Liberalism and conservatism are distinct attitude systems, not opposite ends of one continuum

Evidence

But, perhaps most relevant to our argument is Kerlinger’s (1967, 1972) theory of “criterial referents.” Kerlinger posits that attitudes differ in terms of their “referents,” or focus; referents that are “criterial” or central to one attitude may be irrelevant to another. With respect to the social attitudes composing political belief systems, Kerlinger (1967, p. 112) suggests that “liberal is not just the opposite of conservative”; rather than representing endpoints on the same continuum, liberalism and conservatism constitute relatively distinct attitude systems based on different criterial referents. Kerlinger’s thesis received strong support from his factor analysis which revealed that predesignated “liberal” and “conservative” referents did load on different dimensions, and that there were few negative loadings. Taken together, such findings indicate a distinct lack of bipolarity in the beliefs defining liberalism and conservatism. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1992

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces Kerlinger’s ‘criterial referents’ concept centrally.
• XREF: Relates to research on political ideology and value structure, and the common assumption of a single left-right spectrum. — connects to: Civic republicanism is a distinct doctrine separate from civic humanism and communitarianism. — Frank Lovett, Republicanism, 3
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1992