In recent research published in Frontiers in Social Psychology, scientists have presented findings that challenge long-standing beliefs about how adverse experiences shape our worldviews and ideological stances. The study reveals that while adverse experiences are strongly linked to clinical symptoms like depression, anxiety, and stress, they have only a marginal connection with personal ideologies and worldviews.
Adverse experiences encompass a range of negative events that can significantly impact an individual’s emotional, psychological, or physical well-being, such as abuse, neglect, exposure to violence, or severe economic hardship. These experiences can lead to long-term detrimental effects on mental health, social relationships, and overall quality of life
Psychological theories have postulated that adverse experiences not only lead to clinical symptoms such as depression but also profoundly influence a person’s ideological outlook and perceptions of the world. These theories suggest that people who undergo significant hardships might come to view the world as inherently dangerous or competitive, and consequently adopt more authoritarian or hierarchical ideologies.
Despite the prevalence of these theories, actual empirical research examining these relationships was sparse. Previous studies primarily focused on the clinical implications of adverse experiences, such as their role in psychological disorders, leaving the ideological and worldview aspects largely untested in quantitative terms. This lack of empirical investigation meant that assumptions about how adverse experiences influence broader social attitudes remained speculative and grounded more in psychoanalytic and theoretical frameworks than in data-driven research.
“Most studies about the formation of worldviews and ideologies are experimental and do not take into account real-life experiences,” explained study author Felipe Vilanova, a PhD candidate at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul.
In addition, he noted that “theories derived from the adverse-experiences paradigm cannot thoroughly account for the change of ideology throughout adolescence and adulthood. This is because most theories indicate that the ideological development is related to the familial history in childhood, and it cannot be changed. You only live your childhood once. So how come that some people hold one ideology in one point in time and another one at another point in time?”
To investigate whether and how personal experiences of adversity relate to larger social and ideological constructs, Vilanova and his colleagues conducted two separate studies .
The first study focused on a group of Brazilian youth aged between 13 and 17 years. The researchers employed an online survey method to reach a broad sample, which was shared via various social media platforms associated with the research group. The final sample, after excluding incomplete responses, consisted of 901 participants.
The survey period spanned between January and March 2022. It collected data on a range of variables, including adverse life experiences, worldviews, ideologies, and clinical symptoms such as depression, anxiety, and stress.
The researchers found that while there was a consistent and moderate association between adverse experiences and clinical symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress, the connections to worldviews and ideologies were significantly weaker.
For instance, when it came to ideological measures like right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation, the correlations were either nonsignificant or weakly negative. This suggested that having more adverse experiences did not necessarily lead to stronger beliefs in hierarchical or authoritarian principles.
Similarly, the researchers explored the connection between adversity and beliefs in a dangerous world and a competitive world. Again, the results showed very weak or negligible correlations with adverse experiences.
Vilanova was surprised to find “very small associations between self-reports of adverse experiences, worldviews, and ideologies. The assumptions of a robust association have been held since at least 1943 and were rarely tested empirically. We tested them and it turns out that their associations are rather negligible.”
On the other hand, the link between adverse experiences and clinical symptoms was clear and consistent. Participants who reported higher levels of adverse experiences also showed higher levels of depression, anxiety, and stress, confirming the substantial impact of these experiences on individual psychological health.
The second study shifted the focus to an adult population with a presumably higher incidence of adverse experiences: male prisoners in a Southern Brazilian jail. Conducted between May and August 2023, this study involved face-to-face surveys administered within the prison environment. The prisoner sample included 207 individuals.
The findings largely mirrored those from the previous study. The correlations between adverse experiences and ideologies such as right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation were either weak or nonsignificant. The same was true for beliefs about the world being a dangerous or competitive place. This consistency across such distinct populations reinforced the notion that adverse experiences do not strongly dictate ideological and worldview stances.
“Adverse experiences such as being robbed, starving, or living on the street are related to the formation of clinical symptoms, in particular depression, anxiety and stress, but not to the content of the worldviews and ideologies people hold,” Vilanova told PsyPost. “It means that if someone passes through adverse experiences throughout life, it is relatively safe to predict that this person is also affected by psychopathological symptoms, but it is very hard to predict if the person will endorse capital punishment or inequality between groups.”
But as with any study, the research has some limitations. The reliance on self-reported data can introduce biases such as memory distortion or social desirability, affecting the accuracy of the results. The samples were also limited to specific demographics (Brazilian individuals), which might not capture the full spectrum of how adverse experiences impact individuals across different cultural, social, or economic contexts.
“I think that the most important caveat is that we do not have longitudinal data to provide causal claims,” Vilanova noted. “Our evidence is cross-sectional, tentatively proposing that these associations may be developed throughout life.”
Vilanova said he has two long-term goals for this line of research: “1) promoting a new framework about the formation of worldviews and ideologies that do not focus on adverse experiences; 2) gathering funding for conducting a longitudinal representative survey in Brazil that assesses worldviews, ideologies, and distinct experiences.”
“I would like to recommend people to read the paper,” the researcher added. “It is interesting not only for scholars, but for all those interested in worldviews/ideological development.”
The study, “The limited impact of adverse experiences on worldviews and ideologies,” was authored by Felipe Vilanova, Damiao Soares Almeida-Segundo, Pablo Borges Moura, Felicia Pratto, and Angelo Brandelli Costa.
