Under what conditions are mass attitudes towards particular issues ‘vertically’ constrained by core cultural values? Vertical constraint is shaped by three related variables: the objective content of the issue, the way the issue is framed by elites and the individual's level of attentiveness to the controversy. Some issues are ‘easy’. They so permeate social discourse that people encounter, often without wanting to, many social agents offering shortcuts for the vertical, values-to-issue link. Most issues, however, are ‘hard’. Arcane in content and bereft of vigorous mediation, hard issues are more difficult for individuals to tie to core values. As the inferential connection between value and issue lengthens, and as social agents become fewer and more remote, an individual's ability to use values to interpret issues will increasingly depend on whether the decision makers, activists and other elites directly involved in the debate can create a connection and, of course, on whether the individual is paying attention. An analysis of the nuclear power controversy, a highly complex technical issue, reveals that a value-based interpretation favoured by elites and promoted by the media is faithfully reflected in how the mass public understands the issue. Furthermore, non-elites who are more attuned to political life are more polarized on the basis of these core values.

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Two studies are described. one of 381 university students and the other a statewide survey of 295 adults, both of which examine the relationship between attitudinal support for censorship and political ideologies. Thc results of these studies are interpreted as challenging the view of Suedfeld, Steel, and Schmidt ( I 994) that support for censorship is a function o f both the works in question and the political ideologies ofthe respondents. In both studies we find that s~ipport for censorship is somewhat consistent across messages and images of differing political content. and that support for censorship is generally greater among those with conservative political attitudes, regardless of the content of the works in question. A model ofpglitical attitudes (Maddox & Lilie. 1986) that conceptualizes American political ideologies as consisting of two relatively independent dimensions, rather than a single left-right dimension. is proposed as a more effective means of conceptualizing this issue. Suedfeld, Steel, and Schmidt (1994) argued that attitudinal support for censorship is found in political liberals as well as conservatives. They suggested that political liberals are likely to support the censorship ofpolitically incorrect (i.e., racist, sexist, and homophobic) messages and violent images, just as political conservatives tend to support the censorship of sexually explicit materials (pornography) or works that offend their religious faith or conservative values. Suedfeld et al. (1994) were responding to Hense and Wright (1992), who introduced the Attitudes Toward Censorship Questionnaire (ATCQ) and found that scores on the ATCQ were correlated with authoritarianism, radicalismconservatism, traditional family ideology, and frequency of church attendance. These findings suggested to Hense and Wright that support for censorship was greater among persons with politically conservative attitudes. Suedfeld et a].

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