Attitude Attribution: A Group Basis for Political Reasoning

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Abstract

This article shows that citizens can estimate what politically strategic groups—liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, and blacks and whites—stand for on major issues. These attitude attributions follow from a simple calculus, a likability heuristic. This heuristic is rooted in people's likes and dislikes of political groups. Thanks to this affective calculus, many in the mass public are able to estimate who stands for what politically, notwithstanding shortfalls in information and information processing.

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The principle of congruity in the prediction of attitude change.

Charles E. Osgood, Percy H. Tannenbaum (1955)

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Ideological Interpretations of Presidential Elections

Teresa E. Levitin, Warren E. Miller (1979)

This article presents a new way to define and measure the ideological sentiments of the mass electorate. Citizens are classified in terms of their evaluations and perceptions of liberals and conservatives. The measure is then used to assess the impact of ideology on the 1972 and 1976 presidential elections, to explore citizens' applications of ideological labels to parties, issues, and presidential candidates, and to describe the relationship between ideology and the potential for party realignment as well as meanings of issue voting.