Dissecting the Drivers, History, and Cognition of Attitudinal Incongruence in the American Body Politic Timothy Collins University of Nebraska-Lincoln
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University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Political Science Department -- Theses, Political Science, Department of Dissertations, and Student Scholarship Fall 9-2014 Creatures of Incoherence: Dissecting the Drivers, History, and Cognition of Attitudinal Incongruence in the American Body Politic Timothy Collins University of Nebraska-Lincoln Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/poliscitheses Part of the American Politics Commons, Other Political Science Commons, Politics and Social Change Commons, Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons, and the Social Psychology and Interaction Commons Collins, Timothy, "Creatures of Incoherence: Dissecting the Drivers, History, and Cognition of Attitudinal Incongruence in the American Body Politic" (2014). Political Science Department -- Theses, Dissertations, and Student Scholarship. 33. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/poliscitheses/33 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Political Science, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Political Science Department -- Theses, Dissertations, and Student Scholarship by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. CREATURES OF INCOHERENCE: DISSECTING THE DRIVERS, HISTORY, AND COGNITION OF ATTITUDINAL INCONGRUENCE IN THE AMERICAN BODY POLITIC by Timothy P. Collins A DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate College at the University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Major: Political Science Under the Supervision of Professor John R. Hibbing Lincoln, Nebraska September, 2014 CREATURES OF INCOHERENCE: DISSECTING THE DRIVERS, HISTORY, AND COGNITION OF ATTITUDINAL INCONGRUENCE IN THE AMERICAN BODY POLITIC Timothy P. Collins, Ph.D. University of Nebraska, 2014 Advisor: John R. Hibbing Most American conservatives and liberals wield contradictory political attitudes. This dissertation explores what drives this “attitudinal incongruence.” First, I define and operationalize my terminology and situate the topic within social and political psychology to formulate my central model and theory of ideologically asymmetrical application of (1) individuals’ psychological and cognitive traits, and (2) individuals’ social identity and environmental traits. This leads to the overarching hypothesis that conservatives’ incongruities are more strongly driven by internal forces, and liberals’ by external forces. The central model is then demonstrated in a broad historical overview of attitudinal incongruence in America. The central tenets of my theory are upheld in subsequent quantitative analyses of psychological, cognitive, and biological traits of subjects, but not in a cognitive dissonance experiment—albeit nevertheless demonstrating that psychological traits are likely the strongest drivers of incongruence overall. I eventually conclude that, although in strictly objective terms, liberals tend to be more attitudinally congruent than conservatives, for more “external” reasons, this fact—a common political attack—is not itself a normative negative, but a necessary and positive function of ideologies’ belief systems operating within the structures of the American political system. i Acknowledgements This work was only possible because of the generosity, support, work, and love of a lot of people—all of whom deserve thanks. Miscellaneously, I thank the following: Michele Bachmann for obliging a smarmy high school student for an interview and unknowingly introducing me to direct examples of the circular and specious reasoning that is as close to a universal for politicians as one can get; Bill Watterson, for contributing to my learning of the importance of imagination; and Jackson Publick, Doc Hammer, Bill Oakley, Josh Weinstein, David Mirkin, and others for tending that learning like a garden of weird references and original, unique storytelling. Academically and Professionally, I thank the following: Donald Kinder and David Sears for a 1985 book chapter that, in four concise sentences, captures an essence of my topic I could have never formulated, and Sunshine Hillygus for indirectly bringing my attention to those sentences; John “Big Ivory” Taylor and Jenny Steiger for their warmth and teaching excellence; Alaina Kupec, for her professionalism, earnestness, and faith in me; the faculty during my time at St. Olaf College—particularly Chris Chapp, Kevin Crisp, Dan Forstner, Dan Hofrenning, Tony Lott, Gary Muir, Dianna Postlethwaite, Ali Selim, Bill Sonnega, Charles Taliaferro, and Anthony Watson—for reducing my high school smarm by passionately helping me realize how little I actually understood; the many students who did the same when I taught at Northfield High School and, especially, Frederick Douglass Academy; the St. Olaf political science department— Dan Hofrenning and Tony Lott again, as well as Kathy Tegtmeyer Pak, Kris Thalhammer, and Shawn Paulson—for giving me a life-changing and -affirming ii opportunity in the form of returning to St. Olaf as a visiting instructor; the many undergraduates in the classes I was lucky enough to be able to teach at UNL and St. Olaf for helping me gain confidence and perspective, especially the Oles in PSCI 311; my friends and colleagues at UNL—Kristen Deppe, Amanda Friesen, Karl Giuseffi, Frank “Frankie” Gonzalez, Lee Grossman, Mike Gruszczynski, Aaron Hansen, Carly Jacobs, Alex Kroeger, Jayme Neiman, and Ben Sievert—for their friendship and collegiality; Dana Griffin, for her academic advice and inexplicably powerful and effective way of explaining the unexplainable; Cal Garbin, for his quantitative expertise and distillation of deceptively complicated statistics in psychometric methods; Chris Federico, for his willingness to offer his expertise and for pushing me toward maximum scholarly utility; Brendan Nyhan, for his extremely helpful and productive comments on much of what became Chapter 5; Mike Wagner, for being an indispensable source of academic advice that always happens to be the correct advice, reaching out to me when I needed it, and for representing the great state and idea of Minnesota within the strange lands of Nebraska and Wisconsin; and the four members of my dissertation committee, each of whom is an academic deity—Kevin Smith, for being forthright and clear in utilizing his brilliance to offer great pointers and advice; Mike Dodd, for being a clear, open, and objective source of all things psychology (and wit) whenever that source happened to be needed; Beth Theiss-Morse, for her expertise on top of her fruitful and heartening advice; and most of all, John Hibbing, for being a fountain of wisdom, for believing in me, and for obliging whatever academic whim I had in formulating and executing these ideas. Personally, I thank the following: Barb, Phil, and Sara Kitze, for their consistently open and sincerely earnest arms; Nancy and Matt Overmoen, for being deeply wonderful iii and loving people; Erin Vermilyea and Emily Lamb, for their decades of patience, love, and ready forgiveness when my impatience exceeded my self-control; Dad, for his perspective, advice, friendship, and approach to the world; Mom, for her warmth, care, and tenderness; Dad and Mom together, for their love and for encouraging and answering my frequent and, I assume, frequently bizarre Why? questions as I grew up, not to mention helping me grow up well at all costs; and, most importantly, I thank Rachel, for agreeing to be my partner, for being so wonderful that I should be in a constant state of shock, for being a constant source of unconditional love and inspiration, and for being the heart, the soul, the stars, and the universe. Thank you, sweetheart. I am so excited to grow old with you, and to see, together, what the future holds. iv Table of Contents Chapter 0: Prologue: The Origins of This Idea and What to Expect From This Dissertation iv Chapter 1: What is Attitudinal Incongruence and Why Does it Matter? 1.1.1. What is Attitudinal Incongruence? 1 1.2.1. Operationalizing and Classifying Political Attitudes 4 1.2.2. Operationalizing Political Ideologies 14 1.3.1. Defining Congruence & Incongruence 24 1.3.2. Operationalizing Attitudinal Congruence & Incongruence 27 1.3.3. Previous Work on Congruence & Incongruence 30 Chapter 2: Psychological Dispositions, Political Orientations, and a Theory of Ideological Differences in Attitudinal Incongruence 2.1.1. The Psychological Drivers of Political Attitudes 35 2.1.2. The Cognitive Drivers of Political Attitudes 54 2.1.3. Synthesis of These Political Attitude Drivers 61 2.2.1. The Internal-External Model of Attitudinal Congruence & Incongruence 71 2.2.2. Asymmetric Application of the Internal-External Model by Ideology 81 Chapter 3: Gay is the New Black (But Black is Still Black): The History of and Current Trends in Attitudinal Incongruence 3.1.1. Introduction 90 3.1.2. Conservatism and Conservatives in the Early Sixties: Fission and Fusion 92 3.1.3. Ideologies in the Late Sixties: War has Caused Unrest 97 3.1.4. The Branching of Ideological Strands in the Eighties 102 3.2.1. Modern Trends: Conservatism and Civil Rights 112 3.2.2. Modern Liberals and Privacy 116 3.2.3. Libertarians and the Rest of the Modern Landscape 120 3.3.1. Conclusion 124 Chapter 4: Exploratory Surgery on the American Body Politic: Analyzing Attitudinal Incongruence in the Electorate 4.1.1. Introduction 125 4.1.2. Study 4.1: Methods & Hypotheses 126 4.1.3. Study 4.1: Results 132 4.2.1. Study 4.2: Methods & Hypotheses 145 4.2.2. Study 4.2: Results 149 4.3.1. Study 4.3: Methods & Hypotheses 154 4.3.2. Study 4.3: Results 156 4.4.1. General Discussion 160 4.4.2. Conclusions: What Can be Said for the IEM and my Central Theory? 165 v Chapter 5: Having Your Cake and Eating it Too: Using Cognitive Dissonance to Explore Attitudinal Incongruence 5.1.1. The Importance of Leon Festinger 169 5.1.2. Cognitive Dissonance & Attitudinal Incongruence 171 5.1.3. Cognitive Dissonance & the IEM 175 5.2.1. Exploring Cognitive Dissonance Experimentally 178 5.2.2. Methods & Procedure 182 5.2.3. Hypotheses 189 5.3.1. General Results 192 5.3.2.