Hypocrisy in American Political Attitudes: A Defense of Attitudinal Incongruence

378 Pages·2018·4.021 MB·English

by  Timothy P. Collins (auth.)

HYPOCRISY
IN AMERICAN POLITICAL ATTITUDES
A DEFENSE
TIMOTHY P.
OF ATTITUDINAL
COLLINS
INCONGRUENCE
Hypocrisy in American Political Attitudes
Timothy P. Collins
Hypocrisy in American
Political Attitudes
A Defense of Attitudinal Incongruence
Timothy P. Collins
Political Science
St. Olaf College
Northfield, Minnesota, USA
ISBN 978-3-319-54011-5 ISBN 978-3-319-54012-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54012-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017947210
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
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C
ontents
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Illustrating Attitudinal Hypocrisy and Attacks
Because of It 2
1.2 W hat to Expect in this Book 10
References 12
2 What Is Attitudinal Hypocrisy and Why Does It Matter? 17
2.1 What Is Attitudinal Hypocrisy? 17
2.2 W hy Explore Attitudinal Hypocrisy? 18
2.3 How Should We Conceptualize and Measure
Political Attitudes? 21
2.4 How Should We Conceptualize and Measure
Political Ideologies? 28
2.5 How Should We Conceptualize and Measure Attitudinal
Hypocrisy? 36
2.6 What Has Previous Work Found on Attitudinal Hypocrisy? 43
References 47
3 Psychological Dispositions, Political Orientations,
and a Theoretical Framework of Ideological Differences
in Attitudinal Hypocrisy 57
3.1 The Bottom-Up Psychological Drivers of Personal Politics 57
3.2 The Bottom-Up Cognitive Drivers of Personal Politics 71
3.3 Synthesizing the Drivers of Personal Politics 77
v
vi CONTENTS
3.4 A Model of Political Hypocrisy’s Drivers 84
3.5 Hypotheses: Primary Expectations 94
References 100
4 G ay Is the New Black (but Black Is Still Black):
The History and Current Trends of Attitudinal
Hypocrisy 119
4.1 I ntroduction 119
4.2 T he 1960s’ Conservatism: Fusion and Fission 121
4.3 I deologies in the Late 1960s: War Has Caused Unrest 1 25
4.4 I deological Strands’ Branching in the 1980s 129
4.5 M odern Trends: Conservatism and Civil Rights 136
4.6 M odern Trends: Liberalism and Privacy 140
4.7 M odern Trends: Libertarianism Against Conservatism 142
4.8 M odern Trends: President Trump and People Who Are
Black, Critical Journalists, Disabled, Female, Gold Star
Families, Hispanic, Immigrants, Latino, Muslim,
Native American, Prisoners of War, Refugees, or
Electoral Opponents 145
4.9 C onclusion 147
References 148
5 A nalyzing and Predicting Hypocrisy in the Electorate 159
5.1 S tudy 1.1: 1990–2008 American National Election
Studies 159
5.2 S tudy 1.1: Results 172
5.3 S tudy 1.1: Discussion 192
5.4 S tudy 1.2: 2012 ANES 196
5.5 S tudy 1.2 Results 200
5.6 S tudy 1.2 Discussion 213
5.7 S tudy 1.3: 2016 ANES 216
5.8 S tudy 1.3 Results 218
5.9 S tudy 1.3 Discussion 230
5.10 G eneral Discussion 233
5.11 C onclusions: What Can Be Said for the EPDAM
and My Central Theory? 239
References 240
CONTENT S vii
6 Having Your Cake and Eating It Too: Using Cognitive
Dissonance to Explore Attitudinal Hypocrisy 247
6.1 The Importance of Leon Festinger 247
6.2 Cognitive Dissonance and Attitudinal Incongruence 249
6.3 Cognitive Dissonance and the EPDAM 252
6.4 Exploring Cognitive Dissonance Experimentally 254
6.5 Methods and Procedure 256
6.6 Hypotheses 262
6.7 General Results 265
6.8 Dispositional Trait Results 267
6.9 Essay Compliance: General Results 268
6.10 E ssay Compliance and Dispositional Traits 272
6.11 D iscussion of General Results 274
6.12 Q ualitative Discussion: “Maybe We Are All Hypocrites” 277
6.13 C onclusion 280
References 280
7 What Good Is Cake If You Can’t Eat It? Prescriptions
for and Conclusions About American Attitudinal
Hypocrisy 289
7.1 America Is Attitudinal Hypocrisy, Attitudinal
Hypocrisy Is America 289
7.2 The Central Findings: Clarifying the EPDAM and 
Asymmetry 291
7.3 Predicting Attitudinal Hypocrisy 292
7.4 Prescriptions for Scholars 298
7.5 Prescriptions for the Public 299
7.6 Attitude Structures as the Millay Candle 303
7.7 Exceptions to this Picture of Our Politics 306
7.8 Potential Implications and Grand Conclusions 308
References 310
Appendix 317
References 327
Index 369
L f
ist of igures
Fig. 2.1 A common two-dimensional view of political orientations 22
Fig. 2.2 Libertarianism–authoritarianism lens of political attitudes 23
Fig. 2.3 A two-dimensional view of American political ideologies 33
Fig. 3.1 Epistemic factors and how they overlap 78
Fig. 3.2 External–philosophy dispositions–attitudes model 86
Fig. 3.3 Sketch of the external–disposition factor divide 90
Fig. 3.4 Hypothesized ideologically asymmetric use of EPDAM 95
Fig. 5.1 Mean libertarian–authoritarian scores by available study year 174
Fig. 5.2 Weighted proportions of external and dispositional
factors’ predictive powers by hypocrisy model and
ideological identification, Study 1.1 193
Fig. 5.3 Weighted proportions of external and dispositional factors’
predictive powers by hypocrisy model and ideological
identification, Study 1.2 213
Fig. 5.4 Weighted proportions of external and dispositional factors’
predictive powers by hypocrisy model and ideological
identification, Study 1.3 229
Fig. 5.5 Mean overall hypocrisy over time 234
Fig. 5.6 Mean logical anti-constraint over time 234
Fig. 6.1 Compliance rates by essay condition and ideology 271
ix
L t
ist of abLes
Table 2.1 Issue attitudes, government involvement, and typical
ideological stances 31
Table 4.1 Responses to political correctness items in the 2016
electorate 146
Table 5.1 Attitude items available to be tested by year 163
Table 5.2 Percentage of participants with scores = .00 by item,
1990–2008 ANES 175
Table 5.3 Standardized beta coefficients predicting hypocrisy
scores for all subjects by hypocrisy score type,
1990–2008 ANES 176
Table 5.4 Standardized beta coefficients predicting hypocrisy
scores for liberal identifiers by hypocrisy score type,
1990–2008 ANES 178
Table 5.5 Standardized beta coefficients predicting hypocrisy
scores for conservative identifiers by hypocrisy score
type, 1990–2008 ANES 180
Table 5.6 Logistic regression coefficients predicting binary
government philosophy, 1990–2008 ANES 185
Table 5.7 Standardized beta coefficients predicting mean
government philosophy by ideological identification,
1990–2008 ANES 187
Table 5.8 Standardized beta coefficients predicting issue stances
for all subjects, 1990–2008 ANES 188
Table 5.9 Standardized beta coefficients predicting issue stances
for liberal identifiers, 1990–2008 ANES 189
xi
xii LIST OF TABLES
Table 5.10 Standardized beta coefficients predicting issue stances
for conservative identifiers, 1990–2008 ANES 190
Table 5.11 Percentage of predictive power from external factors
by model, 1990–2008 ANES 191
Table 5.12 Percentage of participants with scores = .00 by item,
2012 ANES 201
Table 5.13 Standardized regression coefficients predicting hypocrisy
scores for all subjects in the 2012 ANES 203
Table 5.14 Standardized regression coefficients predicting hypocrisy
scores for liberal identifiers in the 2012 ANES 205
Table 5.15 Standardized regression coefficients predicting hypocrisy
scores for conservative identifiers in the 2012 ANES 207
Table 5.16 Percentage of predictive power from external factors,
2012 ANES 212
Table 5.17 Percentage of participants with scores = .00 by item,
2016 ANES 219
Table 5.18 Standardized regression coefficients predicting hypocrisy
scores for all subjects in the 2016 ANES 220
Table 5.19 Standardized regression coefficients predicting hypocrisy
scores for liberal identifiers in the 2016 ANES 222
Table 5.20 Standardized regression coefficients predicting hypocrisy
scores for conservative identifiers in the 2016 ANES 224
Table 5.21 Percentage of predictive power from external factors,
2016 ANES 228
Table 6.1 Political demographics, Study 2 265
Table 6.2 Bivariate correlations between measured traits 266
Table 6.3 Bivariate correlations of knowledge with traits, by ideology 267
Table 6.4 Binary logistic regressions predicting compliance by
essay topic 273
Table 7.1 Automatically constructed linear regression model
predicting overall hypocrisy for all subjects in the
2016 ANES 293
Table 7.2 Automatically constructed linear regression model
predicting overall hypocrisy for liberal identifiers in the
2016 ANES 294
Table 7.3 Automatically constructed linear regression model
predicting overall hypocrisy for conservative identifiers
in the 2016 ANES 294
Table 7.4 Standardized beta coefficients for full and reduced
linear regressions predicting social-issue hypocrisy in
the 2016 ANES 295