Why We're Liberal, Why We're Conservative
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SSStttooonnnyyy BBBrrrooooookkk UUUnnniiivvveeerrrsssiiitttyyy The official electronic file of this thesis or dissertation is maintained by the University Libraries on behalf of The Graduate School at Stony Brook University. ©©© AAAllllll RRRiiiggghhhtttsss RRReeessseeerrrvvveeeddd bbbyyy AAAuuuttthhhooorrr... Why We’re Liberal, Why We’re Conservative A cognitive theory on the origins of ideological thinking A Dissertation Presented by Everett Hudson Young to The Graduate School in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (Political Psychology/Behavior) Stony Brook University December 2009 Stony Brook University The Graduate School Everett Hudson Young We, the dissertation committee for the above candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree, hereby recommend acceptance of this dissertation. Charles Taber – Dissertation Advisor Professor, Political Science Oleg Smirnov – Chairperson of Defense Assistant Professor, Political Science Milton Lodge Distinguished University Professor, Political Science John Hibbing Political Science, University of Nebraska-Lincoln This dissertation is accepted by the Graduate School Lawrence Martin Dean of the Graduate School ii Abstract of the dissertation Why We’re Liberal, Why We’re Conservative: A cognitive theory on the origins of ideological thinking by Everett Hudson Young Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (Political Psychology/Behavior) Stony Brook University 2009 I show that multiple dimensions of ideological thinking—fiscal, moral, and a third dimension characterized by tough- and tender-minded approaches to outgroups—are related to a broad psychological phenomenon characterized by individual differences in cognitive rigidity and flexibility. But this is not Authoritarianism research: I provide evidence that this phenomenon is grounded partly in individuals’ unconscious, deep-psychological tendency to perceive the world in relatively strongly or weakly defined categories, which has “downstream” implications for people’s deliberative thinking styles. Numerous conventional wisdoms are dislodged, most prominently that individual psychological differences are more important for “social” than for fiscal ideology. Instead, measuring ideology by issue positions, I find that the fiscal and “tough-tender” dimensions of ideological thinking (i.e., “secular” ideology) are (a) more closely related to each other than either is to moral ideology, and (b) more strongly determined by cognitive rigidity-versus-flexibility than is the moral dimension, while moral conservatives are drawn to leaders who, due to their strongly categorizing cognitive styles, are likely to be secular conservatives. These deep perceptual-cognitive differences between liberals and conservatives—especially between secular ideologues—help explain a parade of odd and unexpected, yet ostensibly apolitical behavioral asymmetries between individuals of the left and the right. iii Table of Contents Chapter 1: A theory to explain ideological thinking ……………………………. 1 Chapter 2: Data and methods overview ………………………………………… 27 Chapter 3: The dimensionality of ideological opinion formation ………………. 56 Chapter 4: Asymmetries, part 1: Traits …………………………………………. 89 Chapter 5: Asymmetries, part 2: Apolitical behavioral differences ……………. 126 Chapter 6: Asymmetries, part 3: Nominally political behavioral differences ….. 191 Chapter 7: The categorization task ……………………………………………… 232 Chapter 8: Deliberative Complexity and Attributionism ……………………….. 271 Chapter 9: Incorporating political knowledge …………………………………... 318 Chapter 10: An experiment: manipulating Categorization Strength ……………. 330 Chapter 11: More explorations from the experimental study …………………… 347 Chapter 12: Still more from the experiment: extending theory …………………. 361 Chapter 13: Is Categorization Strength just Ambiguity Intolerance? …………… 378 Chapter 14: Conclusion: Where Categorization Theory has brought us ………… 395 Works cited ………………………………………………………………………. 403 iv Chapter 1 A perceptual and cognitive categorization theory to explain individual differences in ideological thinking “Don’t worry about studying personality differences between fiscal liberals and conservatives. We know fiscal conservatives are just as open-minded as liberals.” -Anonymous, heard in the halls of an American political science department, 2006 What makes you liberal or conservative? The oldest conventional wisdom says liberals and conservatives are no different from each other with regard to their cognitive or personality traits—they just disagree on the issues. A slightly more progressive conventional wisdom says social liberals and conservatives might have different sorts of personalities, but maintains the psychological indistinctness of fiscal liberals and conservatives. The current conventional wisdom in political science also says that ideologies can contain any grouping of policy positions whatsoever: any issue position can go, at random, with any other issue position and yet be sold effectively as an ideology in the marketplace of ideas. The conventional wisdom also says there are two dimensions to ideology— often called “social” and “fiscal,” but maintains that they are orthogonal, almost entirely unrelated, and certainly not psychologically related. The conventional wisdom also holds that, if there are personality differences between ideological types, social conservatives (often cast as “Authoritarians”) are closed-minded, rigid thinkers, while all other types, liberal and conservative, are less closed-minded, more flexible. The conventional approach to ideology occasionally finds individual differences between liberals and conservatives interesting to describe, but has shown relatively little interest in explaining what causes people to think in left or right ways—probably because many assume causes to be unexplainable. How on earth did we get here? What makes people think the way they do about politics is perhaps the most fundamental, most important question in all of political science. And mostly, political science hasn’t been doing a good job of answering it. Many in our discipline aren’t even interested in trying. However, there is a small but growing group of political scientists and psychologists (and brain-imaging researchers) who understand that ideological differences are not uncaused and have begun to make a real effort at understanding the root causes of ideological thinking—what makes you liberal or 1 conservative. The question has not been completely answered—not even close—and certainly won’t be here. But with this dissertation, I add my effort to theirs. Barker and Tinnick (2006) write, Even if mass publics frequently follow the lead of party elites, it would still not explain why those party leaders came to organize their attitudes in ways that we call predictably “liberal” and “conservative.” Is it purely a historical function of coalition building and interest- group pandering that evolves over time, or is there some natural ideological affinity among the seemingly disparate political attitudes? (My emphasis) This research project was begun with the conviction that indeed there is a natural affinity—that political ideology is largely a psychological phenomenon. By this terminology I mean that ideology is something other than simply a constellation of policy positions that “hang together” in one way for conservatives, in another for liberals, and still another for Marxists, feminists, socialists, and so on. In other words, while it is certainly sensible in some conversational contexts to discuss liberalism or conservatism as a collection of positions, I will show that there’s a clear sense in which ideological thinking is not synonymous with manifesto endorsement, although a particular ideological style of thinking certainly might lead to the endorsement of a particular manifesto. Moreover, I certainly don’t deny that realistic interests, such as class-based interests or involvement in narrow interest groups (farmers, iron workers, ethnic groups) can lead a person to endorse policy positions that their psychological tendencies might not have predicted. I also don’t deny that ideology is partly a social- transmission phenomenon: sure, children can learn political beliefs from their parents. But neither of these points is at issue here. This project is about the cognitive, and to a lesser extent the personality, psychology of ideological thinking. Talking to ordinary people, it seems my hypotheses are largely uncontroversial, if still fascinating. People just sort of know that “liberals are soft” and “conservatives are hard,” “liberals are artists” and “conservatives are frontiersmen,” “liberals are fuzzy thinkers” and “conservatives are straight arrows.” I have become fond of saying that the only people who don’t realize liberals and conservatives are different sorts from one another are political scientists. I hope that changes. There’s evidence here that should substantially change how political psychologists view ideology. Not only is a perceptual-cognitive flexibility-and-rigidity dimension of human psychology largely responsible for differences in ideological thinking (and not only is Big-Five Openness to Experience, the variable du jour for capturing cognitive flexibility in ideology research, a relatively poor way to handle this dimension) but this broad dimension of psychology is not more closely linked to “social” ideology than to “fiscal” ideology—it’s at least 2 as strongly linked to fiscal ideology, and