Ideology, Affect, Context, and Political Judgment: When Conservatives and Liberals Share Feelings and When They Don't

Abstract

Some scholars assert that political ideology is a deep, enduring and fundamental orientation persistent through life. One school of thought holds that the concept of ideological identification can explain why liberals and conservatives display enduring differences not only on substantive issues but also on how they go about making political judgments. Another school of thought focuses on more immediate and contextual factors noting that affective reactions, such as disgust, may differentiate liberals and conservatives. Still yet a third school of thought argues that dispositions, rather than being universally influential, are more influential in some circumstances but less so in others. We exploit two national survey experiments to test these alternative views. To evaluate the claim of that context matters our design extends the Prospect Theory, which posits two contexts – circumstances of reward and circumstances of punishment. In contrast to Prospect Theory, the theory of Affective Intelligence identifies a third situational context, that of novelty and uncertainty. We examine whether people adjust their judgmental strategies according to the demands of this three-fold taxonomy of context.