The Structure of Political Thinking

Abstract

The research on public opinion focuses on people's preferences. Inferences are made regarding the political thinking that underlies these preferences, but political thinking itself has received relatively little attention. Here, an attempt is made to offer theory and research that directly address how people think about politics. Drawing on the theoretical insights and empirical research of developmental psychology, two hypotheses are examined: (1) that there is a single cognitive structure that underlies how a person thinks about both political and nonpolitical phenomena and (2) that different people may think about politics in structurally different ways. To characterize the differences in people's political thinking, three structures of thinking-sequential, linear, and systematic-are described. The validity of the typology is then tested using a combination of open-ended interview and clinical experimental techniques. The results provide strong support for this developmental analysis of political thinking. Most research on political thinking adopts a belief systems approach and examines the political beliefs (the preferences regarding candidates, parties, and policies) people express. While mention is made of the potential contribution of logic and psychology, these beliefs are usually explained with reference to social and cultural forces. (For influential examples of this approach, see Converse, 1964, 1975; Nie, Verba, and Petrocik, 1976.) Here, I suggest a complementary line of inquiry. Rather than focusing on people's preferences, I offer theory and research that address the nature of the reasoning and understanding that underlie those preferences. Further, instead of concentrating solely on the sociocultural determinants of political thinking, I consider the subjective qualities of thinking which mediate the influence that these environmental forces exercise. The aim is not to suggest that preferences are unimportant or that the impact of environments on political thinking is not critical. Rather, it is to open the domain of inquiry on political thinking and ideology and to provide a broader frame of reference in which these issues may be considered. Among the most important contributions of the belief systems research is the evidence it offers on the general structure of people's political thinking. This evidence suggests (1) that people's policy preferences do not cohere along abstract or ideological lines, (2) that the lines along which these preferences do cohere may vary substantially from person to person, and (3) that in a manner presumed to be related to (2), different people prefer candidates and parties for different kinds of substantive reasons. All this naturally gives rise to two questions. How do people think about politics so that they express such seemingly incomprehensible configurations of preferences? To what extent do people really differ in the way they think about politics? These questions are critical and must be a central part of any future agenda for research on ideology and public opinion. Although these questions arise in response to research that adopts the belief