Political ideology has regained prominence in political science and psychology. On the one hand, most of the literature recognizes that ideology is not characterized by a single dimension. On the other hand, recent scholarship has returned to Converse's classic conceptualization of ideology as a belief system: a network of interconnected political beliefs. Using survey data collected after the 2022 Italian general elections, I examine the dimensionality of political attitudes and compare latent and network conceptualizations. Results confirm that Italian political attitudes are bidimensional, and that a partial correlation network model captures their structure very well. I then apply Correlational Class Analysis to identify three distinct belief system types. Political orientations (left-right self-placement and vote) emerge as the strongest individual-level predictors of class membership. I explain these findings through an extension of Converse's theory: while he argued that belief systems primarily vary in tightness (internal consistency), I show that conflicting partisan cues might foster low belief consensus: disagreement over which attitudes should be held together.

Extant work shows that generative AI such as GPT-3.5 and perpetuate social stereotypes and biases. A less explored source of bias is ideology: do GPT models take ideological stances on politically sensitive topics? We develop a novel approach to identify ideological bias and show that it can originate in both the training data and the filtering algorithm. Using linguistic variation across countries with contrasting political attitudes, we evaluate average GPT responses in those languages. GPT output is more conservative in languages conservative societies (polish) and more liberal in languages used in liberal ones (Swedish). These differences persist from GPT-3.5 to GPT-4. We conclude that high-quality, curated training data are essential for reducing bias.

How do perceptions of demographic change affect the strength of white identity and corresponding attitudes toward immigrants, immigration and personal perceptions of victimhood? While white identity has received scholarly attention in the United States, we know much less about its effects in Canada. We conducted a preregistered survey experiment in which we exposed respondents to different framings on Canada’s increasing ethnic diversity. We find that perceiving demographic change increases feelings of white identity, particularly when framed as an increase in Canada’s visible minority or immigrant population. However, exposure to these trends does not in turn robustly affect respondents’ attitudes toward immigrants, immigration admission preferences or own perceptions of personal victimhood. These findings suggest that white identity is both present and can be primed in Canada; however, it has not yet been politically mobilized in the same way as in other contexts, such as the United States.

Popular willingness to compromise is an important step for conflict resolution. A key argument suggests that improving expectations about the prospects of peace can increase public support for concessions. Yet a competing view, anchored in broader debates about preferences and expectations, suggests that prior ideological dispositions motivate biased future expectations rather than vice versa. This tension, however, remains understudied in violent conflicts. In this study, we leverage rich survey data from Israel to disentangle the causal relationship between expectations and preferences for compromise in a long-standing conflict. Using two decades of aggregate monthly series and two exogenous shocks to peace expectations, we find that changes in prospective expectations do predict subsequent shifts in support for compromise. We find no contrary evidence for a null, opposite, or heterogeneous relationship. The findings contribute to ongoing debates about the interrelations between expectations and preferences and provide insights into their implications for conflict resolution.

Research demonstrates that English- and French-speaking Canadians differ in a wide range of attitudes, including their political preferences, their vision of the Canadian federation and their national identity. In this article, we ask whether individual bilingualism is associated with a decrease in the attitudinal differences between anglophones and francophones. Using survey data collected in the summer of 2023, we attempt to determine whether knowledge of the French language is related to an increase in the responsiveness of English-speaking citizens toward issues that typically preoccupy French-speaking Canadians. Our analyses suggest that knowledge of French as a second language is strongly linked to the political preferences of Canadian citizens but does not bridge the attitudinal gap between Canada’s two main language groups. These results highlight the relevance of considering the different languages that people speak—and not just their mother tongue—to understand their political attitudes.

What are the effects of reason-giving on political attitudes? Both political philosophers and political scientists have speculated that defending proposals with reasons may change voters’ preferences. However, while models of attitude formation predict that the explicit justification of one’s political views may result in attitudes that are more ideologically consistent, less polarized, and more stable, empirical work has not assessed the connection between reason-giving and attitudes. Implementing a survey experiment in which some respondents provide reasons before stating their opinions on six issues in UK politics, I find that reason-giving has very limited effects on the constraint, stability, or polarization of the public’s political attitudes. These findings have important implications for our understanding of deliberative conceptions of democracy – in which reason-giving is a central component – as well as for our understanding of the quality of voters’ political opinions.

Americans generally celebrate the abstract principle of diversity, but research suggests that they have a comparatively lower (1) favorability towards policies that promote diversity and (2) sense of personal closeness with others from diverse backgrounds. The current study analyzes nationally representative survey data to assess such “principle-policy gaps” and “principle-personal gaps” in Americans’ diversity attitudes. We find that these attitudinal gaps indeed exist and are substantial in the general population. We also consider how individual-level factors relate to these attitudinal gaps. Following common findings in previous research, we find that participant racial identity and political partisanship have statistically significant relationships with these attitudinal gaps. But our overall findings illustrate that principle-policy gaps and principle-personal gaps in diversity attitudes are fairly substantial and prevalent across Americans who vary by race, politics, and several other individual-level factors. We consider our findings in the current social and political context, and we discuss directions for future inquiry.

The United States is in a time of reckoning with whiteness. Despite white people benefiting from a disproportionate amount of power at every level of government, a significant racial wealth gap, preferential treatment in the legal system, and a rise in white supremacy, “colorblind” critics continue to argue against the relevance of race in a purportedly post-racial society. We assert that parents’ ethnic-racial socialization (ERS) of their children shapes how children view their racial identity and thus influence important political attitudes. ERS is a process by which individuals are taught values, beliefs, and attitudes about ethnicity and race. Most existing research among families of color suggests ERS is strongly linked to a variety of adult political attitudes. However, less is known about the impact of ERS on political attitudes for white young adults. Drawing on survey data from a national U.S. sample of 944 white, young adults (18–25 years old), we find that white ERS is linked with political attitudes. Specifically, we find that increased cultural socialization, preparation for bias, and egalitarianism are positively related to politically conservative ideology, while anti-racism is positively related to politically liberal ideology. Preparation for bias and egalitarianism are positively related to Republican party identification. Promotion of mistrust, silent racial socialization, and anti-racism are positively related to Democratic party affiliation. We suggest ERS impacts the way a person conceptualizes ethnicity and race and is inextricably linked to political outcomes.

Rural residents are typically construed as being more conservative than urban residents. Is this true, or do rural residents carry unique interests from Republicans or conservatives? Using the 2020 ANES, we compare responses from 22 national issues by interacting urban and rural residency with Republican and Democrat identification. We find that issue preferences are partisan, not place-based: rural Democrats resemble their urban counterparts and urban Republicans resemble their rural counterparts, rather than rural areas specifically being more Republican. However, rural Democrats are more conservative than urban Democrats on issues relating to immigration, transgendered people in the military, and income inequality. These results point to partisan nationalization in issue stances, with exceptions, and that rural is not always Republican.

Political identification is the basis of enduring conflict, suggesting thatpolitical attitudes are difficult to change. Here we show that in the 2016 U.S.Presidential Election, political identities underwent modification in responseto salient political events. We investigate these dynamics in detail bycollecting data at periodic intervals from mid-June 2016 through the generalelection (N = 3,958). We operationalize identification using prosocial giving inDictator Games played between supporters of competing primary candidatesrecruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk. The observed dynamics differed acrosspolitical parties. In-group bias among Democrats remained high until theDemocratic National Convention, disappeared shortly thereafter, and thenreturned during the final stage of the election. Bias among Republicans wasgenerally high until the final days of the election. The late resurgence of biasamong Democrats was not reflected in voting intentions, but may have presagedthe Democratic election loss.

Prior research finds that liberals and conservatives process information differently. Predispositions toward intuitive versus reflective thinking may help explain this individual level variation. There have been few direct tests of this hypothesis and the results from the handful of studies that do exist are contradictory. Here we report the results of a series of studies using the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) to investigate inclinations to be reflective and political orientation. We find a relationship between thinking style and political orientation and that these effects are particularly concentrated on social attitudes. We also find it harder to manipulate intuitive and reflective thinking than a number of prominent studies suggest. Priming manipulations used to induce reflection and intuition in published articles repeatedly fail in our studies. We conclude that conservatives—more specifically, social conservatives—tend to be dispositionally less reflective, social liberals tend to be dispositionally more reflective, and that the relationship between reflection and intuition and political attitudes may be more resistant to easy manipulation than existing research would suggest.