Hypocrisy in American Political Attitudes
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HYPOCRISY IN AMERICAN POLITICAL ATTITUDES A DEFENSE TIMOTHY P. OF ATTITUDINAL COLLINS INCONGRUENCE Hypocrisy in American Political Attitudes Timothy P. Collins Hypocrisy in American Political Attitudes A Defense of Attitudinal Incongruence Timothy P. Collins Political Science St. Olaf College Northfield, Minnesota, USA ISBN 978-3-319-54011-5 ISBN 978-3-319-54012-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54012-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017947210 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: GL Archive / Alamy Stock Photo Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland CONTENTS 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Illustrating Attitudinal Hypocrisy and Attacks Because of It 2 1.2 What to Expect in this Book 10 References 12 2 What Is Attitudinal Hypocrisy and Why Does It Matter? 17 2.1 What Is Attitudinal Hypocrisy? 17 2.2 Why Explore Attitudinal Hypocrisy? 18 2.3 How Should We Conceptualize and Measure Political Attitudes? 21 2.4 How Should We Conceptualize and Measure Political Ideologies? 28 2.5 How Should We Conceptualize and Measure Attitudinal Hypocrisy? 36 2.6 What Has Previous Work Found on Attitudinal Hypocrisy? 43 References 47 3 Psychological Dispositions, Political Orientations, and a Theoretical Framework of Ideological Differences in Attitudinal Hypocrisy 57 3.1 The Bottom-Up Psychological Drivers of Personal Politics 57 3.2 The Bottom-Up Cognitive Drivers of Personal Politics 71 3.3 Synthesizing the Drivers of Personal Politics 77 v vi Contents 3.4 A Model of Political Hypocrisy’s Drivers 84 3.5 Hypotheses: Primary Expectations 94 References 100 4 Gay Is the New Black (but Black Is Still Black): The History and Current Trends of Attitudinal Hypocrisy 119 4.1 Introduction 119 4.2 The 1960s’ Conservatism: Fusion and Fission 121 4.3 Ideologies in the Late 1960s: War Has Caused Unrest 125 4.4 Ideological Strands’ Branching in the 1980s 129 4.5 Modern Trends: Conservatism and Civil Rights 136 4.6 Modern Trends: Liberalism and Privacy 140 4.7 Modern Trends: Libertarianism Against Conservatism 142 4.8 Modern Trends: President Trump and People Who Are Black, Critical Journalists, Disabled, Female, Gold Star Families, Hispanic, Immigrants, Latino, Muslim, Native American, Prisoners of War, Refugees, or Electoral Opponents 145 4.9 Conclusion 147 References 148 5 Analyzing and Predicting Hypocrisy in the Electorate 159 5.1 Study 1.1: 1990–2008 American National Election Studies 159 5.2 Study 1.1: Results 172 5.3 Study 1.1: Discussion 192 5.4 Study 1.2: 2012 ANES 196 5.5 Study 1.2 Results 200 5.6 Study 1.2 Discussion 213 5.7 Study 1.3: 2016 ANES 216 5.8 Study 1.3 Results 218 5.9 Study 1.3 Discussion 230 5.10 General Discussion 233 5.11 Conclusions: What Can Be Said for the EPDAM and My Central Theory? 239 References 240 Contents vii 6 Having Your Cake and Eating It Too: Using Cognitive Dissonance to Explore Attitudinal Hypocrisy 247 6.1 The Importance of Leon Festinger 247 6.2 Cognitive Dissonance and Attitudinal Incongruence 249 6.3 Cognitive Dissonance and the EPDAM 252 6.4 Exploring Cognitive Dissonance Experimentally 254 6.5 Methods and Procedure 256 6.6 Hypotheses 262 6.7 General Results 265 6.8 Dispositional Trait Results 267 6.9 Essay Compliance: General Results 268 6.10 Essay Compliance and Dispositional Traits 272 6.11 Discussion of General Results 274 6.12 Qualitative Discussion: “Maybe We Are All Hypocrites” 277 6.13 Conclusion 280 References 280 7 What Good Is Cake If You Can’t Eat It? Prescriptions for and Conclusions About American Attitudinal Hypocrisy 289 7.1 America Is Attitudinal Hypocrisy, Attitudinal Hypocrisy Is America 289 7.2 The Central Findings: Clarifying the EPDAM and Asymmetry 291 7.3 Predicting Attitudinal Hypocrisy 292 7.4 Prescriptions for Scholars 298 7.5 Prescriptions for the Public 299 7.6 Attitude Structures as the Millay Candle 303 7.7 Exceptions to this Picture of Our Politics 306 7.8 Potential Implications and Grand Conclusions 308 References 310 Appendix 317 References 327 Index 369 LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 2.1 A common two-dimensional view of political orientations 22 Fig. 2.2 Libertarianism–authoritarianism lens of political attitudes 23 Fig. 2.3 A two-dimensional view of American political ideologies 33 Fig. 3.1 Epistemic factors and how they overlap 78 Fig. 3.2 External–philosophy dispositions–attitudes model 86 Fig. 3.3 Sketch of the external–disposition factor divide 90 Fig. 3.4 Hypothesized ideologically asymmetric use of EPDAM 95 Fig. 5.1 Mean libertarian–authoritarian scores by available study year 174 Fig. 5.2 Weighted proportions of external and dispositional factors’ predictive powers by hypocrisy model and ideological identification, Study 1.1 193 Fig. 5.3 Weighted proportions of external and dispositional factors’ predictive powers by hypocrisy model and ideological identification, Study 1.2 213 Fig. 5.4 Weighted proportions of external and dispositional factors’ predictive powers by hypocrisy model and ideological identification, Study 1.3 229 Fig. 5.5 Mean overall hypocrisy over time 234 Fig. 5.6 Mean logical anti-constraint over time 234 Fig. 6.1 Compliance rates by essay condition and ideology 271 ix LIST OF TABlES Table 2.1 Issue attitudes, government involvement, and typical ideological stances 31 Table 4.1 Responses to political correctness items in the 2016 electorate 146 Table 5.1 Attitude items available to be tested by year 163 Table 5.2 Percentage of participants with scores = .00 by item, 1990–2008 ANES 175 Table 5.3 Standardized beta coefficients predicting hypocrisy scores for all subjects by hypocrisy score type, 1990–2008 ANES 176 Table 5.4 Standardized beta coefficients predicting hypocrisy scores for liberal identifiers by hypocrisy score type, 1990–2008 ANES 178 Table 5.5 Standardized beta coefficients predicting hypocrisy scores for conservative identifiers by hypocrisy score type, 1990–2008 ANES 180 Table 5.6 Logistic regression coefficients predicting binary government philosophy, 1990–2008 ANES 185 Table 5.7 Standardized beta coefficients predicting mean government philosophy by ideological identification, 1990–2008 ANES 187 Table 5.8 Standardized beta coefficients predicting issue stances for all subjects, 1990–2008 ANES 188 Table 5.9 Standardized beta coefficients predicting issue stances for liberal identifiers, 1990–2008 ANES 189 xi xii List of Tables Table 5.10 Standardized beta coefficients predicting issue stances for conservative identifiers, 1990–2008 ANES 190 Table 5.11 Percentage of predictive power from external factors by model, 1990–2008 ANES 191 Table 5.12 Percentage of participants with scores = .00 by item, 2012 ANES 201 Table 5.13 Standardized regression coefficients predicting hypocrisy scores for all subjects in the 2012 ANES 203 Table 5.14 Standardized regression coefficients predicting hypocrisy scores for liberal identifiers in the 2012 ANES 205 Table 5.15 Standardized regression coefficients predicting hypocrisy scores for conservative identifiers in the 2012 ANES 207 Table 5.16 Percentage of predictive power from external factors, 2012 ANES 212 Table 5.17 Percentage of participants with scores = .00 by item, 2016 ANES 219 Table 5.18 Standardized regression coefficients predicting hypocrisy scores for all subjects in the 2016 ANES 220 Table 5.19 Standardized regression coefficients predicting hypocrisy scores for liberal identifiers in the 2016 ANES 222 Table 5.20 Standardized regression coefficients predicting hypocrisy scores for conservative identifiers in the 2016 ANES 224 Table 5.21 Percentage of predictive power from external factors, 2016 ANES 228 Table 6.1 Political demographics, Study 2 265 Table 6.2 Bivariate correlations between measured traits 266 Table 6.3 Bivariate correlations of knowledge with traits, by ideology 267 Table 6.4 Binary logistic regressions predicting compliance by essay topic 273 Table 7.1 Automatically constructed linear regression model predicting overall hypocrisy for all subjects in the 2016 ANES 293 Table 7.2 Automatically constructed linear regression model predicting overall hypocrisy for liberal identifiers in the 2016 ANES 294 Table 7.3 Automatically constructed linear regression model predicting overall hypocrisy for conservative identifiers in the 2016 ANES 294 Table 7.4 Standardized beta coefficients for full and reduced linear regressions predicting social-issue hypocrisy in the 2016 ANES 295 CHAPTER 1 Introduction BURR: The Constitution’s a mess HAMILTON: So it needs amendments! BURR: It’s full of contradictions HAMILTON: So is independence! —“Non-Stop” by Lin-Manuel Miranda (2015) To human society, hypocrisy is a negative trait (see Grant, 1997, pp.