Structure Of Political Attitudes Research Articles

Разработка методики для измерения представлений об идеальном государстве

Objective. Develop a questionnaire to measure attitudes about ideal government and analyze the psychometric properties of this tool. Background. Psychological studies showed the key role of political attitudes (conservatism/liberalism) in different forms of political activity. Conservatism-liberalism dichotomy did not correspond with actual political “agenda” in Russia that induced the question about the structure of political attitudes. Study design. To indicate the attitudes about ideal government, an online survey was conducted. The structure of political attitudes was analysed through confirmatory factor analysis, and analyses of reliability, validity, and invariance. Participants. The research consisted of 2 independent studies. About 610 participants took part at the study 1 (353 men and 257 women) over 18 years old (M=34.28; SD=13.82); and 378 participants (196 men and 182 women) over 18 years old (M=35.26; SD=10.54) at the study 2. Methods. Russian-language versions of the scales of Needs for cognitive clousure, Openness to experience (“Big Five”), Right-wing Authoritarianism, System Justification, and the author’s questionnaire of attitudes about an ideal government. Additionally, participants completed the self-categoriaiton scales about political orientations (“left-right”; “liberal-conservatives”). Results. The structure of attitudes about the ideal government consisted of “respect” and “support”. “Political respect” was correspondent to “liberal” and “left-wing” self-identification that indicated the criterion validity. At the same time, the analysis of convergent validity showed that “respect” and “support” were linked with right-wing authoritarianism and need for cognitive clousure. Conclusions. The structure of political attitudes in Russia consisted of “governmental support” and “political respect”. The current perspective discussed in the context of liberal/conservative political orientations.

The Determinants of Political Cleavages in Jordan, Tunisia, and Yemen: An Analysis of Political Attitudes Structure in the Arab World

AbstractThis article investigates the determinants of political cleavages composing the structure of political attitudes in Jordan, Tunisia, and Yemen following the Arab Spring. Further, it tests whether political cleavages carry predictive weight on ordinary citizens’ electoral choices in general elections. Using the Sixth Wave of the World Values Survey, discriminant analysis was conducted to generate the dimensionality, type, and structure of political attitudes in the three nations. Findings suggest that the structure of political attitudes in Jordan, Tunisia, and Yemen is multidimensional: the Islamic‐Secular division, a conflict along economic policy visions and an emerging divisive dimension concerning political reform. Evidence indicates that political cleavages do not possess significant predictive power in determining voters’ choice at elections booths. This research also points to the significance of social transformation processes such as modernization and globalization in causing a shift in values among ordinary citizens in the Arab World. This research argues that in countries where the effects of modernization and globalization are higher, a weakening of the Islamic‐Secular division is witnessed. This research is important since it paves the way for further empirical analysis on political ideology in the Middle East. It shatters conjectures concluding that Arab polities are only divided by a single hierarchical dimension: Islamic‐Secular. It contributes to comparative research on the dimensionality of political ideology by showing that the Arab World is similar to the industrialized world in the dimensionality, nature, and structuration of political ideology.

Hans Eysenck and the First Wave of Socio-Political Genetics

Hans Eysenck was a pioneer in many fields of psychological science and is widely recognised for his many outstanding achievements. One field, however, in which Eysenck contributed the important initial flagstones, although remains largely forgotten, is that of socio-political genetics. In this essay I outline Eysenck's early work (c. 1950s) on the structure of political attitudes, details how Eysenck used the classical twin design in order to examine whether genetic factors contributed to individual differences in social and political attitudes, as well as discuss the challenges of publishing such provocative findings amidst a 1970s scientific culture that tended to favour purely environmental explanations of human behaviour. Finally, I provide an overview of the development of the field of socio-political genetics over the last 40years and briefly note some of the challenges that lie ahead for the field.

Political Neuroscience: The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship

The emergence of political neuroscience—an interdisciplinary venture involving political science, psychology, and cognitive neuroscience—has piqued the interests of scholars as well as the mass public. In this chapter, we review evidence pertaining to four areas of inquiry that have generated most of the research in political neuroscience to date: (1) racial prejudice and intergroup relations; (2) the existence of partisan bias and motivated political cognition; (3) the nature of left‐right differences in political orientation; and (4) the dimensional structure of political attitudes. Although these topics are well‐known to political psychologists, the application of models and methods from neuroscience has renewed interest in each of them and yielded novel insights. There is reason to believe that many other areas of political psychology await similarly promising renewals and that innovative methods will continue to advance our understanding of the physiological processes involved in political cognition, evaluation, judgment, and behavior. We address limitations, criticisms, and potential pitfalls of existing work—including the “chicken‐and‐egg problem”—and propose an ambitious agenda for the next generation of research in political neuroscience.

Attitude Towards Foreign Countreis in Japanese Political Attitude Structure

Attitude Towards Foreign Countreis in Japanese Political Attitude Structure

The Structure of Political Attitudes in Hungary and Serbia

The article presents a comparative examination of the structure of political ideology in two post-communist countries, Serbia and Hungary. A broad set of indicators of specific political attitudes is reduced to a smaller number of latent ideological dimensions via factor analysis. The precise meaning of the dimensions is determined after the analysis of their relationships with authoritarianism, out-group sympathy, prejudices, ideological self-identification, party-preference, and socio-demographic variables. Hungarian mass attitudes vary along dimensions of (1) alienation—socialism and (2) nationalist—antisocialism. Results for Serbia revealed the convergence of nationalist and pro-communist attitudes into a single dimension while another factor joined egalitarianism with social alienation. In both countries, authoritarianism is an important determinant of ideological dimensions, especially of pro-communist nationalism in Serbia and alienation— socialism in Hungary. Socio-demographic background variables are weaker determinants of ideological dimensions in Serbia compared with Hungary. In both countries, attitudinal factors differentiate supporters of the main political parties.

Beyond liberal and conservative: Two-dimensional conceptions of ideology and the structure of political attitudes and values

This article analyzes conceptual similarities and differences in selected prior work on ideological multi-dimensionality and finds substantial conceptual convergence accompanied by some provocative divergence. The article also finds that evidence from a recent survey of the American public largely validates areas of conceptual convergence. Respondents' political attitudes vary in two dimensions that are associated with different value structures—specifically, with different rankings of liberty, order, and ‘caring for those who need help’. As a result, liberals, conservatives, and libertarians are identified more fully than previously possible. But the evidence does not allow the validation of one conception over another in the area where they diverge most markedly. Does the fourth ideological type value order and equality, making them ‘communitarians’, or are these respondents better understood as a humanitarian, paternalistic, hierarchical subtype, the ‘inclusive social hierarch’, since they value order as well as ‘caring for those who need help’? Although politicians, philosophers, and social scientists often discuss politics as if it were organized on a single left-right dimension, 50 years of research on public opinion shows that a unidimensional model of ideology is a poor description of political attitudes for the overwhelming proportion of people virtually everywhere.1

The structure of attitudes to a single object: Adapting Criterial Referents Theory to measure attitudes to ‘woman’

Kerlinger's (1984) Criterial Referents Theory (CRT) is a theory of the structure of political attitudes to many objects. We modify and develop the theory to provide an account of the structure of attitudes to a single object—the social category ‘woman’. A three-level hierarchical structure was proposed, spanning from principles (similar to Kerlinger's ‘ideologies’) through identities to behavioural referents. An 80-item scale was used to examine this hypothesized structure. Factor analysis of data from 239 subjects revealed a second-order factor structure which confirmed our structural hypotheses. Subscales constructed from the scale were related to scores on the Women in Society Questionnaire and to scores from a sentence-completion task. The results clearly indicate that existing ‘attitudes to women’ scales, which assume a bipolar unidimensional structure, are inadequate, and that CRT is capable of accommodating structures of attitudes to single objects.

"Muscovite Political Folkways" and the Problem of Russian Political Culture

Like all important reinterpretations of the past, Edward Keenan's Muscovite Political Folkways makes us sit up and take notice. Keenan presents a sweeping overview of the Russian past distinguished his characteristic rhetorical flair and iconoclastic elan. He links the Soviet Union today with Russia's history, and connects current political behavior with patterns originating at the beginnings of the Russian state. It is in Muscovy that Keenan discovers the structure of political attitudes and responses that continued through the imperial, or early modem period, the present. Keenan analyzes Russian history within the framework of a model of political culture elaborated political scientists during the 1950s and 1960s. He strives to discern the 'deep patterns' of political behavior, and discover fundamental congruity between the content of a society's processes of socialization (including long-term historical experience) and its 'rules' and institutions (p. 116). His approach is systemic. The elements of Russian state and society are interrelated and fit into a unified system that describes and also limits the possible types of political behavior. This system embraces the culture of the common people as well, what Keenan calls vernacular political culture. Since secrecy was a governing principle of the political culture at all levels, the system discouraged disclosure of information about its own operations, and evidence must be discovered by unconventional means. The political-culture model enables Keenan present a compelling description of the emergence and persistence of peasant political attitudes, which penetrated the elite culture as well. This culture, dominated the overwhelming problems of survival, gave rise responses that were riskaverse and favored the group over the individual. The Muscovite view of man was pessimistic; it emphasized fear over hope, and led attitudes that can be characterized as authoritarian. Keenan's discussion of the Russian char-

Types of Political Attitude Structure: Results of a Cluster Analysis

This study examines the organization of political attitudes. Using data from the 1980 American National Election Study, it applies the technique of cluster analysis to classify individuals into subgroups that have relatively similar profiles of opinions concerning 12 political issues. Six clusters are distinguished: liberals, quasi-liberals, conservatives, advocates of limited government, those with prolabor attitudes, and those who are middle of the road in attitudes toward government economic programs. Clusters differ systematically in political party affiliation, self-identified ideology, and vote for president in 1980. The results suggest that political attitudes are not organized along a single dimension of ideological liberalism/conservatism, and that ideologically “inconsistent” attitude patterns are still meaningfully organized.

The Structure and Stability of Political Attitudes: Findings From the 1974-76 Dearborn Panel Study

The Structure and Stability of Political Attitudes: Findings From the 1974-76 Dearborn Panel Study

Political Attitude Holding and Structure The Effects of Newspaper and Television News

This article examines the effect of television and newspaper news exposure on the holding and structure of political attitudes. Ideological utility is treated as an intervening variable. and is defined as the usefulness of the traditional dimensions of liberal/conservative and left/right to a person in describing political beliefs. The more ideologically sophisticated are presumed to be more familiar with these dimensions and better able to place themselves accordingly. Data are from the 1976 University of Michigan CPS national election study (N = 2402). Attitude consistency is treated as a variance of a person's responses to a series of nine bipolar political issue scales, indicating how consistently liberal. conservative. or neutral are that person's attitudes. As hypothesized. both television and newspaper news exposure are positively associated with attitude holding at low levels of ideological utility. Counter to expectations. television news exposure is positively associated with attitude consistency at low levels of ideological utility. The opposite is true of newspaper exposure. The results support treating ideology as a cognitive processing de vice for political information. as well as suggesting that television news helps viewers form opinions about political issues and structure them in a meaningful way.

Consensus, constraint, and political polarization in recent presidential elections

By reexamining the structure of political attitudes among Americans in the period 1956–72, using both the items and coding scheme as given inThe Changing American Voter (1976) by Nie and his associates and using only domestic attitude items, but including all available responses, we have found that the major type of change between the 1950s and the 1970s is not an increase in internal constraint (ideological thinking of any sort) but an increase in political attitude polarization. Further, this analysis indicates that when interitem associations are used to measure constraints present in the entire population, a major source of political attitude constraint is ignored—the constraints present within the social, political and demographic groupings within the society. The major types of attitude constraints in our society are likely to be external to the attitudes themselves. Understanding electoral outcomes will necessitate understanding the nature of electoral coalitions formed across social and political groupings.

Political Attitude Structure of Schoolboys in Northern Ireland

Several main dimensions were identified by factor analysis of political attitudes of secondary schoolboys in Northern Ireland. Attitudinal responses of 303 Catholics and 266 Protestants were used in the present study. A composite sub-sample of 260 boys was also derived to give a roughly representative sample of secondary schoolboys in Northern Ireland. Among the key dimensions identified by factor analysis of these samples were: the degree of acceptance of members of the opposite communal group for general social interaction, acceptance or rejection of the other group for more intimate association, the degree of approval of violent behaviour, the amount of positive sentiment toward the government, and the degree of support for the ideological assumptions of Unionism. Attitude scales were derived to represent these factors and tested for reliability. Reasonable reliability was demonstrated for scales measuring most of the above dimensions, though only a composite scale to measure intergroup attitudes had reliability coefficients comparable to those of the other factors.

Political Attitude Structure and Component Change

Political Attitude Structure and Component Change

Study on the structure of political attitudes. I

This paper (1) proposes a new method for studying attitude by revised application of a series of statistico-mathematical models, i.e. the “Quantification Theory” which were developed by Guttman, L, and Hayashi, C.; (2) presents an empirical des-cripiton of the structure of political attitude and the pattern of political behavior of the Japanese based on the new method; and (3) tests the various kinds of models that have been proposed so far on the structure of political and social attitude.Of these models, a great many tend to be either subjective or speculative in their methodology. On the other hand, are usually based on a measurement developed through factor analysis.In an attempt not only to avoid subjectiveness or speculativeness, but also to revise many of the theoretical deficiencies in factor analysis, the present paper applied “Quantification Theory” to structural models of political attitude.As a result, a description was made concerning both the structure of politcal attitude and the pattern of political behavior.Method:Subjects: Electorate of both sexes over 20 years of age.Sample size: 800 subjects, Tokyo (23 wards), and 840 subjects, Chiba City, Chiba Prefecture.Questionnaires: A total of 44 items are included which are to be broken down as follows:(1) Political behavior (7 items)(2) Political attitude (25 items)(3) Social attitude (4 items)(4) Demographic information (8 items)Procedures:(1) The subjects were interviewed individually and answered to the questionnaires that were given orally.(2) To meet the limitation of the computor capacity, 29 items were selected out of the aforementioned 44 items on the basis of the significance of the items, which ranged over 100 categories. Calculation was made through Guttman-Hayashi multidimensional quantification method.Result: Three dimensional vectors were allocated to each of these categories (Table 1 and 2). For the cluster of items on the “party identification” the regressions of the metric component weights, the second component weights, and the third component weights on content percentile (direction of party identification) showed monotonic, U-shaped and N-shaped curves (Fig. 5, Fig. 6 and Fig. 7).Disscussion: The above results lead the author to make the following interpretations.1. The structure of the political attitude of the Japanese is to be observed most efficiently in terms of the three basic dimensions; (1) Progressive vs. Conservative (Direction), (2) Indifferent vs. Interested (Indifferency), and (3) Progressive Critical vs. Conservative Critical (Stability).2. The “content”, “intensity” and “closure” are both mathematically (theoretically) and psychologically (empirically) identified by Guttman, L. as basic functions of the attitude when clusters of items are perfectly scalable. The present study successfully extacted the same three basic functions by applying newly proposed methodology despite the fact that not all theitems were scalable. Furthermore, it was assumed that the above three basic dimensions, i.e., (1) Progressive vs. Conservative, (2) Indifferent vs. Interested, and (3) Progressive Critical vs. Conservative Critical, are themselves the basic functions of attitudes in the area of “party indentification”. In other words, they are “content”, “intensity” and “closure” in the field of “party identification”.In the subsequent discussions, an attempt will be made to describe and consider, by applying the above three basic dimensions, a pattern of specific political behavior and a structure of political attitude.