The Dimensional Structure of Symbolic Ideology:
An Experiment on Liberal-Conservative Self-Placements
Suggested running head: An Experiment on Liberal-Conservative Self-Placements
Abstract
It has been argued that political ideology consists of more than one dimension when the concept
is used to explain policy preferences. These arguments are based on analyses of policy
preferences that utilize dimension-reduction techniques to find at least two dimensions of the
liberal-conservative scale at work—most frequently social and economic dimensions. However,
no one has demonstrated whether individuals think of their ideological identifications in two
dimensions. Do respondents’ provide different self-placements for economic issues as compared
to social issues? This paper uses data from a national survey experiment that directly measures
the social and economic dimensions of ideology to determine whether respondents think of their
ideological views and report their self-placement differently on social and economic issues; and
whether the two self-placement measures of social and economic ideology are more accurate
predictors of policy preferences than the single measure. The analysis provides evidence that the
experimental measures offer some advantages over the unidimensional measure, particularly for
explaining the preferences of individuals who are not strong ideologues.
On its face, ideology is not a concept that lends itself to easy operationalization and
empirical use; it is a complex concept that is not easily measured (e.g., Converse 1964; Luskin
1987). According to the original definition of the term, ideology is an individual’s view of how
society should work, and in the specific case of political ideology, it is a view of how politics and
government should work (Roucek 1944). As Rosenberg (1988) defined it, ideology is “not
simply a set of learned preferences. More basic, it is a way of making sense of politics—of
defining who and what is involved, what they do, and how they relate to one another.” The
terms most associated with ideologies in American politics, “liberal” and “conservative,” are
often used in common language, and the labels carry with them a basic understanding of the
preferences and ideals implied by the use of the label. The labels, and corresponding beliefs, are
typically thought of as a unidimensional scale with extremely liberal views at one end, extremely
conservative views at the other end, and moderate views in the middle. This unidimensional
scale, or some variation of the liberal-conservative structure, has been used to evaluate
individuals’ political views, policy preferences, and many aspects of political life for decades.
Because liberal-conservative ideology is so often used in models of behavior, the measurement
of the construct has been an intermittent subject of debate in the literature. One of these critical
debates has been whether liberal and conservative views are truly unidimensional.
Recently, some scholars have begun to revisit the dimensionality of liberal-conservative
views, a debate that had some traction in earlier decades (e.g., Altemeyer 1981; Chong,
McClosky and Zaller 1983; Maddox and Lilie 1984) but had not seen much work until a few
years ago (e.g., Feldman and Johnston 2009; Treier and Hillygus 2009; Zumbrunnen and Gangl
2008). The basic argument is that political ideology consists of more than one dimension when
the concept is used to explain policy preferences. To support this argument, scholars have used
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factor analysis, item response theory, and a host of other dimension-reduction techniques to
derive individuals’ placements on the latent ideological dimensions from a battery of policy
preference questions. The general finding is remarkably consistent: there are at least two
dimensions of liberal-conservative ideology at work with respect to policy preferences—most
frequently social and economic dimensions (e.g., Altemeyer 1998; Feldman and Johnston 2009;
Haidt, Graham, and Joseph 2009; Jost et al. 2009; 2003; Layman and Carsey 2002; Swedlow
2008; Swedlow and Wyckoff 2009;Treier and Hillygus 2009; Zumbrunnen and Gangl 2008).
This work has established that policy preferences are multidimensional, but what has not been
addressed is whether individual-level liberal-conservative self-identification, as measured using
the traditional liberal-conservative scale survey question, is multidimensional.
This project uses data from a nationwide survey experiment to determine whether
respondents will provide different liberal-conservative self-placements when given the
opportunity to place themselves on the scale for economic and social issues in two different
questions. More substantively, the analysis will address the question of whether the twodimensional self-placements explain individuals’ policy preferences better than the commonlyused unidimensional measure. This research shows that some individuals do place themselves
differently on the liberal-conservative continuum for the two dimensions and that these two
measures do result in some improvement in preference prediction. The evidence supports the
overall conclusion that individuals are able to perceive and report differences in their views on
social and economic dimensions.
Why should we expect different self-placements?
The American politics literature has established two distinct types of liberal-conservative
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ideology for use in models of political behavior: symbolic ideology, which is what individuals
believe their liberal-conservative ideology to be in abstract terms and based on self-reports; and
operational ideology, which is a researcher-created concept of what individuals’ ideological
placements are based on their measured policy positions (e.g., Abramowitz and Saunders 2008;
Campbell et al 1960; Conover & Feldman 1981; Converse 1964; Jacoby 1991, 2002; LewisBeck et al 2008; Peffley and Hurwitz 1985; Sears et al 1979; Sears et al 1980; Swedlow 2008).
The traditional spatial configuration of symbolic ideology—as operationalized in survey
research—asks a single survey question to get respondents to place themselves on a
unidimensional continuum from strongly liberal to strongly conservative. Operational ideology
measures individuals’ positions on the liberal-conservative scale using respondents’ reported
policy preferences, a method which does not rely on respondents having specific knowledge of
what it means to be liberal or conservative.
The idea that policy preferences exist along multiple dimensions is not a new one, but the
multidimensional structure of ideology has developed almost completely within the parameters
of operational ideology. Evidence across many studies shows that in conceptual and factoranalytic terms, political ideology has two distinct dimensions with regard to policy
preferences(e.g., Altemeyer 1998; Feldman and Johnston 2009; Haidt et al 2009; Jost et al. 2009;
Maddox and Lilie 1984; Swedlow 2008; Swedlow and Wyckoff 20009; Treier and Hillygus
2009; Zumbrunnen and Gangl 2008). Ideology at the mass level is dependent upon the policies
about which individuals form preferences and therefore any dimensions of ideology in the mass
public will be defined according to the dimensions of the policies that are under consideration
(Maddox and Lilie 1984). Since Ellis and Stimson (2009) have demonstrated that how an
individual perceives their own ideological placement (symbolic ideology) can be quite different
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from where their ideological placement is based on their policy positions (operational ideology),
these findings cannot be generalized out to the symbolic ideology measured by liberalconservative self-placements. This literature does, however, demonstrate how to approach
measuring liberal-conservative self-placement in multiple dimensions.
The consensus in the multidimensional discussion is that policy issues, as they relate to
liberal-conservative political ideology, are generally divided by social and economic lines.
Maddox and Lilie (1984) define these policy dimensions as “attitudes toward government
intervention in the economy” and “attitudes toward the maintenance or expansion of personal
freedoms.” By these definitions, the dimensions Maddox and Lilie (1984) use are similar to the
dimensions of “capitalism” and “democracy” articulated by Chong, McClosky, and Zaller
(1983): capitalism corresponds to government intervention in the economy, and democracy
corresponds to the maintenance or expansion of personal freedoms. Later work that refers to
“liberalism” or “communitarianism” (e.g., Swedlow 2008; Swedlow and Wyckoff 2009), uses
those terms to refer to two of the categories created by using two dimensions of ideology in a
Cartesian space; the dimensions that divide the space are social and economic ideology.
In more recent studies, Feldman and Johnston (2009) used the social and economic
dimensions of ideology as the jumping-off point to factor-analyze the structure of individuals’
issue positions into more precise categories. They found that a two-factor model of ideology was
a better fit for the data than a one-factor model, and the two factors were identified as economic
and social dimensions of ideology. Treier and Hillygus (2009) use Bayesian Item Response
Theory to analyze policy preferences in terms of ideology, arriving at the same conclusion—
there are distinct cultural and economic dimensions of ideology. The implication of measuring
ideology using only one dimension if two dimensions have more explanatory power is that the
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research could be ignoring powerful relationships between ideology and policy preferences that
are more complex than previously thought (Feldman and Johnston 2009; Haidt et al 2009; Treier
and Hillygus 2009).
Most importantly for applying the results to symbolic ideology, these findings have
demonstrated that some individuals are cross-pressured between different views on different
types of political issues (Treier and Hillygus 2009). As a result of this cross-pressuring,
individuals may consider themselves conservative on one set of issues and liberal on another set
of issues. This pattern is easily demonstrated using policy preferences to measure liberal and
conservative views, as Treier and Hillygus (2009) and Johnston and Feldman (2009) did, but
crosspressures cannot be identified using the unidimensional survey measure of liberalconservative self-placement. Anyone who is cross-pressured will likely respond in the middle of
the scale (“moderate”) or use the don’t know category since “liberal” and “conservative” fail to
accurately describe all of their views (Treier and Hillygus 2009). This response pattern results in
a “muddy middle” group whose policy preferences are unexplained by their liberal-conservative
self-placement. By accounting for the two different types of operational ideology, economic and
social, the cross-pressured individual’s policy preferences can be more clearly explained.
Given that research demonstrates the existence of multiple underlying dimensions of
operational ideology driving responses to policy preference questions, a logical question to ask is
whether individuals conceptualize their liberal-conservative self-placement as different on social
and economic dimensions. In other words, is symbolic ideology multi-dimensional? If the
answer to this question is affirmative, one would expect these cross-pressured individuals to give
different self-placements on items asking about different dimensions of policy views. For
example, a cross-pressured individual might report their symbolic ideology as “liberal” for social
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issues, but “slightly conservative” for economic issues. These measures would then provide
better explanation for the individuals’ policy preferences since their symbolic ideology is
allowed to vary by policy type. The dimension of the policy can be matched to the symbolic
ideology dimension—e.g., a model explaining preferences on a policy generally perceived to be
economic in nature would use the economic liberal-conservative self-placement measure as the
indicator of ideology in the model. The result of this should be an improvement in the
explanatory power of the liberal-conservative measure in the model since the two dimensional
measures are more accurate indicators of symbolic ideology than the unidimensional measure.
Data and Methods
The dimensional structure of liberal-conservative self-placements is tested using data
collected by Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences.1 The survey was a nation-wide
experiment conducted by Knowledge Networks using their KnowledgePanel® internet survey
panel, which is designed to generate nationally representative web samples.2 The experimental
portion of the survey incorporated a simple random-split design that sent respondents to one of
two ideology question tracks. The first track, the control, simply asked respondents the
traditionally-used ideological self-placement question, worded as: “On a scale of political
ideology, individuals can be arranged from strongly liberal to strongly conservative. Which of
the following categories best describes your views?” Respondents were provided the traditional
seven-point scale with values ranging from strongly liberal to strongly conservative and an
alternative response of “I don’t think of my views in these terms” for those respondents who did
not wish to place themselves on the continuum. Approximately half of the sample (N=558) was
1
2
NSF grant 0818839, Jeremy Freese and Penny Visser Principal Investigators
Total N of 1108, Cooperation rate of 68.7% by AAPOR COOP1 rate.
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randomly assigned to this control track.
The experimental track, to which the remaining 550 respondents were assigned, consisted
of three questions about the respondents’ ideological views. The first two, which appeared in
random order, were designed to measure the social and economic dimensions of ideology
separately. Definitions of social and economic issues were provided in order to reduce the
potential for confusion among respondents regarding what was meant by these different types of
issues and to explain the terms to respondents who do not often think about the nature of issues.
The economic ideology question read: “On a scale of political ideology, individuals can be
arranged from strongly liberal to strongly conservative. When thinking about your views on
economic issues, which of the following categories best describes your views? ‘Economic
issues’ are questions of how to distribute resources among people within a society.” The social
ideology question simply changed “economic” to “social” in the text of the question, and defined
social issues as “problems that affect many or all members of society, and often involve cultural
or moral values.” The third question in the experimental track simply asked respondents to place
themselves on the same ideological scale generally: “Now, considering your responses to the
previous two questions, which of the following categories best describes your views overall?”
All three questions had the same response options as the control track question: the standard
seven-point scale that ranges from strongly liberal to strongly conservative, with the additional
option of “I don’t think of my views in these terms.”
Bivariate Analysis
The first step in analyzing the effects of asking two different liberal-conservative selfidentification questions is to look at response patterns—did respondents in the experimental track
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select different placements for social and economic issues? Table I indicates that at least some
respondents did answer the experimental questions differently. Although the majority of
responses in the crosstab do fall into the diagonal boxes indicating that the respondents chose the
same placement for both questions, a nontrivial number of respondents fall into the off-diagonal
boxes that indicate different responses, as indicated by the bottom row and rightmost column of
the table. Overall nearly one-third (31%) of all respondents provided different self-placements
on the two questions, and the highest rates of providing different responses are generally found
among those who placed themselves in the “slightly” liberal or conservative categories (with the
exception of those in the social strongly liberal category, but the low N in this category likely
contributes to the higher volatility).
[Table I here]
Table II provides more information on the distance between placements for each
respondent. The frequency shown is the absolute value of the number of categories between
each respondent’s self-placement on the economic views question and the social views question.
For example, a response of “slightly liberal” on the economic question and “liberal” on the social
question would be a difference of 1; answering “conservative” on both questions would be a
difference of 0. The respondents who indicated 0 difference between their economic and social
self-placements constitute just under 70 percent of the sample. The remaining 31 percent
indicated that there is some difference between their economic and social liberal-conservative
self-placements, as shown in Table I. By far the most common difference in positions is only
one category, but there is a handful of respondents that place their views as far away as four
categories—that would be the difference between answering “strongly conservative” on one
dimension and “slightly liberal” on the other.
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[Table II here]
Now that we know there are differences in placement for some individuals, the question
becomes whether those differences matter when looking at aggregate statistics. Again, the
answer to this question seems to be affirmative—the differences in individual-level placement do
cause significant changes in aggregate statistics. The mean responses for all four questions, the
control plus all three experimental items, are clustered around 4 (moderate), but the differences
are enough to be significant in almost every pairwise comparison. The mean placement for the
control group is 4.21, and all of the experimental question means are slightly more bent toward
the conservative end of the scale, with the social views mean at 4.38, the economic views mean
at 4.54, and the overall mean predictably in between the social and economic means at 4.43.
Table III shows a matrix of the differences between the means. The differences between the
control mean and all three of the experimental measures is statistically significant (p<0.05), as
the first column shows. The experimental economic and social measures are significantly
different from one another despite a high correlation (0.83), and the difference between the
experimental economic and experimental overall measure is significant despite a slightly higher
correlation (0.89). The only difference that fails to reach statistical significance is between the
experimental social measure and the experimental overall measure (correlation 0.90).
[Table III here]
It is interesting that all three of the experimental measures are significantly different from
the control in the conservative direction. It would seem that by prompting respondents to think
about the scale in terms of policy positions when placing themselves on the liberal-conservative
continuum, the question pushes respondents toward the conservative end of the scale. If the
question wording does bias respondents, then we should see that the experimental measures are
10
less effective in explaining policy preferences than the control. Conversely, if the experimental
measures provide a closer approximation of respondents’ true placement on the liberalconservative scale than the control, models using the experimental measures should explain
policy preferences better. With this empirical question in mind, in addition to the theoretical
question of how respondents conceptualize liberal-conservative self-placement, we turn to
models of preferences.
Multivariable Analysis
Three commonly used policy preference measures are used as the dependent variables for
constructing models to test the control and experimental measures. Two of the items asked
respondents to place themselves on seven-point scales, with the simple text “Where would you
place yourself on this scale?” The first dependent variable, regarding government services, labels
the scale where one means “government should provide many fewer services,” four means
“government provides the right amount of services,” and seven means “government should
provide many more services.” The second dependent variable, government-guaranteed jobs,
labels only the anchor points: one means that “government should make sure that people have
jobs and a minimum standard of living,” and seven means that “government should let each
person get ahead on their own.” The third dependent variable is respondents’ opinion about
abortion. The question asks “Which of these statements best describes your opinion regarding
abortion?” with the options of “By law, abortion should never be permitted; The law should
permit abortion only in case of rape, incest, or when the woman’s life is in danger; The law
should permit abortion for reasons other than rape, incest, or danger to the woman’s life, but only
after the need for abortion has been clearly established; By law a woman should always be able
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to obtain an abortion as a matter of choice.” This variable was recoded to a dichotomy in which
0 means that the respondent believes abortion should never be allowed, and 1 means that the
respondent believes abortion should be allowed under at least some circumstances. The text and
answer options for all three questions was taken from the 2004 American National Election
Study.
Table IV shows the relevant statistics from two models for each dependent variable: one
that uses the control liberal-conservative self-placement measure and another using the
experimental social and economic measures. (Full models are included as appendix tables.)
There is not much difference between the control and experimental models, but the patterns are
informative. The control liberal-conservative measure is consistently significant across all three
dependent variables, as expected. Interesting patterns emerge in the models using the
experimental measures, however. Both economic and social self-placement are significant
predictors of the government services dependent variable, which is an intuitive finding since the
services provided by government are a mix of social (e.g., public education) and economic (e.g.,
welfare programs). In the other models, only one of the two experimental measures is a
significant predictor of the dependent variable, and the significant one is exactly what would be
expected given the policy area of the variables. For the question of how respondents feel about
government-ensured jobs, only the economic measure is significant—jobs are clearly viewed as
an economic issue. The opposite is true when predicting whether respondents think abortion
should be allowed: only the social measure is significant, indicating that abortion is viewed as a
social issue. These patterns show that respondents not only place themselves differently on
economic and social dimensions, but that they weight the two dimensions according to the policy
issue in question. Self-placements on an economic liberal-conservative scale correspond with
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opinion about predominantly economic issues, and likewise for the social scale and issues.
[Table IV here]
This finding is not entirely surprising; after all, the respondents were primed to think of
economic and social issues in the experimental liberal-conservative placement questions.
However, it is worth noting that the experimental measures predict the dependent variables at
magnitudes equal to or higher than the control measure. The magnitude of the liberalconservative measure effects is roughly the same between experimental and control measures for
the government services and jobs dependent variables, but social ideology is a much larger
predictor of abortion preferences than the unidimensional measure. The magnitude comparisons
indicate that the two-dimensional measures are at least equally valuable for policy preference
prediction, and in some cases could be more influential than the traditional unidimensional
question. Moreover, the link between the “correct” dimension of liberal-conservative selfplacement and the general policy area (abortion, a social issue, is predicted by social ideology)
indicates that respondents might connect their liberal-conservative views to actual policy issues
more than traditional political science literature often implies (e.g., Converse 1964; Jacoby
1991).
A more interesting test of the measures investigates whether the experimental measures
significantly contribute to explaining policy preferences where the control measure does not. As
mentioned above, some literature argues that cross-pressured individuals will place themselves in
the middle of a unidimensional liberal-conservative measure when they have conflicting views
on different types of issues (Treier and Hillygus 2009).
In addition to the cross-pressure
hypothesis, moderates should show different patterns with respect to the explanatory power of
liberal-conservative measures because it has been shown throughout time that indicators of
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ideology do not explain these respondents’ policy preferences very well (e.g., Converse 1964;
Feldman 1988; Kinder 1983). Table V shows the same models from Table IV, but this time only
for respondents who identified as slightly conservative, middle of the road, slightly liberal, or did
not think of their views in those terms. This group of “moderates” was selected using responses
to the control liberal-conservative question and the third experimental question that asked
respondents to place themselves on the scale overall. It is not surprising that the control liberalconservative measure is not a significant predictor of preferences among moderates for any of
the three dependent variables, but the control measures are significant in models that include
only non-moderate (or ideologue) respondents. This same pattern can be observed in similar
models using ANES data. However, in the models with the experimental measures, at least one
liberal-conservative item is a significant predictor of each dependent variable. Economic selfplacement is significant in the government services and government jobs models, and the
magnitude of the effect is very similar to the magnitude of the effect in the full aggregate models
in Table IV.
[Table V here]
It appears that using the experimental measures helps explain preferences better than the
control measure at least among moderates (see Table V), but how do the different measures
affect the overall fit of the models? Looking at the error associated with each model offers little
insight into the overall fit. There are no significant differences in the mean or standard deviation
of the prediction error from the control models compared to the experimental models for any of
the three dependent variables. However, since there are nine or ten independent variables in
each model, a relatively subtle change in measurement of one of those variables is not expected
to substantially affect the total model error. The change in the measure should affect the error in
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the model prediction as compared to the ideology variables—how well ideology works as a
predictor of the dependent variable.
Figure 1 shows a scatterplot matrix of the relationship between the predicted values of
each dependent variable and the measure of ideology used in the model for each of the three
dependent variables. The plots on the left show this relationship for the control models, and the
plots on the right show the relationship for the experimental models. Since both social and
economic liberal-conservative measures were used in the experimental models, the most
appropriate measure for the dependent variable was used to create the scatterplot. For the first
two scatterplots, government services and government-guaranteed jobs, the economic
experimental measure was used as the x-axis variable. Social liberal-conservative placement
was used for the experimental scatterplot of the abortion dependent variable.
[Figure 1 here]
A quick left-to-right glance at Figure 1 illustrates the key finding: the experimental
measure greatly reduces the noise and error in the comparison between respondents’ predicted
values on the policy variables and their ideological placements. Liberal-conservative selfplacement is assumed to have a directional influence on respondents’ policy preferences
regardless of other predictors in the models, and this appears to be true for all three of the
dependent variables. However, the control scatterplots on the left consistently show a lot of
variance in predicted policy view for each category of liberal-conservative self-placement. This
means that the control measure, although statistically significant in the models, is not a very
strong predictor of the policy preference. The control measure seems to predict preferences best
for the government services dependent variable, and worst for the abortion variable. Looking
specifically at the three middle categories that represent moderates (3, 4, and 5), we see that the
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predicted values on the dependent variables cover the majority of the possible variance—
supporting the finding that there is no relationship between the control measure and the
dependent variables among moderates.
The plots on the right-hand side of Figure 1 show a notably closer relationship between
the experimental liberal-conservative measures and the predicted policy positions. The
directional relationship is very clear at first glance, and the overall variance in predicted policy
position for each category of liberal-conservative self-placement is much smaller. The most
striking comparison is between the control and experimental measure plots for the predicted
probability of supporting abortion. The control plot shows almost no directional pattern, despite
the statistical significance of the variable, but the experimental plot shows a very clear pattern of
tightly clustered predicted probabilities for every one of the seven points on the social liberalconservative scale. Focusing on the three middle categories of liberal-conservative placement
illustrates the differences between the control and experimental measures even further: there is a
clear difference in the predicted direction of preferences among slight liberals, moderates, and
slight conservatives for all three dependent variables.
Discussion
The preceding analyses show that individuals are able to conceive of their liberalconservative scale placements in the two separate social and economic dimensions, and that
these multidimensional self-placements offer some advantages over the unidimensional measure
with respect to the relationship between liberal-conservative ideology and policy preferences.
These findings bring up new questions about how individuals cognitively perceive the
dimensions—some of which are unanswerable using this data set and some of which we already
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have clues to the answers.
Any conversation about measuring multiple dimensions of ideology must attend to the
issue of how individuals “weight” the dimensions—that is, whether the social and economic
dimensions of ideology matter equally to individuals, or whether one is more important than
another. Certainly this weighting process factors into specific issue considerations: the models
above demonstrate that an economic liberal-conservative self-placement is ineffective in
predicting preferences on a social issue such as abortion, and social placements are ineffective in
predicting preferences on economic issues such as government-guaranteed jobs. The more
difficult question is whether individuals consider one dimension as more important than the in
their overall assessments of politics and their own political attitudes other. The third liberalconservative question in the experimental track offers some insight into this question by asking
respondents to place themselves on the liberal-conservative scale again, this time “considering
your responses to the previous two questions.” This wording effectively primed respondents to
think about their placements on the social and economic scales in providing their response to this
third question. The intention was to have respondents cognitively “average” their previous scale
placements to get the answer to this item. There is no way to know whether that is the cognitive
process that respondents used to answer the question, but the fact that the mean response to the
overall question (4.43) is in between the mean response to the economic and social items (4.54
and 4.38) indicates that some averaging did take place.
The relationship between these three means can be interpreted to show that, on average,
respondents weighted the social dimension a bit more than the economic dimension in their
overall assessments of their liberal-conservative placement. The difference between the social
placement mean and the overall placement mean is only 0.05 and not statistically significant (see
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Table III), whereas the difference between the economic placement mean and the overall
placement mean is 0.11 and is statistically significant. This conclusion should be treated very
cautiously, however, because it is based on aggregate means and because the survey did not
measure the cognitive processes taking place as the respondents answered the overall question in
the experimental track. It seems logical that the dimensions would be weighted differently for
each person, depending on which issues are most important to them and on the context of that
particular point in time. One would expect that economic issues would have been more
important than social issues to most respondents in a survey taken in September of 2008;
similarly, social issues would be more important than economic issues to a gay or lesbian couple
who want to get married in California. Other respondents might simply pick a placement on the
overall scale at random without regard for either type of issues. Future work on the
multidimensional nature of ideology will need to tackle this problem of how people cognitively
process the dimensions. This project supplied the first necessary part—evidence that individuals
do perceive differences in the dimensions.
Another question that comes up in dealing specifically with liberal-conservative selfplacements is whether differences in placement are artifacts of political knowledge or interest.
The data collected do not include measures of political knowledge so it is difficult to test for
knowledge effects, but the survey does contain items that serve as indicators of political interest
and activity. These items ask respondents how interested they are in politics and public affairs
(very interested, somewhat interested, slightly interested, not at all interested), and three yes/no
questions that asked if, in the last 12 months, the respondent had contacted a government official,
volunteered or worked for a political candidate, issue, or cause, or commented about politics on a
political message board or Internet site. The logical hypothesis is that higher levels of interest
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and activity would indicate higher political awareness in general, and a higher propensity to
recognize and report a difference between liberal-conservative placements on social and
economic issues. A comparison of the interest and activity measures to the variable indicating
the distance between placements on the two experimental scales (distribution shown in Table II)
shows that this hypothesis is not supported. No bivariate comparison shows a significant
relationship between interest and distance between placements or between activity and distance
between placements. In fact, none of the relationships even come close to significant. The
correlation between interest and distance is 0.05, and the p-value of a chi-square statistic
comparing the two variables is 0.38. Given the lack of relationship, there is no reason to believe
that the differences in placements on social and economic dimensions are primarily attributable
to political interest or activity.
Conclusion
This experiment has resulted in two critical findings: first, that at least some individuals
will provide different answers when asked to place themselves on separate liberal-conservative
scales for economic issues and social issues. Secondly, there is evidence that these separate
measures improve the explanatory power of liberal-conservative self-placements for policy
preference dependent variables, particularly among moderates. Plenty of evidence exists
indicating that preferences are multidimensional by using the preferences themselves to discover
the latent underlying dimensions (e.g., Altemeyer 1998; Feldman and Johnston 2009; Haidt et al
2009; Jost et al. 2009; 2003; Layman and Carsey 2002; Treier and Hillygus 2009; Zumbrunnen
and Gangl 2008). What was unknown was whether individuals perceived those differences and
could express that in liberal-conservative terms, or if the multidimensional structure is simply an
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artifact of scholarly evaluation and analysis. The experimental data provides evidence for the
former—people are capable of conceptualizing their ideological views in social and economic
dimensions, and the relationship between policy preferences and liberal-conservative selfplacement is improved by using social and economic measures. Accounting for the differences
between social and economic liberal-conservative self-placements allows researchers to account
for more of the variance in policy preferences that is due to ideology, providing a more accurate
picture of the factors that influence individual policy preferences.
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23
Table I: Economic Liberal-Conservative Self-Identification (rows) by Social LiberalConservative Self-Identification (columns)
Strongly
liberal
Liberal
Slightly
liberal
Moderate/
DK
Slightly
conservative
Conservative
Strongly
conservative
Percent
offdiagonal
Strongly
liberal
10
1
--
1
--
--
--
17%
Liberal
5
37
4
1
1
--
--
23%
Slightly
liberal
Moderate/
DK
3
9
23
9
3
--
--
51%
1
9
14
142
20
7
2
27%
Slightly
conservative
1
1
4
19
42
6
--
42%
Conservative
--
3
3
5
12
75
8
29%
Strongly
conservative
--
--
2
1
2
15
42
32%
Percent offdiagonal
50%
38%
54%
20%
48%
27%
19%
31%
(Total)
24
Table II: Distribution of differences between Responses
N
%
0
371
68.32
1
122
22.47
2
34
6.26
3
10
1.84
4
6
1.10
543
100.00
Total
25
Table III: Difference of Means Tests
Control
Economic
Social
--
0.33*
0.17*
Economic: 4.54
0.33*
--
0.16*
Social: 4.38
0.17*
0.16*
--
Experimental overall: 4.43
0.22*
0.11*
0.05
Control: 4.21
*Significant at the p<0.05 level
26
Table IV: Liberal-Conservative Measure Coefficients for Three Policy Models
Services DV
Control Experimental
Jobs DV
Control Experimental
Abortion DV (logit)
Control Experimental
-0.35
(0.05)
--
-0.28
(0.05)
--
0.33
(0.08)
--
Experimental
Econ. Ideology
--
-0.25
(0.07)
--
-0.28
(0.08)
--
-0.02
(0.12)
Experimental
Social Ideology
--
-0.13
(0.07)
--
-0.08
(0.07)
--
0.64
(0.12)
0.34
0.33
0.24
0.30
0.11
0.17
1604.29
1444.64
1660.98
1534.43
-334.37
-299.73
549
537
544
536
546
534
Control
Ideology
Adjusted/
Psuedo R²
Sum of squares
/log-likelihood
N
Bolded coefficients are significant at the p<0.05 level, one-tailed.
27
Table V: Liberal-Conservative Measure Coefficients for Three Policy Models, Moderates
Only
Services DV
Control Experimental
Control
Ideology
Jobs DV
Control Experimental
Abortion DV (logit)
Control Experimental
-0.11
(0.14)
--
-0.05
(0.15)
--
0.06
(0.19)
--
Experimental
Econ. Ideology
--
-0.25
(0.11)
--
-0.32
(0.11)
--
-0.06
(0.17)
Experimental
Social Ideology
--
-0.08
(0.10)
--
-0.06
(0.10)
--
0.51
(0.16)
0.14
0.15
0.08
0.10
0.04
0.05
766.92
653.78
786.74
689.65
-207.96
-198.43
315
307
311
305
314
304
Adjusted/
Psuedo R²
Sum of squares
/log-likelihood
N
Bolded coefficients are significant at the p<0.05 level, one-tailed.
28
Figure 1: Scatterplot Matrix of Predicted Policy Preferences by Liberal-Conservative SelfPlacement, Control and Experimental Models
29
Appendix Table 1: Full Models for All Respondents
Services DV
Control Experimental
Jobs DV
Control Experimental
Abortion DV (logit)
Control Experimental
-0.35
(0.05)
--
-0.28
(0.05)
--
0.33
(0.08)
--
Experimental
Econ. Ideology
--
-0.25
(0.07)
--
-0.28
(0.08)
--
-0.02
(0.12)
Experimental
Social Ideology
--
-0.13
(0.07)
--
-0.08
(0.07)
--
0.64
(0.12)
Black
0.79
(0.21)
0.86
(0.22)
0.03
(0.24)
0.54
(0.24)
0.03
(0.33)
0.57
(0.36)
Hispanic
0.52
(0.22)
0.19
(0.20)
0.34
(0.24)
0.28
(0.22)
0.60
(0.35)
-0.23
(0.34)
Female
-0.19
(0.12)
-0.30
(0.12)
-0.02
(0.13)
-0.10
(0.12)
-0.28
(0.19)
-0.04
(0.20)
Education
-0.01
(0.07)
-0.10
(0.06)
0.07
(0.07)
0.11
(0.06)
-0.28
(0.10)
0.05
(0.11)
Age
-0.00
(0.00)
-0.01
(0.00)
-0.00
(0.00)
-0.01
(0.00)
-0.00
(0.01)
0.00
(0.01)
Income
-0.05
(0.02)
-0.08
(0.01)
-0.08
(0.02)
-0.06
(0.02)
-0.07
(0.02)
-0.06
(0.03)
Party ID
0.20
(0.04)
0.09
(0.04)
0.19
(0.04)
0.13
(0.04)
-0.16
(0.06)
-0.07
(0.06)
Interest
-0.16
(0.07)
-0.09
(0.07)
-0.15
(0.08)
-0.13
(0.07)
0.02
(0.11)
0.03
(0.11)
Constant
5.46
(0.44)
6.83
(0.46)
5.35
(0.48)
6.09
(0.48)
1.19
(0.68)
-1.47
(0.77)
Adjusted/
Psuedo R²
0.34
0.33
0.24
0.30
0.11
0.17
1604.29
1444.64
1660.98
1534.43
-334.37
-299.73
549
537
544
536
546
534
Control
Ideology
Sum of squares
/log-likelihood
N
Bolded coefficients are significant at the p<0.05 level, one-tailed.
30
Appendix Table 2: Full Models, Moderates Only
Services DV
Control Experimental
Control
Ideology
Jobs DV
Control Experimental
Abortion DV (logit)
Control Experimental
-0.11
(0.14)
--
-0.05
(0.15)
--
0.06
(0.19)
--
Experimental
Econ. Ideology
--
-0.25
(0.11)
--
-0.32
(0.11)
--
-0.06
(0.17)
Experimental
Social Ideology
--
-0.08
(0.10)
--
-0.06
(0.10)
--
0.51
(0.16)
Black
0.65
(0.26)
0.78
(0.28)
0.10
(0.28)
0.31
(0.30)
0.16
(0.37)
0.18
(0.44)
Hispanic
0.51
(0.29)
0.17
(0.26)
0.59
(0.31)
-0.06
(0.28)
0.69
(0.43)
-0.14
(0.40)
Female
-0.12
(0.17)
-0.33
(0.16)
0.11
(0.18)
0.01
(0.17)
-0.37
(0.24)
-0.36
(0.24)
Education
0.02
(0.09)
-0.05
(0.08)
0.08
(0.10)
0.21
(0.09)
-0.15
(0.13)
-0.02
(0.13)
Age
-0.00
(0.01)
-0.00
(0.01)
-0.00
(0.01)
-0.01
(0.01)
0.00
(0.01)
-0.00
(0.01)
Income
-0.06
(0.02)
-0.07
(0.02)
-0.10
(0.02)
-0.06
(0.02)
-0.08
(0.03)
-0.04
(0.03)
Party ID
0.24
(0.05)
0.06
(0.05)
0.13
(0.05)
0.07
(0.05)
-0.05
(0.07)
-0.09
(0.07)
Interest
-0.09
(0.10)
-0.12
(0.09)
-0.08
(0.10)
-0.07
(0.09)
-0.06
(0.14)
0.01
(0.14)
Constant
4.19
(0.78)
6.41
(0.64)
4.72
(0.83)
6.14
(0.72)
1.44
(1.12)
-0.48
(1.00)
Adjusted/
Psuedo R²
0.14
0.15
0.08
0.10
0.04
0.05
766.92
653.78
786.74
689.65
-207.96
-198.43
315
307
311
305
314
304
Sum of squares
/log-likelihood
N
Bolded coefficients are significant at the p<0.05 level, one-tailed.
31