Political Orientation Moderates Worldview Defense in Response to Osama bin Laden's Death

This study examined 480 Americans' psychological attitudes following Osama bin Laden's death. We tracked changes in how different participants responded to dissimilar others from the night of bin Laden's death for five weeks. Liberal participants reported lower worldview defense (i.e., a defensive reaction to uphold one's cultural worldview) immediately after bin Laden's death but then increased over time. Conservative participants reported greater worldview defense during each point of the study and did not significantly change over time. These temporal differences between liberals and conservatives were only present in the year of bin Laden's death and not in a comparison sample (N = 329) collected 1 year prior. These findings demonstrate that the attitudes of liberals and conservatives may change in theoretically predictable ways following a major societal event.