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A Value Pluralism Model of Ideological Reasoning

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Philip E. Tetlock at University of Pennsylvania
Philip E. Tetlock
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Abstract

Tested the value pluralism model, which asserts that people are likely to think about an issue domain in integratively complex ways to the degree that issue domain activates conflicting values that people perceive as (a) important and (b) approximately equally important. The relations between the value hierarchies endorsed by 145 undergraduates (measured by the Rokeach Value Survey) and the policy preferences they expressed on issues designed to activate conflicts between different pairs of basic social/political values (e.g., the question of whether one is willing to pay higher taxes to assist the poor activates a conflict between concern for personal prosperity and social equality). Regression analyses revealed that (a) policy preferences could be best predicted from knowledge of which of the conflicting values Ss deemed more important and (b) the integrative complexity of people's reasoning about policy issues could be best predicted from knowledge of the similarity of the importance rankings of the conflicting values, the mean importance ranking of the 2 conflicting values, and the interaction of these 2 terms. It is concluded that the value pluralism model provides a flexible theoretical framework for predicting Ideology Issue interactions in both the content and structure of policy reasoning. (43 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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STABILITY AND CHANGE IN THE COMPLEXITY OF SENATORIAL DEBATE - TESTING THE COGNITIVE VERSUS RHETORICAL STYLE HYPOTHESES
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The Study of International Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows: Theories of the Radical Right and the Radical Left
Article
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The political spectrum has often been viewed as a linear continuum on which the extremes of the right and left occupy the most antithetical positions. The alternative hypothesis is that there are some dimensions on which the extremes resemble each other. This essay examines the theories of international politics and foreign policy espoused by scholars of the radical right and left. Two dozen points of convergence are grouped under five headings: Understanding history and politics, the causes of war, the nature of the enemy, the conditions of peace , and ends and means in politics . Because the essay is focused on studies of international politics since the outbreak of World War II, considerable attention is devoted to the parallels between rightwing theories of the USSR and Soviet foreign policy, and left wing explanations of the United States and American foreign policy. The conclusion suggests that both theories are fundamentally flawed in two respects: (1) As employed by their proponents, the theories appear incapable of being falsified; and (2) studies employing them are marred by serious methodological flaws that violate the canons of systematic inquiry.
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