People who are prone to anxiety tend to favor welfare programs and redistribution, and the pull is strongest when they feel socially excluded. That is the main finding of a study drawing on nearly 18,000 people in the United States and the Netherlands.
The research was carried out by political scientists Adam R. Panish and Andrew W. Delton of Stony Brook University. It was published online in the British Journal of Political Science on February 7, 2025.
The authors set out to explain a puzzle: liberals report more distress than conservatives, even though a long tradition in political psychology held that fear pushes people to the right. Their answer is what they call the social support hypothesis. People who are sensitive to rejection feel needy and vulnerable when they are left out, and so they warm to policies that promise care and resources.
Anxiety, not general moodiness, tracks economic views
The team analyzed four nationally representative surveys: the American National Election Studies, the Cooperative Election Study, The American Panel Survey and the Dutch LISS panel. Samples ranged from about 750 to almost 4,800 respondents per wave.
They split the personality trait neuroticism into two parts. Anxiety covers worry and feeling easily threatened. Volatility covers anger and mood swings.
Anxiety mattered more than volatility in 4 of 5 datasets. Compared with the least anxious respondents, the most anxious were 7 to 18 points further left on a 100-point economic scale. Volatility showed a significant effect in only one dataset.
The link was specific. Anxious people backed social welfare, public health care and redistribution, but they were not generally more liberal on issues such as same-sex marriage or immigration. The authors did find unexpected left-leaning views on gun control, affirmative action and the death penalty.
One comparison stood out to the researchers. A single question about whether someone is “anxious, easily upset” predicted economic attitudes about as well as their income, which they called “a shocking equivalence.”
Exclusion switches the effect on
Among people who felt well supported, anxiety did not predict economic views. Among those who felt they had few people to rely on, the most anxious were 22 points further left in the Dutch data and 33 points further left in the American Panel Survey.
The same pattern showed up using Facebook friend counts. For people with more than 500 friends, anxiety made no difference. For those with 101 to 250 friends, the most anxious were 21 points further left than the least anxious.
To test cause and effect, the authors ran two preregistered online experiments with 378 and 913 participants. People joined a fake discussion portal where anonymous profiles either liked their posts or ignored them.
In the larger experiment, anxious participants who had been snubbed leaned clearly left on economics, while among those who had been included the link was weak and not significant. Because the rejection came from strangers who could never offer real help, the authors argue the response is emotional rather than a calculation about losing material support.
Caveats from the authors
Political engagement amplified the effect in the first experiment, but that result did not replicate in the second, better-powered study. Several surveys measured anxiety with a single item, and the survey data are cross-sectional.
The authors also note that correlations between anxiety and feeling excluded were small, suggesting anxious people do not simply see rejection everywhere. They suggest social media driven loneliness could help explain rising distress among young liberals since 2010.
Study Details:
- Title: Why Anxious People Lean to the Left on Economic Policy: Personality, Social Exclusion, and Redistribution
- Authors: Adam R. Panish, Andrew W. Delton
- Journal: British Journal of Political Science
- Publication Date: February 7, 2025
- DOI: 10.1017/S0007123424000590