The Self-Validating Role of Political Ideology on Political Attitudes

Abstract

Recently there has been a resurgence of interest in the influence of ideology on the formation and maintenance of political attitudes. Much of this work has examined ideology as an individual difference that influences evaluations of political issues; these studies instead examined how one's ideology explicitly serves to polarize political opinions. Using the self-validation perspective as a theoretical backdrop, two studies examine the role of political ideology in validating thoughts about a political issue. In Study 1, considering one's political ideology after writing about one's attitude toward abortion increased thought confidence and attitude extremity related to abortion. Study 2 utilized a more subtle manipulation of ideology salience and found that political ideology validated thoughts about abortion, but not the issue of changing the legal drinking age (an issue less related to political ideology). These studies suggest that political ideology plays a role in attitude extremity and certainty toward ideology-relevant issues.

Self-validation theory: An integrative framework for understanding when thoughts become consequential.

“…Furthermore, the impact of thoughts on placement recommendations was mediated by measured thought-confidence. In another example, simply making participants’ political ideologies salient after they wrote about an ideology-relevant issue (e.g., abortion) validated their thoughts about that issue, leading attitudes to become more extreme (Blankenship et al, 2021). These outcomes have been conceptually replicated with different materials and populations (Clark et al, 2013, 2015, 2017; Clark & Thiem, 2015, 2018).…”

A systematic review on political ideology and persuasion

“…Because both conservatives and liberals want to maintain a connection with their respective political ingroups (Weber et al, 2021), they engage in behaviors to signal their identities to themselves and others around them. Consequently, when political identity is salient, individuals may become more entrenched in their opinions on polarizing issues and may engage in behaviors that signal their political identities (Blankenship et al, 2021). For instance, in the domain of climate change, liberals perceive sustainable behavior as signaling their identities because of its strong association with liberalism (Geiger et al, 2020).…”