Evidence map›Paper›PMID 36968234›Full record

ArticleRoyal Society open science2023

Neuroanatomical correlates of system-justifying ideologies: a pre-registered voxel-based morphometry study on right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation.

Jan Paolo M Balagtas, Serenella Tolomeo, Bindiya L Ragunath, Paola Rigo, Marc H Bornstein, Gianluca Esposito

Open access · goldFull text read
In one paragraph

Article in Royal Society open science, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
3citing papers in PubMed
4.6field-weighted citation impact, top 6% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

3 citing papers in PubMed, 8 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. The Amygdala and Politics.Brain sciences · 2026
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

6 authors at 5 institutions in 3 countries.

Jan Paolo M BalagtasPsychology Program, School of Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Serenella TolomeoInstitute of High Performance Computing, AStar, Singapore.
Bindiya L RagunathPsychology Program, School of Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Paola RigoDepartment of Developmental and Social Psychology, University of Padova, Padova, Italy.
Marc H BornsteinChild and Family Research, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, USA.
Gianluca EspositoDepartment of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento, Rovereto, Italy.ORCID 0000-0002-9442-0254
Nanyang Technological University · SGEunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development · USInstitute of High Performance Computing · SGUniversity of Padua · ITUniversity of Trento · IT

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

System-justifying ideologies are a cluster of ideals that perpetuate a hierarchical social system despite being fraught with inequalities. Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO) are two ideologies that have received much attention in the literature separately and together. Given that these ideologies are considered to be stable individual differences that are likely to have an evolutionary basis, there has yet to be any examination for volumetric brain structures associated with these variables. Here, we proposed an investigation of overlapping and non-overlapping brain regions associated with RWA and SDO in a sample recruited in Singapore. Indeed, it will be interesting to determine how RWA and SDO correlate in a country that proactively promotes institutionalized multi-culturalism such as Singapore. RWA and SDO scores were collected via self-report measures from healthy individuals (39 males and 43 females; age 25.89 ± 5.68 years). Consequently, voxel-based morphometry (VBM) whole brain and region of interest (ROI) analyses were employed to identify neuroanatomical correlates of these system-justifying ideologies. RWA and SDO scores were strongly correlated despite the low ideological contrast in Singapore's sociopolitical context. The whole brain analysis did not reveal any significant clusters associated with either RWA or SDO. The ROI analyses revealed clusters in the bilateral amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) that were associated with both RWA and SDO scores, whereas two clusters in the left anterior insula were negatively associated with only SDO scores. The study corroborates the claim of RWA and SDO as stable individual differences with identifiable neuroanatomical correlates, but our exploratory analysis suggests evidence that precludes any definitive conclusion based on the present evidence.

Indexed as

grey matter volumeright-wing authoritarianismsocial dominance orientationsystem-justifying ideologiesvoxel-based morphometry

Identifiers

PMID36968234
PMCPMC10031404
OpenAlexW4353099432

What OpenQuestion holds

Textfull text, public
LicenceCC BY
measurements read4
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.