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Psychological Sources of Political Belief: Self-Esteem and Isolationist Attitudes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Paul M. Sniderman  and
Jack Citrin
Paul M. Sniderman
Affiliation:
Stanford University
Jack Citrin
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Abstract

Research has shown that political attitudes spring from diverse sources. This paper focuses on isolationism, a set of beliefs that can stem from social factors (e.g., economic deprivation, poor education, social or geographic isolation) and from psychological factors (e.g., n. aggression, inflexibility and low self-esteem). The purpose is not to demonstrate again that there is a connection between personality and political belief. Instead, the authors ask whether or not it matters if a political attitude—in the present case, isolationism—stems from personality influences rather than from some other sources, for example, education, group memberships, or ideology. Isolationists low in self-esteem are shown to differ from those high in self-esteem on a range of values and beliefs: liberalism-conservatism, extreme political values, and specific foreign policy questions. Thus, those who hold common beliefs on one set of issues are likely to differ in the opinions they hold on other political questions depending on whether they owe their convictions to their personality characteristics or to some other influence.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 65 , Issue 2 , June 1971 , pp. 401 - 417
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1971

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References

1 On this, see McClosky, Herbert, “Personality and Attitude Correlates of Foreign Policy Orientations,” in Rosenau, James N., ed., Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy (New York: The Free Press, 1967)Google Scholar; and Cantril, Hadley and Free, Lloyd, Political Beliefs Among Americans (New Brunswick, NJ.: Rutgers University Press, 1967)Google Scholar.

2 Ibid.

3 See Herbert McClosky, “Personality and Attitude Correlates,” in Rosenau, ed., op cit.; Fensterwald, Bernard Jr., “The Anatomy of American Isolationism and Expansionism, Part I,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 2 (June, 1958), 111–139 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fensterwald, Bernard Jr., “The Anatomy of American Isolationism and Expansionism, Part II,” vol. 2 (Dec, 1958), 280–309 Google Scholar.

4 The literature on this is voluminous. Greenstein, Fred I., Personality and Politics (Chicago: Markham Publishing Co., 1969 Google Scholar) provides a comprehensive discussion of key theoretical and methodological issues, as well as a guide to the revelant research literature. Among the major contributions are Adorno, Theodor, Frenkel-Brunswik, Else, Levinson, Daniel, and Sanford, Nevitt, The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper Bros., 1950)Google Scholar; Smith, M. Brewster, Bruner, Jerome S., and White, Robert W., Opinions and Personality (New York: Wiley, 1956)Google Scholar; Christiansen, B., Attitudes Towards Foreign Affairs as a Function of Personality (Oslo: University of Oslo Press, 1959)Google Scholar; Lane, Robert, Political Ideology (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1962)Google Scholar; McClosky, Herbert, “Conservatism and Personality,” American Political Science Review, vol. 52 (March, 1958), 27–45 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Herbert McClosky, “Personality and Attitude Correlates,” in Rosenau, ed., op. cit.; Kelman, Herbert, ed., International Behavior (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1965)Google Scholar; Christie, Richard and Jahoda, Marie, eds., Studies in the Scope and Method of the Authoritarian Personality (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1954)Google Scholar; Rokeach, Milton, The Open and Closed Mind, New York: Basic Books, 1960)Google Scholar; and Almond, Gabriel, The Appeals of Communism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Evidence establishing the consistency of psychological dispositions is not as conclusive as one might wish—or as most assume. Personality traits are hypothetical constructs, inferred to account for consistencies in behavior, which are commonly thought to be highly enduring and widely generalized, although as yet the limits of their consistency either over time or across situations cannot be fixed. For a comprehensive although critical review of the recent literature, see Mischel, Walter, Personality and Assessment (New York: Wiley, 1968)Google ScholarPubMed.

6 On these points, see Sanford, Nevitt, Self and Society (New York: Atherton Press, 1966), pp. 90–91 Google Scholar.

7 For a discussion of this and some evidence see Di Palma, Giuseppe and McClosky, Herbert, “Personality and Conformity: The Learning of Political Attitudes,” American Political Science Review, vol. 64 (Dec, 1970), 1054–1073 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Smith, Bruner, and White, op. cit.

9 Katz, Daniel, “The Functional Approach to the Study of Attitudes,” Public Opinion Quarterly, vol. 24 (Summer, 1960), 163–204 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 These are only some of the political consequences of acute anxiety. Similar examples can be given for other personality traits.

11 See the example of anxiety above.

12 For evidence on this see Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip, Miller, Warren and Stokes, Donald, The American Voter (New York: Wiley, 1960)Google Scholar; and Converse, Philip, “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics,” in Apter, David, ed., Ideology and Discontent (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1964)Google Scholar; and Key, V. O. Jr., Public Opinion and American Democracy (New York: Knopf, 1960)Google Scholar.

13 Whether personality plays a more important role in shaping the political beliefs and behavior of political leaders than of average citizens is a question of continuing interest to political scientists, although in this paper we touch on it only peripherally. For a general discussion, see Greenstein, op. cit.

14 Self-esteem is especially useful for this purpose because its influence has been demonstrated in previous research on such diverse phenomena as psychological maladjustment, attitude change, creativity, conformity, and social interaction, as well as on political behavior. The literature on self-esteem (and equivalent psychological constructs) is exceptionally large and varied; the citations which follow, therefore, are illustrative and not exhaustive; Coopersmith, Stanley, The Antecedents of Self-Esteem (London: W. W. Freeman, 1967)Google Scholar; Rosenberg, Morris, Society and the Adolescent Self-Image (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wylie, Ruth C., The Self-Concept: A Critical Survey of Pertinent Research Literature (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961)Google Scholar; Hovland, Carl I. and Janis, Irving L., eds., Personality and Persuasibility (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959)Google Scholar; Milbrath, Lester W., Political Participation (Chicago: Rand Mc-Nally, 1965)Google Scholar, see chapter 3; Barber, James D., The Lawmakers (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1965)Google Scholar; Rogers, Carl, Client-Centered Therapy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1951)Google ScholarPubMed.

15 These data were collected by Herbert McClosky in his Political Affiliations and Belief (PAB) research project. The sample, questionnaire, personality and attitude measures are described by McClosky and his colleagues in a number of publications. McCIosky, “Personality and Attitude Correlates,” in Rosenau, ed., op. cit.; McClosky, , “Conservatism and Personality,” American Political Science Review, vol. 52 (March, 1958), 27–45 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McClosky, , “Consensus and Ideology in American Politics,” American Political Science Review, vol. 58 (June, 1964) 361–382 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McClosky, , Hoffman, Paul, and O'Hara, Rosemary, “Issue Conflict and Consensus Among Party Leaders and Followers,” American Political Science Review, vol. 54 (June, 1960), 406–427 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gough, Harrison G., McClosky, Herbert, and Meehl, Paul, “A Personality Scale for Dominance,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, vol. 46 (July, 1951), 360–366 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed and “A Personality Scale for Social Responsibility,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, vol. 47 (January, 1952), 73–80 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; McClosky, and Schaar, John, “Psychological Dimensions of Anomy,” American Sociological Review, vol. 30 (February, 1965), 14–40 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

16 This definition and much of the discussion of the meaning of isolationism follow closely McClosky, “Personality and Attitude Correlates,” in Rosenau, ed., op. cit., pp. 56–59.

17 Walter Lippmann has led the pundits in discussing the new isolationism. See the discussions of Schlesinger, Arthur Jr., “The New Isolationism,” Atlantic Monthly (May, 1952), 34–38 Google Scholar; Graebner, Norman A., The New Isolationism: A Study in Politics and Foreign Policy Since 1950 (New York: Ronald Press, 1956)Google Scholar; and Leroy Rieselbach, “The Ideology of Foreign Policy: A Preliminary Analysis,” unpublished paper delivered at 1968 Midwestern Political Science Association meeting.

18 For a discussion of the historical sources of American isolationism, see Graebner, op. cit.; and Paul Seabury, “The Irreconcilables,” unpublished manuscript.

19 This strategy was also followed in the definition and measurement of the other attitude variables in the PAB study, for example, classical conservatism.

20 Rieselbach correctly points out that this must be determined by empirical research on the clustering of foreign policy attitudes and opinions. See his unpublished manuscript, op. cit.

21 The following discussion closely parallels that of McClosky, “Personality and Attitude Correlates,” in Rosenau, ed., op. cit., pp. 61–62.

22 The pattern of relations uncovered was remarkably similar for the Minnesota sample, the national general population sample, and the party leader sample.

23 See McClosky, “Personality and Attitude Correlates,” in Rosenau, ed., op. cit., p. 62. It is worthwhile at this juncture to make some general comments on the procedures employed to construct and validate measures of the many personality and attitude variables we will discuss below. All these measures were built from agree-disagree items similar to those in the isolationism scale. The items were written and carefully screened by a team of researchers. The personality variables were conceptualized following an examination of available inventories and the work of relevant theorists, including Gordon Allport, Henry Murray and Raymond Cattell. The “attitude” items were intended to follow closely the statements made by typical representatives of a point of view. So, for example, right-wing items were based on an examination of the speeches and writings of leading right-wing politicians and journalists. For these attitude scales, judges' ratings of face validity constituted the main validating procedure. Validation of the personality measures was more elaborate. While it is impossible to discuss the construction and validation of every scale here, the discussion of the dominance, social responsibility, and anomy scales provides information on the diverse set of procedures employed. See Gough, McClosky, and Meehl, op. cit., and McClosky and Schaar, op. cit. General discussions of scale construction abound. A recent commentary that cites McClosky's conservatism scale as a model to follow is Kalleberg, Arthur L., “Concept Formation in Normative and Empirical Studies: Toward Reconciliation in Political Theory,” American Political Science Review, vol. 63 (March, 1969), 26–39 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 See Rosenberg, Society and the Adolescent Self-Image, part I.

25 An extensive literature has grown up on this topic. See, for example, Coopersmith, The Antecedents of Self-Esteem; Coopersmith, Stanley, “A Method for Determining Self-esteem,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, vol. 59 (July, 1959), 87–94 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Crowne, Douglas P., Stephens, Mark W., and Kelly, Richard, “The Validity of Equivalence Tests of Self-acceptance,” Journal of Psychology, vol. 51, (January, 1961), 101–112 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Crowne, Douglas P. and Stephens, Mark W., “Self-acceptance and Self-evaluative Behavior: A Critique of Methodology,” Psychological Bulletin, vol. 58 (March, 1961), 104–121 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Diggory, James C., Self Evaluation: Concepts and Studies (New York: Wiley, 1966)Google Scholar; Perkins, Charles W. and Shannon, Donald T., “Three Techniques for Obtaining Self-perceptions in Pre-adolescent Boys,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 2 (Sept, 1965), 443–447 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rosenberg, op. cit.; and especially Wylie, The Self-Concept.

26 The factor analysis was run by Alan Wilson's FA 80 program on the IBM 7094 of the University of California, Berkeley, Computer Center. This program provided a principal components solution and a varimax rotation.

27 For a detailed consideration of the relation between self-esteem and anxiety, see Rosenberg, op. cit., Chapter 8.

28 See, for example, Rosenberg, op. cit., Chapter 10; Coopersmith, Antecedents of Self-esteem; Mussen, Paul H. and Porter, Lyman W., “Personal Motivation and Self-Conceptions Associated with Effectiveness and Ineffectiveness in Emergent Groups,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, vol. 59 (July, 1959), 23–27 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

29 Crandall, Virginia C., “Personality Characteristics and Social Achievement Behavior Associated with Children's Social Desirability Response Tendencies,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 4 (Nov., 1966), 477–486 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 The alienation scale includes nine items, all scored in the agree (alienated) direction.

31 Need for inviolacy is a concept developed by Murray. (See Murray, Henry, Explorations in Personality [New York: Oxford University Press, 1938].Google Scholar) It refers to an individual's desire to maintain his status and to protect himself from the intrusions of others. The scale included six items all scored in the agree (high need inviolacy) direction.

32 The anomie scale is discussed in McClosky and Schaar, op. cit. It includes nine items all scored in the agree (anomie) direction. The cruel world index is comprised of statements that describe the world as an unhappy, threatening place in which true values cannot be preserved. A sample item: “Whatever people say about it, the world is actually a pretty selfish dog-eat-dog affair.” Eight of the nine items are scored in the agree (the world is cruel) direction.

33 McClosky, “Personality and Attitude Correlates,” in Rosenau, ed., op. cit., p. 68.

34 Ibid., pp. 82–86.

35 See a full description of the classical conservatism scale in McClosky, “Conservatism and Personality.” On the complexity of liberalism-conservatism, see Key, Public Opinion and American Democracy.

36 This index includes statements asserting that the average man is incapable of exercising sound political judgement and that “some breeds of people are better than others.” Six of the nine items are scored in the elitist direction.

37 See the discussion of this in McClosky, “Conservatism and Personality.”

38 The business attitudes index is comprised of statements opposing government intervention in the economy and praising the initiative of private business. Five of the seven items are worded in the agree (probusiness) direction. The economic conservatism index expresses support for the free enterprise system and opposition to proposals for changing the character of the American economy. Six of the eight items are worded in the agree (conservative) direction.

39 A typical statement in this index is: “Even if I fail, I would rather stand on my own feet than accept any help from the government.” Five of the nine items in this index are scored in the agree or pro-selfreliance direction.

40 For some corroborating evidence, see McClosky, “Personality and Attitude Correlates.” For more general discussions of extreme beliefs, see Rokeach, , Open and Closed Mind; and Bell, Daniel, ed., The Radical Right (New York: Doubleday, 1964)Google Scholar.

41 See Adorno, et al., Authoritarian Personality; and for a review of scapegoat theories of prejudice and group conflict, Berkowitz, Leonard, Aggression (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962)Google ScholarPubMed.

42 This scale is composed of statements praising socialist economic principles, attacking American society as controlled by the wealthy, and denying the existence in America of true freedom. It is a 14-item index, all items worded in the agree (left-wing) direction.

43 The Populism index is comprised of items that express the critical aspects of the Populist creed. These statements were drawn from speeches and writings of participants in and students of the Populist movement. It is a nine-item scale, all items worded in the agree (populist) direction. The Direct Action index expressed support for a quick solution to political problems, regardless of whether the proposed course of action would violate established procedures. It is a six-item index, all worded in the agree (pro-direct action) direction. The Right-wing values index includes 12 items, all worded in the agree (right-wing) direction. These items bemoan the influence of liberals, “dogooders,” and left-wingers in American government and express fear for the survival of the “American way of life” and of freedom and initiative. It should be clear that to deny these assertions is not necessarily to subscribe to left-wing beliefs. Hence, we include both a Right-wing and a Left-wing index. The Totalitarianism index is comprised of 13 statements worded in the agree (pro-totalitarianism) direction. These items express disregard for minorities, support for social change even if it requires ruthlessness, and intolerance of dissent.

44 The probable reason for this single discrepancy is the especially high correlation between right-wing beliefs and isolationism among the politically articulate. Nevertheless, even this exception is more apparent than real: isolationist leaders low in self-esteem are much more likely to score high on right-wing values.

45 For summaries of the literature on political participation and knowledge, see Lane, Robert, Political Life (Glencoe: Free Press, 1959)Google Scholar; Milbrath, Political Participation; Greenstein, Fred I., The American Party System and the American People (Englewood, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963)Google Scholar; Key, Public Opinion.

46 McClosky and Schaar, “Psychological Dimensions of Anomy”; Campbell et al., American Voter; Stouffer, Samuel, Communism, Conformity and Civil Liberties (New York: Doubleday, 1955)Google Scholar; Key, Public Opinion; McClosky, “Consensus and Ideology in American Politics”; James W. Prothro and Grigg, Charles W., “Fundamental Principles of American Democracy: Bases of Agreement and Disagreement,” Journal of Politics, vol. 22 (May, 1960), 276–294 Google Scholar.

47 Rokeach, Open and Closed Mind; and Brown, Roger, Social Psychology (Glencoe: Free Press, 1965), ch. 10Google Scholar.

48 See Di Palma and McClosky, “Personality and Conformity.”

49 Ibid. For an interesting explanation of this see League, Betty Jo and Jackson, Douglas N., “Conformity, Veridicality, and Self-Esteem,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, vol 68 (Jan 1964) 113–115 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

50 See McClosky, , “Personality and Attitude Correlates,” p. 91 Google Scholar.

51 The measures of these attitudes were constructed in the same way as those described above. The differences between high and low self-esteem isolationists were consistently large, statistically significant at the .001 level.

52 The general problems raised by acquiescence response sets are too complex for detailed discussion here. See Block, Jack, The Challenge of Response Sets (New York: Appleton Century Crofts, 1965)Google Scholar; Peabody, Dean, “Attitude Content and Agreement Set in Scales of Authoritarianism, Dogmatism, Anti-Semitism, and Economic Conservatism,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, vol. 63 (July, 1961), 1–11 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Jackson, Douglas N. and Messick, Samuel, “Response Styles on the MMPI: Comparison of Clinical and Normal Samples,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, vol. 65 (Nov., 1962), 285–299 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rorer, Leonard G., “The Great Response Style Myth,” Psychological Bulletin, vol. 65 (March, 1965), 129–156 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Campbell, Donald T., Siegman, Carole R. and Rees, Matilda B., “Direction-of-wording Effects in the Relationship Between Scales,” Psychological Bulletin, vol. 68, (Nov., 1967), 293–303 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 See Converse, “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics”; and Key, Public Opinion and American Democracy.

54 The reader should keep in mind, however, that isolationists with high self-esteem are still more likely to take an isolationist stand on specific foreign policy issues than non-isolationists with low self-esteem.

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