Political Taste as a Marker of Class: A Bourdieu Approach to the Study of Public Opinion Formation

Abstract

Even rough groupings of individuals according to education and occupation

Is the Political Animal Politically Ignorant? Applying Evolutionary Psychology to the Study of Political Attitudes

“…While research on this is limited, political scientists have argued that certain issues are “easier” to form opinions about and vote on the basis of than others ( Carmines and Stimson, 1980 ). In a European context, Slothuus (2005) compared eight different issues and showed that whereas questions about attitudes on immigration, social welfare and criminal justice elicit very few “don't know” responses, questions about economic policies and the European Union elicit a much higher rate. If we compare these observations to the findings in Table 1 , this clearly suggests that the more a modern political issue carries recognizable similarities to basic adaptive problems, the easier it is for people to form opinions (see also Haidt, 2012 ).…”

Informationsflüsse, Wahlen und Demokratie

“…This increases the variance in the individual perceptions about party positions across voters and results in decreased perceptual agreement. Existing literature suggests that the more clearly parties state their positions, the easier voters can use this information to infer party positions (see, for example, Merolla et al 2008;Brader/Tucker 2009;Slothuus 2009). If, however, parties' policy messages are vague, ambiguous or uninterpretable, voters may base their judgments on other information like changes in the party leadership (Fernandez-Vazquez/Somer-Topcu 2019).…”