A Prejudice for the Thinking Classes

Abstract

Research on attitudes toward Christian fundamentalists shows that antagonism toward this group has become a significant factor since the early 1990s in structuring candidate preferences and issue positions. This article explores how information conveyed in news media helped inform popular evaluations of fundamentalists and instruct antifundamentalists on how to make use of these judgments politically in the culture wars. Our thesis is that attitudes toward Christian fundamentalists can be considered in large measure as a reaction to messages about this group carried in media, filtered through individual differences in political attentiveness and predispositions. Data from the 1988—2004 American National Election Studies show significant media effects, which increased over time, particularly among the sophisticated segment of the public. Our findings illuminate how variation in media attentiveness and individual differences in political and cultural predispositions conjoin to determine whether and the degree to which nonfundamentalists feel antagonistically toward Christian fundamentalists.