Occupations as a Site of Political Preference Formation

Abstract

Political preferences are multi-dimensional, covering topics like redistribution, immigration, and abortion. But what accounts for people’s political preferences? We argue that an individual’s work experiences on the job play an important part in shaping attitudes. In a process of generalization and transposition, people apply the kinds of reasoning, heuristics, and problem-solving techniques they learn and use at work in all realms of life. In this article, we briefly discuss the dimensionality of the political preference space and then explicate our account that links work experiences with attitudes. We use European Social Survey data to establish correlations between work experiences and attitudes and find evidence that is consistent with our account.