Psychological Sources of Political Belief: Self-Esteem and Isolationist Attitudes

Paul M. Sniderman and Jack Citrin

American Political Science Review, 1971, vol. 65, issue 2, 401-417

Abstract: Research has shown that political attitudes spring from diverse sources. This paper focuses on isolationism, a set of beliefs that can stem from social factors (e.g., economic deprivation, poor education, social or geographic isolation) and from psychological factors (e.g., n. aggression, inflexibility and low self-esteem). The purpose is not to demonstrate again that there is a connection between personality and political belief. Instead, the authors ask whether or not it matters if a political attitude—in the present case, isolationism—stems from personality influences rather than from some other sources, for example, education, group memberships, or ideology. Isolationists low in self-esteem are shown to differ from those high in self-esteem on a range of values and beliefs: liberalism-conservatism, extreme political values, and specific foreign policy questions. Thus, those who hold common beliefs on one set of issues are likely to differ in the opinions they hold on other political questions depending on whether they owe their convictions to their personality characteristics or to some other influence.

Date: 1971
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:65:y:1971:i:02:p:401-417_13

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in American Political Science Review from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().