his negative polling indicators suggested he would. Although there is a tendency to think of Trump support as reflecting ideological conservatism, we argue that part of his support during the election came from a non-ideological source: The preponderant salience of norms restricting communication (Political Correctness – or PC – norms). This perspective suggests that these norms, whi…
Developing and Evaluating the Social Axioms Survey in Eleven Countries
Based on a deductive, culturally decentered approach, new items were generated to improve the reliability of the original Social Axioms Survey, which measures individuals' general beliefs about the world. In Study 1, results from 11 countries support the original five-factor structure and achieve higher reliability for the axiom dimensions as measured by the new scale. Moreover, moderate but meaningful associations between axiom and Big-Five pers…
The hidden implications of radical group rhetoric
We compared the public rhetoric of two terrorist groups to ideologically-similar non-terrorist groups on integrative complexity and its two sub-components (dialectical complexity and elaborative complexity). We further attempted to use these constructs to understand when the two focal terrorist groups engaged in violent acts. Results suggested that terrorist group rhetoric was uniformly simpler than non-terrorist rhetoric, and that this simplicit…
Intranational Cultural Variation
Within-nation cultural variation across regions provides a largely untapped resource for examining cross- cultural relations usually studied at the international level. The current study examines the relations of collectivism, helping behavior with strangers, and pace of life across regions of the United States. The study shows that within-nation cultural variation can be used both to (a) cross-validate findings generated at the international lev…
Collectivism and Governmentally Initiated Restrictions
This article provides evidence for a link between cultural collectivism and indexes of governmentally initiated restriction both across nations and within one nation, both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. In Investigation 1, across U.S. states, an index of legislative restriction is positively related to an index of collective behaviors. In Investigation 2, across nations, an index of political restriction is positively related to measures o…
Strategic Communication and the Integrative Complexity‐Ideology Relationship
Research on the relationship between political conservatism and integrative complexity has yielded contradictory results, and little effort has been made to place these mixed results in a theoretical context. The present article considers this issue through a strategic model of language that suggests different psychological processes apply to public politicians versus private citizens. We use a methodologically precise meta‐analytic test of the r…
Ideologically Motivated Perceptions of Complexity
While prior research has found linguistic complexity to be predictive across multiple domains, little research has examined how people perceive-or misperceive-linguistic complexity when they encounter it. Drawing from a model of the motivated ideological lens through which people view linguistic complexity, two studies examined the hypotheses that (a) participants are more likely to overestimate the complexity of political candidates when they be…
Social contagion of time perception
Are U.S. Presidents Becoming Less Rhetorically Complex? Evaluating the Integrative Complexity of Joe Biden and Donald Trump in Historical Context
Are U.S. political leaders becoming simpler in their rhetoric? To evaluate, we place the two most recent Presidents’ integrative complexity against a historical context for three different types of comparable materials. Results reveal that both Biden and Trump are simple when compared to the typical President. Further, segmented regression analyses reveal Biden's and Trump's low complexity is partially the continuation of an ongoing historical de…
When Beliefs Lead to (Im)Moral Action
Does believing in torture's effectiveness shape the endorsements of its use? Using a multimethod approach across six studies, we provide converging evidence that efficacy beliefs can help increase understanding of individual differences and situational influences on torture support. Studies 1a and 1b found that torture opinions contained more efficacy‐based language than other types of harm and that people relied more on torture efficacy than tor…
The Strategic Manipulation of Linguistic Complexity
To what degree is complex language driven by personal cognitive factors versus strategic self-presentation? Studies teasing apart these two influences on complexity are hard to design and evidence bearing on the question is not abundant. To fill this gap, the present studies explored two models relevant to a form of communication full of strategic implications: deception. The cognitive strain model suggests that because lies are cognitively drain…
Insights into the accuracy of social scientists' forecasts of societal change
Validating automated integrative complexity
Computer algorithms that analyze language (natural language processing systems) have seen a great increase in usage recently. While use of these systems to score key constructs in social and political psychology has many advantages, it is also dangerous if we do not fully evaluate the validity of these systems. In the present article, we evaluate a natural language processing system for one particular construct that has implications for solving k…
An Integrative Complexity Analysis of Religious and Irreligious Thinking
Stereotypical views cast religious believers as closed-minded, unthinking individuals, and irreligious persons as comparatively more intellectual and complex. But are these perceptions accurate? To investigate, three studies assessed differences between religious and irreligious thinking on Integrative Complexity (IC). In Study 1, six atheist-Christian opponents were selected for IC. Findings revealed that Christians were significantly more compl…
The target is straw or the arrow is crooked
Noise, logic, and the span of time
Intranational Cultural Variation
Within-nation cultural variation across regions provides a largely untapped resource for examining cross- cultural relations usually studied at the international level. The current study examines the relations of collectivism, helping behavior with strangers, and pace of life across regions of the United States. The study shows that within-nation cultural variation can be used both to (a) cross-validate findings generated at the international lev…
Selective pressures on the once and future contents of ethnic stereotypes
Social contagion of time perception
When authorities' commands backfire
The perception of consensus typically produces conformity, but specific attributional circumstances may produce deviance instead. Ironically, the command of an authority figure may create one such circumstance. Participants were presented with scenarios in which they had to make a choice between 2 options. Prior to their decision, they observed others all making a single choice. In some conditions, this consensus occurred following an authority's…
Collectivism and Governmentally Initiated Restrictions
This article provides evidence for a link between cultural collectivism and indexes of governmentally initiated restriction both across nations and within one nation, both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. In Investigation 1, across U.S. states, an index of legislative restriction is positively related to an index of collective behaviors. In Investigation 2, across nations, an index of political restriction is positively related to measures o…
Integrative Complexity of 41 U.S. Presidents
Although U.S. presidents are one of the most studied groups of political figures and integrative complexity is one of the most widely used constructs in political psychology, no study to date has fully examined the integrative complexity of all U.S. presidents. The present study helps fill in that gap by scoring 41 U.S. presidents' first four State of the Union speeches for integrative complexity and then comparing these scores with a large range…
The language of violence
This study examined whether quantitative content analysis of the value references, motive imagery, and integrative complexity expressed in the documents of two terrorist groups and two nonterrorist comparison groups could distinguish the violent groups from their nonviolent counterparts. The two terrorist groups were Central al Qa'ida and al Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula. For each, a comparison group that operated in the same context and had a …
Two ways to be complex and why they matter
Integrative complexity broadly measures the structural complexity of statements. This breadth, although beneficial in multiple ways, can potentially hamper the development of specific theories. In response, the authors developed a model of complex thinking, focusing on 2 different ways that people can be complex within the integrative complexity system and subsequently developed measurements of each of these 2 routes: Dialectical complexity focus…
Ethos of independence across regions in the United States
Contemporary U.S. culture has a highly individualistic ethos. Nevertheless, exactly how this ethos was historically fostered remains unanalyzed. A new model of dynamic cultural change maintains that sparsely populated, novel environments that impose major threats to survival, such as the Western frontier in the United States during the 18th and 19th centuries, breed strong values of independence, which in turn guide the production of new practice…
The Biological Roots of Complex Thinking
Are highly heritable attitudes more or less complex than less heritable attitudes? Over 2,000 participant responses on topics varying in heritability were coded for overall integrative complexity and its 2 subcomponents (dialectical complexity and elaborative complexity). Across different heritability sets drawn from 2 separate prior twin research programs, the present results yielded a consistent pattern: Heritability was always significantly po…
Religious Fundamentalism
Items were generated to explore the factorial structure of a construct of fundamentalism worded appropriately for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Results suggested three underlying dimensions: (a) External versus Internal Authority, (b) Fixed versus Malleable Religion, and (c) Worldly Rejection versus Worldly Affirmation. The three dimensions indicate that religious fundamentalism is a personal orientation that asserts a supra-human locus of mo…
The terrorist rhetorical style and its consequences for understanding terrorist violence
The linguistic content analyses systems used in the present special issue covered a large range of conceptual and methodological approaches from many of the major researchers in the field. Taking a broad view of this massive set of results, what can we learn about terrorist groups' rhetoric? We present here a summary set of analyses that suggests terrorist rhetoric (compared to non-terrorist control groups) was more social in nature, contained mo…
The hidden implications of radical group rhetoric
We compared the public rhetoric of two terrorist groups to ideologically-similar non-terrorist groups on integrative complexity and its two sub-components (dialectical complexity and elaborative complexity). We further attempted to use these constructs to understand when the two focal terrorist groups engaged in violent acts. Results suggested that terrorist group rhetoric was uniformly simpler than non-terrorist rhetoric, and that this simplicit…
Does Complex or Simple Rhetoric Win Elections? An Integrative Complexity Analysis of U.S. Presidential Campaigns
Research suggests that the integrative complexity of political rhetoric tends to drop during election season, but little research to date directly addresses if this drop in complexity serves to increase or decrease electoral success. The two present studies help fill this gap. Study 1 demonstrates that, during the Democratic Party primary debates in 2003–2004, the eventual winners of the party nomination showed a steeper drop in integrative compl…
Developing and Evaluating the Social Axioms Survey in Eleven Countries
Based on a deductive, culturally decentered approach, new items were generated to improve the reliability of the original Social Axioms Survey, which measures individuals' general beliefs about the world. In Study 1, results from 11 countries support the original five-factor structure and achieve higher reliability for the axiom dimensions as measured by the new scale. Moreover, moderate but meaningful associations between axiom and Big-Five pers…
Personal closeness and perceived torture efficacy
Psychological research on the efficacy of torture frequently excludes an important question: What causes people to believe that torture is effective? We investigated whether a factor increasing persons’ desire for torture to be effective might lead them to perceive that it was more effective. Across 2 studies, participants evaluated hypothetical crisis scenarios that varied in the degree of personal closeness to the potential victim of the perpet…
Automated Integrative Complexity
Automating integrative complexity is fraught with many challenges. To address these challenges, we discuss the tension between a specificity approach and a more flexible multiple‐pass approach, the multifaceted nature of the complexity construct, the gold standard for complexity measurement, the difficulty of human scoring and its consequences for automation, and some ways forward for creating the best complexity measurements. In so doing, we pre…
Automated Integrative Complexity
Integrative complexity is a conceptually unique and very popular measurement of the complexity of human thought. We believe, however, that it is currently being underutilized because it takes quite a bit of time to score. More time‐efficient computer‐based measurements of complexity that are currently available are correlated with integrative complexity at fairly low levels. To help fill in this gap, we developed a novelautomated integrative comp…
Psychological Spacetime
It has been an accepted scientific fact in physics for almost 100 years that time speeds up and slows down for an observer based on factors—such as motion and gravity—that affect space. Yet this fact, drawn from the theory of relativity, has not been widely integrated into the study of the psychology of time. The present article helps to fill in this gap between physics and psychology by reviewing evidence concerning what a psychological spacetim…
Are Conservatives Really More Simple‐Minded than Liberals? The Domain Specificity of Complex Thinking
Prior research suggests that liberals are more complex than conservatives. However, it may be that liberals are not more complex in general, but rather only more complex on certain topic domains (while conservatives are more complex in other domains). Four studies (comprised of over 2,500 participants) evaluated this idea. Study 1 involves the domain specificity of a self‐report questionnaire related to complexity (dogmatism). By making only smal…
Ideologically Motivated Perceptions of Complexity
While prior research has found linguistic complexity to be predictive across multiple domains, little research has examined how people perceive-or misperceive-linguistic complexity when they encounter it. Drawing from a model of the motivated ideological lens through which people view linguistic complexity, two studies examined the hypotheses that (a) participants are more likely to overestimate the complexity of political candidates when they be…
Donald Trump as a cultural revolt against perceived communication restriction
Donald Trump has consistently performed better politically than his negative polling indicators suggested he would. Although there is a tendency to think of Trump support as reflecting ideological conservatism, we argue that part of his support during the election came from a non-ideological source: The preponderant salience of norms restricting communication (Political Correctness – or PC – norms). This perspective suggests that these norms, whi…
The cognitive complexity of Miss Piggy and Osama Bin Laden
Psychology (40 works) · Social Psychology (30 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (29 works) · Political science (28 works) · Law (23 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (22 works) · Politics (20 works) · Social Psychology (19 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Law (17 works)