Survey shifts in ideological self-identification measure symbolic meaning, not issue movement.

Evidence

Several methodological implications stem from our finding that the meaning of ideological labels is largely based on symbols rather than issues. Specifically, this finding suggests that the common method of using the liberal and conservative labels as stimuli to measure ideological or issue-oriented thinking may be misleading, For the same reason, we should also be cautious of interpretations of political change which rely on shifts in ideological identifications as an empirical indicator of changes in basic issue positions. Our findings imply that major shifts in the distribution of the public’s ideological identifications are indicative of fundamental alterations in the symbolic meaning of politics, rather than major changes in issue orientations. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2081

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Undercuts a default habit across social science and journalism of treating self-reported liberal/conservative identification as a proxy for issue positions; the methodological critique generalizes beyond this specific study.
• XREF: connects to: Facebook’s own research measured ideological alignment by averaging sharers’ self-reported politics — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 417; Critiques of victim-identification culture span opposed political positions — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1938