Mapping Political Attitudes: The Impact of Concept Mapping on Ideological Constraint |
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Authors: | David M Keating Daniel E Bergan |
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Institution: | 1. Department of Communication Studies, California State University, Northridge;2. Department of Communication, Michigan State University |
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Abstract: | People with more political knowledge tend to have more coherent ideologies (Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996; Judd & Krosnick, 1989; Stimson, 1975; Zaller, 1992). Drawing on prominent theories of attitude structure (e.g., Dinauer & Fink, 2005; Hunter, Levine & Sayers, 1976), we propose an explanation for this relationship, testing whether people who spend time thinking about how political concepts relate to one another are more likely to exhibit ideologically coherent attitudes (Judd & Krosnick, 1989). We find that participants who are instructed to participate in an exercise that requires them to think about how political concepts are related exhibit greater correlations between social- and economic-policy attitudes than nonparticipants and find some evidence that participants’ policy attitudes are more consistent over time. Contrary to expectations, there was no evidence of greater consistency between policy attitudes and underlying values, including party identification. |
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Keywords: | Attitude Structure Concept Mapping Ideological Constraint Policy Attitude |
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