Evaluating Belief System Networks as a Theory of Political Belief System Dynamics

Abstract

A theory of political belief system dynamics should incorporate causal connections between elements of the belief system and the possibility that belief systems are influenced by exogenous factors. These necessary components can be satisfied by conceptualizing an individual’s belief system as a network of causally connected attitudes and identities which, via the interactions between the elements and the push of exogenous influences, produces the disparate phenomena in the belief systems literature. We implement this belief systems as networks theory in a dynamic Ising model and demonstrate that the theory can integrate at least six otherwise unrelated phenomenon in the political belief systems literature, including work on attitude consistency, cross-pressures, spillover effects, partisan cues, and ideological differences in attitude consensus. Our findings suggest that belief systems are not just one thing, but emerge from the interactions between the attitudes and identities in the belief system. All code is available: https://osf.io/aswy8/?view_only=99aff77909094bddabb5d382f6db2622 .

Preference Falsification: How Social Conformity as an Interdependent, Recursive, and Multilevel Process Corrupts Public Knowledge

“…Here, we focus on acts of deception concerned with reward-and reputation-seeking (for a more exhaustive perspective on anxiety and uncertainty motivating conformity, see Theriault et al, 2021). Third, and consistent with an instrumentalism over scientific realism perspective, we regard private preferences as more complex than described here (e.g., Brandt & Sleegers, 2021). However, we view the current operationalization of private preferences along a two-dimensional continuum (i.e.…”

The Theoretical and Statistical Ising Model: A Practical Guide in R

“…In contrast, if the system "wants" to align in either of the directions, then the (−1, 1) encoding provides a better description of the system. Positive versus negative political attitudes have been modelled with this encoding [8,17]. The crucial choice of whether to use the (0, 1) versus (−1, 1) configurations depends on whether one theoretically expects negative states to increase alignment; for political attitudes, the hypothesis that negative feelings of a political candidate increase the negative cognitions of that candidate is plausible; meanwhile, for depression, the hypothesis that the absence of one problems causes the absence of another may be less plausible.…”

“…Within psychology, the Ising model has a long-standing tradition of making a good first approximation within opinion research. Both within and across groups of people, opinions are argued to follow alignment processes [17,19,36,58]. More specifically, alignment has repeatedly been linked to our need for consistency of beliefs and aversion towards ambiguity [17,19].…”

“…Both within and across groups of people, opinions are argued to follow alignment processes [17,19,36,58]. More specifically, alignment has repeatedly been linked to our need for consistency of beliefs and aversion towards ambiguity [17,19]. Once this correspondence is established, many hitherto unrelated opinion phenomena can be integrated.…”

“…In this paper we focus on its recent use in the expanding literature on network modeling and network psychometrics [15,16]. Here, we see its two-fold use both as a theoretical model of political beliefs, attitudes, and depression [17][18][19], and as a psychometric data analytic tool [7,[20][21][22][23].…”