The Structure of Attitudes Toward Groups: A Comparison of Experts and Novices

Abstract

The study of mass opinion has recently focused increased attention on political sophistication and attitudes toward groups. Although the two topics are not directly related, they share a common concern: how does the mass public manage to form opinions about political issues given its well-established lack of a coherent political ideology. Groups are impor tant symbols that structure political reasoning; but, it is not clear that this structure is the same for people with different levels of political aware ness. On the one hand, the sophistication hypothesis has found low lev els of political sophistication associated with poorly organized issue attitudes and ideological naïveté. On the other hand, research supporting the group hypothesis suggests that groups may provide even the least politically sophisticated with a coherent view of the political world. To test these ideas we draw upon data from the 1980 and 1984 studies of delegates to the Democratic and Republican national conventions and the National Election Studies of the same year. We find, in agreement with the preponderance of evidence in the literature on political sophisti cation, that the structure of attitudes toward groups becomes more ideo logical as the level of political sophistication increases. Furthermore, we argue that with decreasing levels of political sophistication comes a greater reliance on emotion as a guide to the political world.