Most people lack coherent ideological belief systems.

Evidence

It is often argued, however, that abstract dimensions like the liberal-conservative continuum are superficial if not meaningless indicators: All that they show is that poorly educated people are inarticulate and have difficulty expressing verbally the more abstract lines along which their specific political beliefs are organized. To expect these people to be able to express what they know and feel, the critic goes on, is comparable to the fallacy of assuming that people can say in an accurate way why they behave as they do. When it comes down to specific attitudes and behaviors, the organization is there nonetheless, and it is this organization that matters, not the capacity for discourse in sophisticated language. … If it were true that such organization does exist for most people, apart from their capacities to be articulate about it, we would agree out of hand that the question of articulation is quite trivial. As a cold empirical matter, however, this claim does not seem to be valid. Indeed, it is for this reason that we have cast the argument in terms of constraint, for constraint and organization are very nearly the same thing. Therefore when we hypothesize that constraint among political idea-elements begins to lose its range very rapidly once we move from the most sophisticated few toward the “grass roots,” we are contending that the organization of more specific attitudes into wide-ranging belief systems is absent as well. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1912 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

In our first reading in this section, Converse cleverly weighs in on the “end of ideology” debate by arguing for the necessity of distinguishing between the belief systems of political elites and ordinary citizens. On the basis of survey data, Converse concludes that only a small percentage of voters (approximately 15%) should be classified as “ideologues” or “near-ideologues” and that more than a third of the population cannot accurately define even such basic political terms as liberal and conservative. This does not mean, however, that the left-right distinction is meaningless or inconsequential. Elite politicians—whose belief systems are far more constrained by social and psychological forces than are the belief systems of mass publics—do use conventional ideological dimensions to organize their political attitudes. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1815 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Apparent political ignorance masks a lack of analytic framework. — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 943; Political ignorance reflects lack of opportunity for unhurried reasoning, not low intelligence. — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 1095; Ideological constraint declines sharply and non-elite publics hold disconnected idea clusters. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 1875 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Ordinary citizens lack the organized belief systems scholars once assumed they possess #corroborates (1.00) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1912
• Mass belief systems are fragmented and narrow rather than ideologically coherent #corroborates (0.95)
• Only a small fraction of voters hold coherent ideological belief systems #corroborates (0.92) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1815