Individuals’ Ideologies as Networks

• In Event: Political Methodology Virtual Poster Session

Abstract

This paper tests the hypothesis that people not only hold opinions about parties and specific issues; they also explicitly connect their various beliefs together to create more-or-less coherent logical structures.

Although scholars meticulously analyze the structure of the arguments in books, essays, and speeches, several streams of research suggest that ordinary people have very limited structures. Most people’s political preferences are said to be random, chosen by elites, or driven by latent variables of which they are unconscious.

However, the conscious structure of average people’s thinking will be invisible unless there are tools that can detect it. In this study, survey respondents were asked their opinions about specific issues and then shown randomized pairs of their own opinions and asked about logical connections between these pairs. For instance, they were asked whether one opinion offered a reason for a different one. Networks were derived from their responses. In a regression, the locations of opinions in individuals’ networks predicted their political ideology (as measured independently) better than their mere opinions did. Examples of specific individuals’ networks are also presented and analyzed. The evidence suggests that these logical structures are meaningful.

Author

• Peter Levine, Tufts University