Patterns of Support for Democratic and Capitalist Values in the United States Author(s): Dennis Chong, Herbert McClosky, John Zaller Source: British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Oct., 1983), pp. 401-440 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/193890 Accessed: 16/06/2009 13:30 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showpublisher?publishercode=cup. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to British Journal of Political Science. http://www.jstor.org
B.J.Pol.S. 13, 401-44( Printed in Great Britain 40 Patterns of Support for Democratic and Capitalist Values in the United States DENNIS CHONG, HERBERT McCLOSKY AND JOHN ZALLER* Two major traditions of belief, democracy and capitalism, have dominated American public life from its inception. Although they have not always coexisted in perfect harmony- indeed their union has often been torn by conflict - they have managed to accommodate to each other with sufficient flexibility to have forged a viable political culture. The values embodied in these traditions are all familiar to us. The theory and practice of democracy rest on the notion that all people possess equal worth and dignity and, for this reason, among others, have the right to share in their own governance - to rule themselves either directly or through rulers of their own choosing. The ruled, in short, must consent to their rulers, who are in turn accountable to those they govern. Democracy also aims to protect the governed against arbitrary authority, and requires that rulers observe 'due process' in the enforcement of law and other regulations. It includes, of course, such rights as freedom of speech, the press, assembly and worship. These are valued not only as manifestations of each individual's worth, but as liberties essential to the process by which consent and accountability are exercised. All - the ruled as well as the rulers - are equal before the law, and are supposed to enjoy equal rights and, in so far as possible, equal opportunities. The values and practices associated with capitalism are equally familiar: they include private enterprise, private property, the right to unlimited profit from economic effort, economic competition, a substantial measure of laissez faire, market determination of production and distribution, and differential economic rewards reflecting the scarcity and importance of different econ- omic skills. Capitalist values also include some notions from the Protestant Ethic and individualist doctrine that are widely regarded as part of the capitalist creed, such as the emphasis on individual achievement, self- reliance, and considerable independence of economic actors from external regulation. * Survey Research Center, University of California, Berkeley. This article is drawn from material prepared for the Twentieth Century Fund for a work by Herbert McClosky and John Zaller, The American Ethos: Public Support for Capitalism and Democracy. The authors are greatly indebted to the Gallup Organization (Princeton, New Jersey) for assistance in the administration of the surveys discussed in this paper, and also indebted to Christopher Achen and J. Merrill Shanks for invaluable advice and criticism on problems of research procedure and analysis, to Mark Westlye, Eric Smith, Larry Bartels and Debra Zaller for other helpful criticisms, and to Roberta Friedman and Carol McKevitt for preparation of the manuscript.
402 CHONG, McCLOSKY AND ZALLER The importance of these values in American life is scarcely debatable, as is evident from the observations of some of the most authoritative writers on the subject. Louis Hartz, for example, has argued that capitalism and democracy constitute a 'liberal tradition' which is fundamental to American history and experience: 'where the aristocracies, peasantries, and proletariats of Europe are missing, where virtually everyone... has the mentality of an indepen- dent entrepreneur, two national impulses are bound to make themselves felt: the impulse towards democracy and the impulse toward capitalism.'1 Clinton Rossiter has described the American political tradition in essen- tially similar terms, except that he emphasizes the paramount influence of democratic values in American society: 'There has been in a doctrinal sense, only one America. We have debated fiercely, but as men who agreed on fundamentals.... The American political tradition is basically a liberal tradition... its articles of faith, a sort of American Holy Writ, are perfectability, progress, liberty, equality, democracy, and individualism.'2 Richard Hofstadter agrees that American society is essentially democratic, but he emphasizes to a greater extent than Rossiter the importance of capitalist values in the nation's political tradition: The fierceness of the political struggles in American history has often been misleading; for the range of vision embraced by the primary contestants in the major parties has always been bounded by the horizons of property and enterprise. However much at odds on specific issues, the major political traditions have shared a belief in the rights of property, the philosophy of economic individualism, the values of competition; they have accepted the economic virtues of capitalist culture as necessary qualities of man. Even when some property right has been challenged - as it was by followers of Jefferson and Jackson - in the name of the rights of man or the rights of the community, the challenge, when translated into practical policy, has actually been urged on behalf of some other kind of property.... America's traditions also show a strong bias in favor of equalitarian democracy, but it has been a democracy in cupidity rather than a democracy in fraternity.3 The differences in emphasis between the views quoted from Hofstadter and Rossiter reflect the different aims of the two men. Hofstadter, as he later observed about himself, was writing from a 'somewhat... left' perspective, and his purpose was to point up the absence of a strong radical left tradition in America. Rossiter, writing as a conservative, sought to explain the absence of a strong conservative tradition in the United States. But despite their different ideological outlooks, both affirmed the existence of a consensual American value system that contained essentially the same elements. Though in different proportions, both believed that the values of democracy and capitalism lie at the heart of the American ethos. 1 Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1955), p. 89. 2 Clinton Rossiter, Conservatism in America (New York: Vintage, 1962), pp. 66, 68. 3 Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition, second edn (New York: Vintage, 1972), p. xxxvii.
Support for Democratic and Capitalist Values 403 THEORY AND HYPOTHESES For over two centuries, these values have provided the creeds from which Americans derive most of their standards about political and economic life. They have been worked into the constitution and laws, as well as the customs and folkways, of the United States - to such a degree, in fact, that the beliefs identified with alternative systems of political or economic life have played only an insignificant role in the American experience. While these values are widely circulated in American society, not everyone assimilates them with equal facility, comprehension, or thoroughness. People differ in their inclination and capacity for learning them, depending, in part, on their level of political involvement and awareness. Those who are actively interested in political events should encounter little difficulty in understanding the principles on which the system operates. Others, less discerning in their powers of observation, more circumscribed in their social roles and experiences, or perhaps more parochial in their perspectives, will be less likely to learn the norms. By 'learning' in this context we have in mind, of course, not formal lessons or classroom instruction (although these may also play a role) but a more informal process by which individuals acquire their beliefs by interaction with their social and political environment. This kind of learning, commonly referred to as 'social learning', involves exposure and attentiveness to many different kinds of subtle social, psychological, and cognitive influences. It requires a measure of sensitivity to the sorts of attitudes and behaviour expected by one's fellow citizens, as well as an awareness of the values and standards transmitted from one generation to the next and upheld by influential opinion leaders, past and present. The social learning of a society's norms and values requires that one be able to sort out the countless fragments of political thought and opinion encountered in the course of everyday life, discriminating those that help to define the political culture from those the culture rejects. The social learning of a nation's norms ordinarily involves three basic steps: first, an individual must be exposed to the norms; second, he or she must comprehend what they involve; and third, he or she must absorb (or accept) them.4 In the course of this paper, we will develop and test hypotheses relating to each of these three steps. We begin the analysis by investigating the degree of support for general statements of capitalist values. Previous research has shown that support for general statements of democratic values is strong across all strata of society, 4 See especially Paul M. Sniderman, Personality and Democratic Politics (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1975); William McGuire, 'The Nature of Attitudes and Attitude Change', in G. Lindzey and E. Aronson, eds., The Handbook of Social Psychology, 2nd ed., Vol. III (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, I969), pp. I36-314; and Giuseppe Di Palma and Herbert McClosky, 'Personality and Conformity: The Learning of Political Norms', American Political Science Review, LXIV (1970), I054-73.
404 CHONG, McCLOSKY AND ZALLER and since capitalist values are also fundamental to the American ethos, we should expect to find that most Americans have learned to recognize and uphold capitalist values in their general form as well. We focus next on patterns of support for the values of capitalism and democracy. We believe that three major patterns have become dominant in the United States: (I) strong support for the values of both capitalism and democracy (often described as the nineteenth-century liberal pattern); (2) strong support for democratic values but distaste for capitalism in its unfet- tered or laissez faire form (best labelled, perhaps, as welfare-state liberalism); and (3) strong support for capitalist values but only moderate, or even weak support for democratic values (a position most likely to be taken by strong conservatives). Since an individual's level of political awareness and activity reflects the degree to which he is exposed to, and comprehends, conventional belief patterns, we should find that most opinion leaders and the politically aware in general will exhibit attitudes that fit one of these three patterns. Mutatis mutandis, the less aware, by contrast, should more often be low in their support for the values of both capitalism and democracy, a pattern which, for want of a better term, we have labelled 'anti- regime'. A person's response to the values of the traditional belief systems, as we shall show, is also influenced by his social characteristics and psychological dispositions. For example, a trait like psychological inflexibility is a personal- ity dysfunction which impairs one's ability to comprehend the prevailing norms. Consequently, we should find that people who are relatively inflexible will tend to give less support to the values of both capitalism and democracy, and, furthermore, that this tendency will be most pronounced among people whose exposure to the norms and capacity for understanding them is already fairly limited (e.g., the unaware). The politically aware, on the other hand, should be more capable of understanding the prevailing norms regardless of these social and psychological impediments - they should, so to speak, be able to overcome such barriers because of their greater opportunities and capacities for social learning. We would also expect to find that individuals who have failed to learn the political beliefs endorsed by opinion leaders can be led by their social and psychological dispositions to respond to certain issues in a patterned way. For example, when questions tap concerns of a particularly visceral, moralistic, or punitive nature (which many of our democracy items do), even the less aware should be capable of responding to them in a consistent - though, in this case, predominantly anti-democratic - fashion. In analysing the various ways in which an individual's political awareness interacts with his or her social and psychological dispositions to affect learn- ing of traditional values, this paper seeks to increase our understanding of why it is that some Americans systematically support capitalist and democratic values, while others do not - why, in other words, some people embrace prevailing patterns of belief while others fail to do so or even reject them.
Support for Democratic and Capitalist Values 405 *DATA AND METHODS To test these and related issues, we have drawn data principally from our Opinions and Values Study (OVS). This study employs a series of parallel surveys conducted between 1975 and 1977 on a cross-section sample of the national population5 and two 'elite' surveys of opinion leaders and members of groups active in public affairs. One of the elite surveys was administered to a randomly drawn sample of the members of twenty national 'criterion groups', selected for their high levels of political interest and activity and their ideological 'purity'; the other was administered to random samples of opinion leaders selected from groups that were non-partisan'or ideologically neutral (League of Women Voters, Conference of Editorial Writers, Who's Who in America). The same lengthy questionnaire was administered to both sets of elite samples as well as to the general population. The rate of return, after four follow-up procedures, was approximately two-thirds. The questionnaire used in the Opinions and Values Survey was a 24-page instrument which, in addition to including the usual demographic and 'face-sheet' questions, contained 267 items presented in random order and covering a wide range of attitude questions. Items were also included that assess key personality dispositions as well as political participation and knowledge. While the individual items are self-contained and can be analysed in their own right, each of them is also a part of a cluster of items that permits us to assign scale scores to a respondent by cumulating his responses to the items in a given attitude domain. A brief comment should also be made about the new item format employed in the OVS survey. Each item is essentially a sentence completion question. Each was designed to be short, concise, and easy to read. The respondent was offered in each case two alternative answers, devised so as to encompass the fundamental differences that prevail on that particular issue. For respondents who did not find either response acceptable, we provided Neither and Undecided alternatives. This format (examples of which appear in Table I) has the advantage not only of pressing respondents to weigh carefully devised alternatives and to deliberate before responding, but it also eliminates acquiescent response set and other problems of response style. For purposes of comparison, data are also presented in the present paper from the Political Affiliation and Belief (PAB) study, conducted by McClosky in 1958 on a national cross-section sample of 1,484 respondents and 3,020 Democratic and Republican leaders who had been delegates to their party's national convention in I956.6 5 We wish to express our gratitude to the Gallup Organization for assistance in the administration of the national general population survey. Gallup interviewers took our lengthy questionnaire into the field and distributed it, after appropriate instructions, to a cross-section area probability sample of 1,456 adult Americans, nearly two-thirds of whom completed the questionnaire and returned it. 6 Details of the PAB surveys and samples can be found in Herbert McClosky et al.. 'Issue Conflict and Consensus Among Party Leaders and Followers', American Political Science Review, XLIV (I960), 406-27; and in Herbert McClosky, 'Consensus and Ideology in American Politics', American Political Science Review, LVIII (I964), 361-82.
406 CHONG, McCLOSKY AND ZALLER Data have also been drawn from a study of attitudes towards civil liberties, conducted in 1978-79, on a national sample of 1,993 respondents in the general public and 1,891 opinion leaders.7 In order to assess attitudes toward capitalism and democracy, as earlier defined, two lengthy scales (twenty-eight and forty-four items respectively) were constructed. The items in these scales were designed to tap responses to a variety of controversial issues relating to the two traditions. The capitalism measure, for example, includes questions about the use of property, the merits of economic competition, the fairness of the free enterprise system, the rights of business and labour, and the income to which workers and employers are entitled. The democracy measure taps support for the rights and liberties of various groups, support for equal rights and other aspects of equality, and support for the rights of privacy and due process of law.8 These scales measure a respondent's tendency to express stronger or weaker support for the values of each tradition. Low scores on these scales do not necessarily reflect principled opposition to capitalism or democracy. Thus a respondent could score low on the capitalism measure, not because of a wish to overthrow capitalism, but because the respondent favoured a form of welfare capitalism that limited certain privileges of business, such as freedom from government regulation. Similarly, a person might score low on the democracy scale because of a desire to limit or qualify the enforcement of certain democratic values rather than to abolish them. Because of its importance in the analysis that follows, a word should be said about the political awareness variable. By political awareness, we refer to a respondent's level of exposure to and comprehension of the norms of the American political culture. At least three measures available in our research have clearly shown themselves to be direct or indirect indicators of awareness - political knowledge, political participation, and education. Of the three, a respondent's demonstrated level of political information is obviously the most direct and dependable measure of awareness. Respondents who display high levels of information about the workings of American politics can also reasonably be expected to have acquired an understanding of the norms under which the system operates. In addition, a high level of political participation, indicating as it does actual involvement in the political system, further increases the likelihood that a person will acquire an understanding of its norms. Finally, education, because it is associated with greater attention to public affairs and a greater capacity to grasp abstract political principles, also contributes significantly to knowledge of the political process and its prevail- ing norms.9 7 The results of this survey are reported in Herbert McClosky and Alida Brill, Dimensions of Tolerance (New York: Basic Books, I983). 8 For a list of the items included in the democracy and capitalism scales, see Appendix I. 9 In the civil liberties survey, a ten-item measure was constructed to assess each respondent's knowledge of American legal norms relating to civil liberties. As expected, awareness and understanding of these norms was positively correlated with formal education, political participa-
Support for Democratic and Capitalist Values 407 In an effort to strengthen our measure of political awareness and make it as reliable as possible, we decided to combine the separate measures of political information, political participation, and education into a single index. The awareness index, thus, includes a thirteen-item political information test, a nine-item political participation scale, and a six-level education variable. A factor analysis performed on these three measures was used to extract a principal factor which accounted for 6I per cent of their variance. The factor scores obtained from this procedure, which were approximately equal, were then used to create a single measure, consisting of a weighted combination of the three variables. In the present study, we might add, we have replicated key parts of our analysis using each indicator separately and have obtained highly comparable results in most cases. Of the three, information proves the most powerful, and participation the least. PATTERNS OF SUPPORT FOR THE TWO TRADITIONS Previous studies have shown that, in the abstract at least, most Americans recognize and support the basic values associated with the democratic tradition.10 Our own findings illustrated by a few items in Table i, drawn from three different surveys conducted over a twenty-year period, indicate that broad popular support also exists for the values of capitalism. The vast majority of Americans consistently uphold such key capitalist notions as private property, the profit system, economic competition, and the general fairness of the private enterprise system. In addition, they overwhelmingly reject every suggestion that Communism or socialism might prove desirable alternatives to American capitalism.11 But no matter how strongly Americans may support capitalist and demo- cratic values when they are expressed in general or abstract form, some disagreement over what these values mean and how they should be applied is inevitable. One reason is that general values of the kind we have been discussing - freedom, equality, individualism, free enterprise - are by nature vague and open-ended. Fixing their exact boundaries and meanings is always a source of potential argument. Another reason for disagreement is that societies tend to honour multiple and even conflicting values. Conflicts between the values of majority rule and minority rights, between equali- tion, and an index of factual information about politics. Other evidence from the several surveys we have conducted clearly show that each of these variables could stand by itself as a valid indicator of awareness. 10 See James W. Prothro and C. W. Grigg, 'Fundamental Principles of Democracy: Bases of Agreement and Disagreement', Journal of Politics, xxii (1960), 276-95; McClosky, 'Consensus and Ideology in American Politics'; and Frank R. Westie, 'The American Dilemma: An Empirical Test', American Sociological Review, xxx (1965), 527-38. 11 For a fuller treatment of American attitudes toward capitalism, see Herbert McClosky and John Zaller, The American Ethos: Public Support for Capitalism and Democracy (New York: The Twentieth Century Fund, forthcoming), Chapters 4 and 5, and passim.
408 CHONG, McCLOSKY AND ZALLER TABLE I Support for General Statements of Capitalist Values Among Opinion Leaders and the General Public General Opinion public leaders Private ownership of property: - is as important to a good society as freedom 78% 66% - has often done mankind more harm than good 7 I2 - Decline to choose. 15 23 (OVS, 1975-77) (N =938) (N =533) The profits a company or business can earn should be: - strictly limited by law to a certain level I 8 - as large as they can fairly earn 73 79 - Decline to choose. I6 13 (Civil Liberties, I978-79) (N= I,026) (N=60o) Competition, whether in school, work, or business: - is often wasteful and destructive 8 11 - leads to better performance and a desire for excellence 8I 73 - Decline to choose. II 16 (OVS, 1975-77) (N=938) (N=533) If adopted here, the main features of Communism: - would greatly benefit the average person 3 4 - would make things worse for most Americans 82 82 - Decline to choose. 15 I4 (Civil Liberties, 1978-9) (N= 967) (N= 556) Some form of socialism would certainly be better than the system we have now. - Agree. II 4 - Disagree. 89 96 (PAB, 1958) (N= 1,484) (N= 3,020) Giving everybody about the same income regardless of the type of work they do: - would be a fairer way to distribute the country's wealth than the present system 5 5 - would destroy the desire to work hard and do a better job 85 84 - Decline to choose. Io 11 (Civil Liberties, 1978-9) (N=967) (N=556) tarianism and individual achievement, or between freedom and authority, for example, are widely recognized features of American political culture. Controversies over the values embodied in the two traditions have been evident from the earliest days of the republic. Throughout much of the nineteenth century, for example, the nation was deeply divided over ques- tions of equalitarianism and states' rights, especially as they applied to the
Support for Democratic and Capitalist Values 409 issue of slavery and race. While the defeat of the South in the Civil War opened the way for the eventual settlement of some of these questions, the rise of industrialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries created a new generation of social and political problems, centred around the conduct of the free enterprise economy. In response to these problems, twentieth-century liberals (as distinguished from their nineteenth-century predecessors) sought to articulate and enact a programme of social legislation requiring state guidance and greater regulation of the private economy. While supporting the principal tenets of capitalism, they argued that government must play an active role in correcting the deficiencies and inequities of free enterprise capitalism. While the modern liberal critique of unfettered capitalism has not, of course, been universally embraced by Americans (witness the continued conservative opposition to it), it has none the less achieved considerable standing in the political culture. By the fourth decade of the twentieth century, it had won the support of countless intellectuals, educators, profes- sional economists, and social commentators; it had become institutionalized in the political programmes of the Democratic party; and it had begun to serve as the rationale for an ever-widening range of government regulations and social legislation designed to correct 'abuses' in the performance of capitalism and (to some extent) reallocate wealth. Welfare capitalism, as articulated by modern liberals, thus stands as an important, culturally legitimated alternative to the traditional (or nineteenth-century) notion of laissez faire capitalism. Differences have also developed around the democratic tradition, but to a lesser extent. Few opinion leaders, of any ideological persuasion, have argued for major modifications in the democratic creed. Occasionally, however (and then mainly among some groups of conservatives), one encounters protests that democracy has been carried to excess; that civil liberties have sometimes been extended too far at the expense of law, order, and stability; that the extreme emphasis upon equality has jeopardized the recognition of individual differences in contribution and worth; or that due process has been adhered to so inflexibly that justice miscarries and the guilty too often go free. While much of this is familiar to informed observers of American politics, we take note of it here because it has important implications for our analysis. If, as we believe, the members of the general public tend to acquire their attitudes toward capitalism and democracy from the elite political culture, our observations suggest that they may end up learning them in at least three different combinations - the nineteenth-century liberal pattern described by Hartz and others as the prevailing American tendency (enthusiastic support for the values of both traditions); the welfare-state liberal pattern (strong support for democracy and qualified support for capitalism); or the pattern favoured by many strong conservatives (strong support for capitalism and qualified support for certain democratic values). Each of these three patterns involves strong support for the values of at
410 CHONG, McCLOSKY AND ZALLER least one of the principal traditions of American political culture; each qualifies as a belief system in the sense that it represents a coherent social philosophy; and each can claim significant support among such legitimating agencies of the political culture as the political institutions, the press, and the universities. To the extent, therefore, that an individual's attitudes corre- spond to one of these three combinations, we may say that his attitudes are consistent with a culturally sanctioned pattern of support for the values of capitalism and democracy. One other combination of capitalist and democratic beliefs, of course, is also possible, namely, opposition to the values of both. This belief pattern, however, differs from the other three in that it enjoys little acceptance in the political culture. No widely respected political movement is identified with it; no important philosopher has sought to justify its principal tenets; and (with the possible exception of miniscule splinter movements on the Far Left or Far Right) none of the usual sources that disseminate political values seeks to inculcate it. On the contrary, the adherents of this pattern of anti-regime beliefs are often ridiculed by such derogatory labels as 'rednecks', 'authori- tarians', 'yahoos' or 'extremists'. Although groups expressing this combina- tion of beliefs have occasionally surfaced in American politics - the short-lived appearance of George Wallace's American Independent Party is an example - their views are rejected by the vast majority of American opinion leaders and enjoy little, if any, legitimacy. These observations lead to several readily testable propositions. If, as we have maintained, support for political values is the result of social learning, we should find that adherence to the anti-regime value cluster (low on democracy, low on capitalism) is concentrated among the least aware and most politically inert strata of society - among those who have had the fewest opportunities to learn the prevailing norms. Among those who are more politically active and aware, on the other hand, we should find that most people reject the anti-regime pattern and embrace one of the three culturally sanctioned belief patterns. Scatterplots showing the joint distribution of attitudes toward capitalism and democracy clearly confirm these expectations. To simplify the presentation, we have provided a schematic diagram which summarizes the central tendencies of the data. As can be seen in Figure I, the distribution of scores among the general public assumes the shape of a rugby football which spans the diagonal running from the welfare-state liberal position (high on democracy, low on capitalism) to the position espoused by certain strong conserva- tives (low on democracy, high on capitalism). Significant portions of the mass sample, however, also turn up in the high-high (nineteenth-century liberal) and low-low (anti-regime) corners. Among opinion leaders, on the other hand, the joint distribution of beliefs assumes the shape of a 'half-moon' that contains few respondents who are low on both dimensions, and a large number of nineteenth-century liberals. Note, too, that nearly all opinion leaders, relative to the mass public, score moderate to high in their support
Support for Democratic and Capitalist Values 411 Twentieth-century liberalism Nineteenth-century liberalism high Democratic values low Key: Opinion leaders --- General public low I I I high Anti-regime pattern Capitalist values Strong conservative Fig. i. Schematic representation of the distribution of mass and elite attitudes towards capitalism and democracy for democratic values. The disagreements they exhibit have mainly to do with their orientation toward capitalism. Thus elite differences, although often intense, occur within a subspace defined by relatively high levels of overall support for democratic values. Visual patterns of the kind represented in Figure I can also be summarized in tabular form. For example, Table 2 shows that respondents in the mass sample who are low on political awareness gravitate towards the low-low quadrant,12 while the more aware respondents more often fall into the 12 Any procedure for representing the scatterplots in tabular form is to some degree arbitrary. We began by trichotomizing scores on the capitalism and democracy scales, using the 33rd and 67th percentiles of the mass distribution as cutting points. We next classified respondents as follows: respondents scoring in the top third on the values of one tradition, and high or moderate on the values of the other, were counted as nineteenth-century liberals. Those scoring high on democracy and low on capitalism were counted as strong welfare-state liberals; those scoring low on democracy and high on capitalism were counted as strong conservatives. And finally, those scoring low on the values of one tradition, and low or moderate on the values of the other, were counted as falling within the anti-regime cell. Respondents scoring in the middle third of both scales have been excluded from the analysis as ambiguous cases, unclassifiable for our purposes. This method of classification was designed to highlight the tendencies which exist in the data. The asymmetrical grouping of cells reflects our judgement that the people who fall into cells that are off the main liberal-conservative diagonal hold positions other than strong liberalism or strong conservatism.
412 CHONG, McCLOSKY AND ZALLER TABLE 2 Patterns of Support for the Values of Capitalism and Democracy Among the Elites and the General Public (Corner Percentaging) * General Public Bottom tenth on Top tenth on Opinion awareness awareness leaders Welfare-state Nineteenth-century liberal liberal low cap. high cap. 1 high dem. I - high dem. 27 49 28 57. low low 56 8 z dem. dem. 6 13 2 7 S low cap. high cap. 3 Anti-regime Strong pattern conservative Capitalist values (N = 93) (N = 94) (N = 533) * Labels shown in the first set of quadrants apply to all the others. Source: OVS, 1975-77. high-high category. Some 56 per cent of those who score among the bottom tenth on the awareness scale turn up in the anti-regime cell, compared to only 6 per cent of the most aware respondents in the mass public, and 2 per cent of the opinion leaders. Similarly, only 26 per cent of the politically unaware but over 90 per cent of the opinion leaders and the aware respondents adopt one of the three belief patterns that indicates strong support for either capitalism or democracy or both. Similar results were obtained from an analysis of McClosky's 1958 (PAB) survey of the American public and party influentials (i.e., delegates to the national party conventions). As can be seen in Table 3, the modal tendency of less educated Americans in the late I950S was to score low on an index of business values and low on a measure that combined procedural rights and tolerance. Most political influentials, on the other hand, scored high on both measures. 13 13 Although the measures of support for democracy and capitalism in the PAB and OVS studies are composed of different items, their general content is very similar. They may therefore be considered comparable measures of the same basic concepts. Since measures of political knowledge and participation were not included in the PAB study, we have relied, in this table, on the best available indicator of political awareness, namely, education.
TABLE 3 Patterns of Support for the Values of Capitalism and Democracy Among th the g95os (Corner Percentaging)* Twentieth- century liberal low cap. Grade school Nineteenth- century liberal high cap. General public High school College ^ high dem. 8 24 high dem. II 32 I9 46.) low Z dem. u o?, 35 26 low dem. 3I 20 low cap. high cap..? Anti-regime Strong pattern conservative Capitalist values (N = 320) (N = 757) (N = 402) * Labels shown in the first set of quadrants apply to all the others. t 'Political Influentials' (i.e., political convention delegates) have been screened for education. Source: PAB, I958. 9
414 CHONG, McCLOSKY AND ZALLER The belief patterns common among the most and least aware strata of society thus seem to have changed little between the I950S and I970s. In view of the differences between the two decades and the turbulent period that separates them, this fact is itself noteworthy. But equally impressive is the powerful influence of the traditional American norms. Only among the politically unaware do we find significant support for the anti-regime pattern. As awareness increases, respondents gravitate toward one of the three historically sanctioned belief patterns. SOCIAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL INFLUENCES ON THE LEARNING OF NORMS Despite its importance, political awareness is only one of several factors influencing support for the values of the two traditions. Other possible influences include respondents' personality dispositions, their orientations toward change, and such social characteristics as economic status, age and place of residence. Since we cannot, within the compass of the present paper, examine all such variables, we shall concentrate on those which help to illustrate the general process by which people learn to support fundamental political and economic values. We might begin, for example, with place of residence as a possible influence on exposure to political norms. People who live in large metropoli- tan areas are typically close to the centre of the cultural mainstream. While many urban residents are, to be sure, poorly educated or immobilized by poverty, most are nevertheless exposed to a broad flow of social and political communications which serve as carriers of society's dominant values. People who live in rural or small town settings, by contrast, are further removed from the central sources of opinion and culture. Political communication about national norms is less frequent in these settings, and the concerns of the existing media are usually narrower and more parochial than they are in the cities.14 One has reason to expect, therefore, that support for the values of the American political culture is weaker in the countryside than it is in the urban areas. Table 4 confirms this expectation. Although the differences are not overwhelming, people in the smaller and more isolated communities are indeed more likely than residents in the urban areas to score low on the values of both capitalism and democracy. Our data show that people living in small communities are also more likely than urban residents to score low on political awareness (gamma = 0-26), and it is this fact which mainly accounts for their tendency to score low on both democracy and capitalism. Physical distance from the centres of social and political communication thus is for some segments of the population an impediment to the learning of social norms. There are, however, also psychological impediments which, 14 We are not, of course, claiming that residents of rural areas read less or watch less television than residents of urban areas, but rather that they are exposed to a less varied and smaller number of communications about public affairs.
Support for Democratic and Capitalist Values 415 TABLE 4 Frequency of Anti-Regime Belief Pattern by Place of Residence Rural Large city or or farm Small town Small city its suburbs Anti-regime pattern: (low on capitalism and low on democracy) 35% 30% 2I% 19% (N) (188) (271) (182) (288) Source: OVS, 1975-77. even in urban centres, serve to prevent some individuals from comprehending the norms they do encounter. One such disposition, for example, is psycho- logical inflexibility. On an earlier occasion we have defined inflexibility as: a genotypic source trait [whose] manifest characteristics include an inclination toward black-white polarization and dichotomous distinctions, premature cognitive closure, stereotypic and automatized thought sequences, stimulus fixation, selective attention, and a narrowing of exposure to exclude unfamiliar persons and other stimulus objects. The inflexible person is also characterized by a strong need for order and autonomy, and is made acutely uncomfortable by ambiguity, uncertainty, contingency, complex- ity, and unfamiliarity. He tends, characteristically, to oversimplify by narrowing the phenomenal field and by assigning fixed, predictable roles to all the players. He is in a continual struggle against his own impulse life, and is rigidly constrained in the limits he imposes upon himself and others.... He is impatient with... differences and he accommodates poorly to novelty and change. He is severe in his judgments and intolerant of unconventionality. He is attracted to opinions that are categorical and dogmatic and he tends more than most to exclude incompatible information.15 Although people who are highly inflexible may wish to conform to society's norms, their personality characteristics make it difficult for them to do so.16 Bewildered by the disparate social influences they encounter, they are often unable to tell what is expected of them or to discover what society's norms are. Even simple factual information can elude them. As can be seen in Table 5, 50 per cent of those scoring high on inflexibility are low on our measure of political information, compared to only 23 per cent of those who score low on inflexibility. 15 Herbert McClosky, Political Inquiry (New York: Macmillan, I969), pp. 86-7. For items in the inflexibility scale, see Appendix II. 16 For a fuller discussion of the relationship between psychological inflexibility and other personality characteristics as they affect conformity to national norms, see Di Palma and McClosky, 'Personality and Conformity: The Learning of Political Norms': R. S. Crutchfield, 'Conformity and Character', American Psychologist, x (1955), 191-8; Francis Di Vesta and Dandon Cox, 'Some Dispositional Correlates of Conformity Behavior', Journal of Social Psychology, Lll (1960), 259-68; for related articles see C. I. Hovland and I. L. Janis, eds, Personality and Persuasibility (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1959); and William McGuire, 'Personality and Susceptibility to Social Influence', in E. F. Borgatta and W. W. Lambert, eds, Handbook of Personality Theory and Research (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1968), Chapter 2.
416 CHONG, McCLOSKY AND ZALLER TABLE 5 The Influence of Psychological Inflexibility on the Acquisition of Political Information Among the Mass Public (Percentage) Psychological inflexibility Low Middle High Level of political information* Low 23 27 27 36 50 Middle 36 36 40 36 30 High 41 37 34 28 2I Totalt 100 100 IoI I0O IOI N (174) (15I) (I82) (260) (I7I) * In the case of this and other measures, the categories of low, middle and high have been neutrally defined by breaking the frequency distribution of scores among the general public into arithmetic thirds. t Small discrepancies are due to rounding. Source: OVS, I975-77. Although inflexibility hinders learning, its effects are not entirely debilitat- ing. They can often be overcome by formal education, by active involvement in public affairs, or by other compensatory influences. Evidence of the compensatory effect of education, for example, is shown below in Figure 2. There we see that the acquisition of formal schooling serves gradually to close 25-20. Political information (Standard Deviation = 3-8) 15 Low on inflexibility High on inflexibility n1 Low Education High Fig. 2. The influence of psychological inflexibility on the acquisition of political information among different education groups* * The plotted lines represent levels of political information among different education groups for people who are high on the inflexibility scale and for people who score low. The data have been obtained from a regression analysis which included statistical controls for respondents' age, sex, place of residence, income and attitudes toward change and reform. Source: OVS, I975-77.
Support for Democratic and Capitalist Values 417 the gap in political knowledge that separates flexible from inflexible respon- dents. The largest differences in political knowledge between flexible and inflexible respondents occur at the lowest levels of education. Among the most highly educated, however, the differences separating the two personality types vanish. In the language of social learning theory, these results indicate that psychological inflexibility hampers the ability of the culturally impover- ished to comprehend the dominant values of the political culture, while it has little effect among those who have managed to receive a fairly extensive introduction to public affairs. If we are correct in this observation, we should find that people who are psychologically inflexible will tend to score low in their support for the values of both capitalism and democracy. As can be seen in Table 6, such is indeed TABLE 6 Frequency of Anti-Regime Belief Pattern by Awareness and Psychological Disposition Inflexibility Political awareness Low Middle High Low 33* 43 53 Middle 22 24 28 High 9 9 12 Total 24 24 37 * Cell entries are per cent in each cell holding anti-regime belief patterns. Source: OVS, I975-77. the case, but this impediment to social learning exerts its greatest influence on those whose capacity for learning the norms is already weakest, namely, the politically unaware. ACCEPTANCE OF POLITICAL NORMS Our discussion so far has shown that factors which increase exposure to or comprehension of the values of the political culture also increase the likelihood of accepting one of the three culturally legitimated belief patterns. But people obviously differ in their preferences among the three patterns. Some politically aware respondents gravitate towards the norms of welfare- state liberalism; others verge toward the ninteenth-century liberal pattern; while still others opt for the strong conservative belief pattern. To account for these differences in preference, we shall need to focus on factors affecting acceptance of political values. One such factor is the cluster of attitudes reflecting liberal-conservative tendencies relating to change, reform, order, and stability. From all indica- tions in our data, this factor constitutes one of the most empirically powerful and theoretically important variables included in our survey. Considering first the relationship of these values to the democratic tradition, it is plain from
418 CHONG, McCLOSKY AND ZALLER both historical evidence and intuitive observation that a strong attachment to social order and the status quo (as against receptivity to change and reform) is inversely related to support for democratic values. This negative association may be as old as the democratic tradition itself. Now as in the past, the advocates of democracy champion broader popular control of the govern- ment, greater freedom of expression, and more social and economic equality - none of which endears democracy to those who fear that large-scale reforms may lead to disorder and instability. For these and other reasons, people who believe that things should remain essentially unchanged are likely to be unsympathetic to the tendency in democracy to press for reforms that will upset established arrangements. Attitudes toward order and stability are related to support for capitalism as well. In this case, however, people who are hostile to change and reform, and who maintain a deep aversion to 'programmes' and 'theories' for reconstitut- ing society, are likely to favour capitalism because it represents, among other things, the traditional way of conducting economic affairs. To experiment with major changes in the established economic system would involve more risk than such people are willing to countenance. With this information, we can press the analysis a step further by showing what happens to people with different orientations towards change as they acquire greater political awareness. As can be seen in Table 7, the unaware tend to score 'anti-regime' whether they preponderantly resist or lean toward change and reform. Even among the least aware, however, pro-change respondents tend to favour the welfare-state position over the strong con- servative position, whereas the reverse is true for the anti-change respon- dents. As awareness increases, these tendencies become more pronounced. Among those in the mass public who score high on awareness, 42 per cent of the pro-change respondents are welfare-state liberals and only 7 per cent are strong conservatives, while the corresponding figures for those opposed to change are 4 per cent and 33 per cent respectively. Among the ideological elite (whose sub-groups, as we noted, were selected with ideological purity in mind), the tendency toward polarization is even greater, with 70 per cent of the pro-change respondents falling into the welfare-state liberal cell, and 52 per cent of the anti-change respondents falling into the strong conservative cell. Among opinion leaders, the trend is slightly altered. Those favouring change and reform divide evenly between the welfare-state and nineteenth- century liberal positions, whereas those who oppose change and reform are, by a wide margin, nineteenth-century liberals. What this seems to reflect is the predominantly pro-democratic nature of the American political culture. While people strongly opposed to change and reform are clearly less enthusiastic about some democratic values than are those who favour change, they must nevertheless accommodate to a political culture that affords little legitimacy to anti-democratic sentiments. Hence ordinary conservatives (as distinct from hard-core ideologues on the Right) often score moderate to high
TABLE 7 The Effect of Attitude Towards Change on Support for the Values of Ca Percentaging)* General public Bottom third Bottom tenth Bottom on awareness s on awareness Welfare- Nineteeth- state century liberal liberal =Q low cap. high cap. Top third on awareness ' Favour change high high and reform dem. 26 de. 7 8 42 38 dem_...35. d?er. 6 7 7 low cap. high cap. Anti-regime Strong pattern conservative Capitalist values (N= 27) (N= 103) (N = Io) Resist change and reform 2 4 5 11 4 47 64 12 52 i6 9 33... _......... _.........._ (N = 25) (N = Ioo) (N = Ii8) * Labels shown in the first set of quadrants apply to all the others. Source: OVS, 1975-77.
420 CHONG, McCLOSKY AND ZALLER on democratic values despite ideological dispositions which make it difficult for them to do so. These findings, incidentally, cannot be attributed to differences in status, since our measure of attitudes towards change is essentially uncorrelated with income. CLEAR AND CONTESTED NORMS Our argument so far has been based on the notion that the American political culture is mainly united on democratic values, but often divided on capitalist values. We must bear in mind, however, that notwithstanding the importance of these tendencies, the culture is divided on some democratic issues and united in support of some capitalist issues. Consider, for example, the democratic issue of the separation of Church and State which is raised by prayer in the public schools. In a series of cases beginning with Engel v. Vitale,17 the Supreme Court ruled that prayers in the public schools violated the principle of separation of Church and State. The court's interpretation was (and is) shared by the American Civil Liberties Union, many church organizations, and numerous liberal opinion leaders. But the court's ruling on school prayers is only twenty years old and represents a fairly recent development in constitutional doctrine. The decision, moreover, has been widely criticized by some nationally influential political and religious leaders. On the school prayer issue, therefore, the elite political culture is divided and upholds no clear and uncontested norm. By the same token, American elites currently disagree over such democratic issues as the rights of homosexuals, affirmative action, and the authority of the police to use such methods as wire tapping. One can also find some capitalist issues on which American opinion leaders overwhelmingly agree. For example, no major political party in the United States has ever favoured equality of income, the abolition of private property, or government control of the economy. On these capitalist issues, then, the political culture upholds relatively clear and uncontested norms. The fact that American opinion leaders are united on many but not all democratic issues, and divided on many but not all capitalist issues, provides an opportunity to extend our understanding of the social learning process. If our general arguments are correct, we should find that whenever opinion leaders are united on particular norms that are widely endorsed in public discourse, the members of the general public who pay most attention to politics should follow along and embrace most of the same norms. When, on the other hand, the opinion leaders are sharply divided on a given issue, exposure to the political culture will engender public attitudes that reflect these divisions. 17 370 U.S. 421, I962.
Support for Democratic and Capitalist Values 421 To test these expectations, we created four indices to measure support for clear and unclear norms relating to capitalism and democracy. For example, an item concerning the right of 'crackpots' to enjoy freedom of speech was included in the index measuring clear democratic norms because freedom of speech is a time-honoured principle which the courts have repeatedly affirmed. An item asking whether the land of America should be left in the hands of private owners or 'turned over to the people' was included among the clear capitalist norms because nearly all American opinion leaders currently support the principle of private ownership. On the other hand, questions about the rights of homosexuals, the speed of racial integration, and government regulation of business were included in the indices measuring contested or unclear norms because they represented prominent issues on which elite opinion is divided.18 The data in Table 8 are consistent with our expectations. Exposure to the elite political culture - as measured by an individual's level of political TABLE 8 The Effect of Political Awareness on Support for Clear and Contested Norms Among the General Public Political awareness Clear democratic norms* 0-38t Contested democratic norms o0o6 Clear capitalist norms 0-22 Contested capitalist norms oi I * For information on scale construction, see Appendix III. t Cell entries are partial correlations between awareness and the indicated scale, with the effects of income and age held constant. Source: OVS, I975-77. awareness - is correlated more strongly with support for the clear norms of capitalism and democracy than with support for the contested norms of each tradition. As Table 8 further affirms, these tendencies hold up even after the effects of age and income have been statistically removed. The main contention here is that influentials and opinion leaders play an important role in defining the political norms which the members of the general public learn and adopt as their own. A 1978 California initiative designed to limit the rights of homosexuals (the Briggs Initiative) offers an excellent illustration of elite influence. Even though early public opinion polls showed strong popular support for the initiative, a large number of notable opinion leaders publicly opposed it as a violation of the democratic principles of equal rights and individual liberty. Owing, apparently, to the elite campaign, public opinion shifted dramatically and the initiative was defeated. Equally interesting, the principal shift took place among the more politically 18 For further information on the construction of these measures, see Appendix III.
422 CHONG, McCLOSKY AND ZALLER CLEAR DEMOCRATIC NORMS 2 Emphasize change and reform Level of support for clear democratic norms 1 0 Low High awareness awareness (- 2 s.d.) (+ 2 s.d.) CONTESTED DEMOCRATIC NORMS Level of support for contested democratic norms Emphasize change and reform Low awareness High awareness Fig. 3. The effect of political awareness and attitudes towards change on the learning of democratic norms - among the mass public* * The lines in the figure represent slopes derived from a regression analysis which also controlled for respondents' age, income, race and sex. Source: OVS, 1975-77.
Support for Democratic and Capitalist Values 423 CLEAR CAPITALIST NORMS 1. Emphasize order // and stability Level of support for clear capitalist norms ^^ ^ --'~~~~~~~~^~ Emphasize change and reform Low awareness (- 2 s.d.) High awareness (+ 2 s.d.) CONTESTED CAPITALIST NORMS Level of support for contested capitalist norms Emphasize order and stability Low awareness High awareness Fig. 4. The effect of political awareness and attitudes towards change on the learning of capitalist norms - among the mass public* * The lines in the figure represent slopes derived from a regression analysis which also controlled for respondents' age, income, race and sex. Source: OVS, 1975-77.
424 CHONG, McCLOSKY AND ZALLER aware members of the public, whereas the unaware changed far less.19 A contested norm had become, at least among politically aware Californians, a relatively clear norm. We have developed one additional and, to our minds, decisive test of the arguments we have been advancing. We expected that when a norm is clear, greater awareness should lead to greater support for it even among people who differ in ideological orientation. But when a norm is unclear or contested, greater sophistication should lead to a divergence of opinion between, for example, those who favour and those who resist change and reform. These expectations are borne out in Figures 3 and 4. These data reaffirm our contention that when society's norms are clear, most politically aware Americans learn them; when the norms are contested, politically aware Americans tend to diverge on them more sharply than the unaware. THE STRUCTURE OF POLITICAL BELIEF In examining the patterns of popular support for the two traditions, we have focused on the substance of the public's attitudes towards capitalism and democracy - whether, for example, an individual favours or opposes freedom of speech, racial equality, the profit system and so forth. To understand the two traditions adequately, however, citizens must also pay attention to the organizing principles that tie the values together into coherent systems of belief. The distinction we are making is between the content and the structure of one's attitudes. A person could, for example, generally favour property, competition, and the profit system, and yet fail to understand how these values are related to one another. Effective social learning can be said to have occurred when one both supports the values of a given tradition and grasps the organizing principles - or structure - which hold those values together. In his seminal paper on 'The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics', Converse20 argued that the general public was largely unaware of such organizing principles. A basic concept in Converse's paper, and in the substantial literature on belief systems which it has inspired, is attitude structure, or what Converse calls 'constraint'. An individual's attitudes are said to be structured if knowledge of his position on some issues allows one to predict his position on others, and if he understands the overarching principles which interconnect the issues. A person whose attitudes are I9 As a result of this shift, the correlation between sophistication and gay rights among the general public, negligible to begin with, became significant by the end of the campaign. For a fuller discussion of the Briggs campaign, see McClosky and Zaller, The American Ethos: Public Support for Capitalism and Democracy, Chapter 8. See also the California Poll, San Francisco Chronicle, 6 October I978. 20 Philip E. Converse, 'The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics', in David Apter, ed., Ideology and Discontent (New York: Free Press, I964), pp. 206-6I
Support for Democratic and Capitalist Values 425 structured thinks on a more abstract plane than the person who answers questions in a less organized fashion. Only the most politically aware members of the population, Converse maintained, have learned to relate their political opinions to a recognizable belief system, while the remainder tend to waver on various political issues and seem unaware of the conven- tional 'logic' which links them together. We might provide an illustration of attitude structure by considering the notion as it applies to capitalist doctrine. No strict logical considerations can explain why someone who believes in the sanctity of private property should also believe in business competition, unlimited private profits, and a sharply differentiated wage system. However, in many Western nations, these ideas have for at least two centuries been intimately linked as part of the capitalist creed. Hence, in so far as individuals organize their beliefs with the capitalist creed in mind, they ought to exhibit consistently strong (or weak) support for such values as private property, economic competition and the profit system. Similar considerations, of course, hold for the values embodied in the democratic tradition. The problem of attitude structure has become the focus of considerable scholarly debate. Researchers disagree on how to conceptualize and measure structure, whether the degree of structure varies from one status group to another, and whether the amount of structure in the electorate as a whole has increased over the past few decades. Most of the research on belief systems measures structure by examining the correlations between pairs of issue positions for a given group of respondents. The average magnitude of these inter-item correlations is then taken as an indication of the extent to which the respondents connect the issues by reference to abstract principles. One difficulty with this approach is that high average inter-item correla- tions do not always reflect sophisticated or structured political thought. As Converse himself observed, some individuals with little political know- ledge might nevertheless respond consistently to a series of questions about a particular social group simply because they like or dislike that group.21 One might elaborate on this theme by observing that a respondent who possesses certain personality traits - say, generalized feelings of aggression - might be led to express opinions that are consistent (in that they all reflect rage, for example), but that are nevertheless unrelated to any structured political ideology, such as liberalism or conservatism. Probably the best known (if controversial) example of ideology as the expression of personality is the anti-democratic pattern of values associated with authoritarianism. The authoritarian syndrome is characterized by the desire to punish and condemn unconventionality; a fascination with power, toughness and dominance; hostile impulses; anti-intraception; a tendency towards stereotypy; the inclination to vilify other human beings; a preoccupa- 21 Ibid., pp. 234-5.
426 CHONG, McCLOSKY AND ZALLER tion with sexual 'goings on', and other 'deviant' traits.22 Whether authori- tarianism can be traced to Freudian personality dynamics, as Adorno and his colleagues contended, or whether it is a product of a socio-economically impoverished environment,23 this cluster of attitudes is widely acknowledged to be interrelated and to reflect an extremely visceral, parochial and poorly informed outlook.24 Thus, while many regard authoritarianism as a belief system, the presence of consistently authoritarian opinions among the lower socio-economic strata might more appropriately be attributed to inadequate assimilation of the elite political culture than to a genuine endorsement of a recognizable political philosophy. What makes attitude consistency possible even in the absence of social learning is that little information or political awareness is necessary in order for a respondent to relate certain issues to his basic personality needs. Some of the issues relating to democracy fall into this category. A person made uncomfortable by non-conformity and inclined to suppress deviancy needs to possess only a small amount of information - for example, an awareness that certain groups are 'different', 'unorthodox', or 'immoral' - in order to deliver himself of consistently intolerant or punitive responses towards outgroups. Thus, on matters of this kind, unsophisticated people will often be able to provide a series of consistent responses even though they lack a broader political ideology. Does this mean that the attitudes expressed by the politically unaware towards many democratic (or undemocratic) values will be indistinguishable from those of the more aware? Not at all. Our data indicate that the politically aware are far more likely than the unaware to endorse democratic values. Here we are only suggesting that both groups may turn out to be equally consistent in their beliefs, despite sharp differences in their stands on democracy. Social and psychological dispositions, as we have seen, are important for understanding attitudes toward capitalism as well. But given the complex and recondite nature of capitalist doctrine, it requires considerable political awareness for a citizen to relate his concerns - even his so-called pocketbook interests - to questions about the merits of competition, the optimal utilization of property or the free market. Hence, in examining the attitudes of the unsophisticated toward capitalist values, one should expect to find relatively little consistency, even of the kind that arises from moralistic or visceral motivations. Our data presented in Table 9 lend support to this line of reasoning. As can be seen, the average correlation between responses to items in the domain of 22 T. W. Adorno, Else Frankel-Brunswick, Daniel J. Levinson and R. Nevitt Sanford, The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper, I950). 23 Herbert H. Hyman and Paul B. Sheatsley, "'The Authoritarian Personality" - A Methodological Critique', in R. Christie and M. Jahoda, eds., Studies in the Scope and Method of 'The Authoritarian Personality' (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, I954), pp. 50-122. 24 Roger Brown, Social Psychology (New York: Free Press, I965).
Support for Democratic and Capitalist Values 427 TABLE 9 Average Inter-Item Gammas for a Representative Sample of Items Relating to Capitalism and Democracy General public's political awareness Elites Opinion Ideological Low Middle High leaders elite Democratic values. Tolerance-related issues 0'54* 0o65 0'79 0-71 0-82 Non-tolerance-related issues 0-36 0-52 o-6o o-8i 0o87 All democracy issues 0'37 0'45 0o62 0-65 o-80 Capitalist values: 0-23 0-46 0-71 0'74 o-88 (N) (309) (310) (3I0) (533) (1,426) * Cell entries represent average inter-item gammas for the domain and subpopulation indicated. Source: OVS, 1975-77. political and moral tolerance is 0-54 among the least aware members of the general public, and 0-79 among the most aware.25 On such issues as sexual freedom, the right of atheists to ridicule God and freedom of expression for Nazis, it thus appears that the two groups can express consistent (although different) opinions with nearly equal facility. As we move away from tolerance issues or other issues that are heavily laden with affect, attitude consistency among the politically unaware tends to break down (see Table 9 and Figure 5). When we turn to the inter-item correlations in the capitalism domain, for example, we find that the inclina- tion (or ability) of unaware respondents to organize their beliefs in keeping with the more familiar patterns of political discourse is much weaker - in both absolute and relative terms. Among opinion leaders and the politically aware mass respondents, on the other hand, the inter-item correlations are rela- tively high across each of the issue domains we have examined. All this, of course, should not be taken to mean that the attitudes of the elites and the politically aware are entirely uncoloured by their psychological dispositions. Rather, we believe it would be more accurate to say that their basic dispositions operate in concert with more abstract intellectual principles to provide the motivation and rationale for the stands they take on particular issues. Consequently, they are able to respond in a structured fashion to a wide variety of issues, whether those issues relate to affectively neutral principles, or are visceral, moralistic, or punitive in flavour. 25 The measure of association we have used for measuring consistency is gamma. This coefficient is symmetrical and relatively insensitive to the shape of the distribution. See Herbert F. Weisberg, 'Models of Statistical Relationship', American Political Science Review, LXVIII (1974), pp. I638-55.
428 CHONG, McCLOSKY AND ZALLER 1.00 ~~0 ^~*-~?-~~~~~~90~~~ ~~- ^elite Ideological 0.80. 'Xw ' ~^ ^ wopinion E 0.70. i E _ leaders 0 E 0-60- 7 0-50 - a).: 040 - c 0.30 - > < 0.20. General public 0-10 - (Low awareness) I! I I I Tolerance Non-tolerance All All related related issues democracy capitalism issues issues issues Fig. 5. Average inter-item gammas for a representative sample of items relating to capitalism and democracy Source: OVS, 1975-77. That high levels of attitude consistency exist among opinion leaders and the politically aware is, by now, hardly surprising. Our finding that relatively high levels of consistency also exist among the unaware on certain issues is, however, less familiar, and hence warrants closer examination. A striking aspect of the consistency of the unaware, compared with that of the aware, is its anti-democratic bent. This difference in content is illustrated by the scattergram in Figure 6, which represents the correlation of responses to two short scales measuring tolerance. The first of these measures, the 'neutral' tolerance scale, includes questions that ask, for example, whether 'crackpots' and other ideologically neutral groups should enjoy freedom of expression; the second, a morals tolerance scale, includes questions about such issues as the censorship of 'obscene' books, prayers in the public schools and the regulation of adult sexual conduct. As Figure 6 shows, responses to these two scales are correlated almost as strongly among the least aware as they are among the most aware. (The Pearson r's are 0-59 versus 0-71.) The two groups, however, still differ markedly in the direction (or content) of their attitudes. The politically unaware predominantly fall into the lower left quadrant of the scattergram, which indicates consistently low scores on the two tolerance measures, while the aware, by contrast, mostly fall into the upper right or consistently pro-democratic quadrant. Notwithstanding the consistency of the unaware on some types of issues, one is tempted to interpret the weakly correlated responses of the unaware to
Bottom decile of general public on political awareness Top d on High 0 0 High o?o 8 0 0 a) O In o 0 00 o% O00 o 000? 0 00 0? 0o 0 00 o O o o o o 00 o0 o 0 0 0 00 0 000 00 00 00 0 0 Ca) 0 CO Q) 0 ui ro 0 (9 0 0 0 0 0 0 08 0o 0 Low 0 00 00 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Low Low Neutral tolerance High Low 0 0? 0 o 0 0 0 Pearson's r = 0-59 P Fig. 6. Attitude structure on tolerance issues among the most and least aware general public Source: OVS, 1975-77.
430 CHONG, McCLOSKY AND ZALLER other issues as an indication that their opinions are superficial or, in effect, 'non-attitudes'. This thesis, which Converse advanced, has stirred a fair amount of controversy, much of it centring on the question of whether the less sophisticated members of the mass public hold stable opinions.26 We are concerned, here, less with this issue than with the question of whether most Americans respond to the values associated with capitalism and democracy in a manner that suggests familiarity with their traditional mean- ings. On this point, our data are clear. Whereas opinion leaders and the politically aware answer questions about, for example, private property, the profit system, and competition in patterns that suggest that they are relating them to some standard evaluation of the private enterprise system, the unaware respond to such questions in ways that, by comparison, are only weakly related to any familiar realm of political discourse. SCALE RELIABILITY AND THE MEASUREMENT OF ATTITUDES In light of these observations, how can we claim to have validly measured the attitudes of the politically unaware towards the values of the two traditions? In responding to this question, one can observe that, appearances to the contrary, even unaware respondents show up in our data as having at least some understanding of what the values of capitalism and democracy signify. As we stated earlier, they can recognize the principles of the two traditions well enough to uphold them in their general form, and are sometimes able to reject ideas that are inconsistent with them. Even on specific issues, it should be noted, inter-item correlations among the unaware are weak, but they are not zero. Survey researchers, in our view, can compensate for the difficulties in evaluating weakly developed belief structures by using batteries of items rather than single items. Whereas single items are prone to sizeable measure- ment error and might have little discriminating power when used individually, a series of questions on a particular topic resembles in some ways a 'depth interview' in which a respondent may sometimes provide misleading answers which do not reflect the true attitudes being measured, but in which he nevertheless manages in the end to provide a fair indication of his point of view. One of the best known results from psychometric theory is that researchers can compensate for sizeable measurement error in the responses of subjects by administering attitude scales that contain large numbers of items. To illustrate this point, we have calculated the scale reliabilities for 26 Philip E. Converse, 'Attitudes and Non-Attitudes: Continuation of a Dialogue', in Edward R. Tufte, The Quantitative Analysis of Social Problems (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1970), pp. 168-89; Christopher Achen, 'Mass Political Attitudes and the Survey Response', American Political Science Review, LXIX (1975), I218-31; Robert S. Erickson, 'The SRC Panel Data and Mass Political Attitudes', British Journal of Political Science, Ix (I979), 89-114.
Support for Democratic and Capitalist Values 431 capitalism measures of several different lengths.27 In making these calcul- ations, we have used the average inter-item correlations, obtained from the twenty-eight capitalism items included in our survey. We have also made separate calculations for the least and most aware members of the general public, and for the ideological elites. As can be seen in Figure 7, short scales achieve acceptable levels of reliability only among the elites. As scales lengthen, however, it becomes possible to make highly reliable measurements of the attitudes of respondents at all levels of awareness. Examining mass attitudes as assessed by our 28-item capitalism scale and our 44-item democracy scale, we find in Table IO that even the attitudes of the least aware respondents can be measured with a high degree of reliability. TABLE I Reliabilities for Scales Measuring Attitudes Towards Capitalism and Democracy Among Elites and the General Public General public's political awareness Elites Opinion Ideological Low Middle High leaders elites Democracy (44 items) 0o85* o-88 o09i 09g 00o95 Capitalism (28 items) 0'74 0o83 o09i 091I 0'95 (N) (309) (310) (3IO) (533) (1,426) * Cell entries are scale reliabilities. Source: OVS, I975-77. We must, however, approach these findings with caution. What they show is that with a sufficient number of probes into the weakly developed opinion structures of the politically unaware, it is possible to measure their underlying attitudes toward capitalism and democracy almost as reliably as we can measure the attitudes of the more aware. Recall, however, that the two groups still vary markedly in the consistency with which they respond to questions relating to the two traditions. Hence, only a handful of items are sufficient to learn how elites feel about such matters as equality, private property, or competition, whereas several dozen items are necessary to achieve an equally reliable measure of the attitudes of the less aware. This indicates that the aware have a better grasp of the general principles that underlie individual issues, and they respond to these issues in a manner that reflects their awareness. Their attitudes, in other words, tend to be more highly organized. The attitudes of the unaware, on the other hand, reflect only a faint recognition of the general principles underlying the two tradi- tions. Whether they score high or low in their overall level of support for the 27 The formula we have used is (k x ri)/(i + (k - I )ij), where k is the number of items in the scale, and rij is the average inter-item correlation among items included in the scale. See J. C. Nunnally, Psychometric Theory, 2nd edn (New York: McGraw Hill, 1978).
1.00 Ideological 0.90 elites 0-80 Top third of mass public -^ 0/ ~on awareness * 0.70 Bottom third of mass > / on awareness 0-60 / 0.50 Q) X 040 / 0-30 0-20 0-10 I I I 2 10 20 30 40 50 Number of items in scale Fig. 7. How capitalism scale reliabilities vary as a function of scale length among elit public * See footnote 26. Source: OVS, 1975-77.
Support for Democratic and Capitalist Values 433 values of capitalism or democracy, they tend none the less to shift between ideas that are categorically favourable to traditional values and others that are categorically critical. Their opinions, in other words, are less homogeneous and structured. The unaware may, of course, have strong opinions on particular subjects. If one could devise an 'objective' measure of intensity of conviction, one might discover that their attitudes are as deeply felt as those of the more aware. It is also possible that the unaware have a roughly serviceable view of the way in which certain features of capitalism and democracy work - they might, for example, know which political party speaks for their interests, or why a business enterprise needs to make profits. But it taxes one's imagination to suppose that their views on topics of this kind are tied together as part of a well-developed ideology. In light of the foregoing, to what extent can one say that the least aware respondents, in scoring low on measures of support for the values of capitalism and democracy, are actually rejecting these values rather than simply failing to understand them? We have shown that the politically unaware are able to respond to individual issues relating to the traditions of capitalism and democracy with enough consistency to enable us to build reliable measures of their attitudes. But the internal coherence of their beliefs about capitalism and democracy remains so weak that their political thought appears to be little influenced by conventional ideological principles of any kind. These respondents appear to have only vague inclinations to favour or oppose the two traditions, and seem unable to make the connection between these inclinations and specific issues. We believe we are on safer ground, therefore, to conclude that their low levels of support for capitalist and democratic values and their poorly developed belief structures stem not from intellectual conviction but from a failure to have learned the prevailing norms. The reasons for inferring this are persuasive: poor education, low levels of political knowledge, little participation in the political system, residence outside the mainstream of the political culture, and incapacitating personality characteristics, such as inflexibility, are all impediments to social learning and are all associated with low levels of support for the values of capitalism and democracy - at least in the United States. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION The arguments and findings of this article can be briefly summarized as follows: Two major traditions of belief, democracy and capitalism, have dominated American political culture from its inception. These traditions constitute a body of norms or authoritative values to which all Americans are expected to adhere.
434 CHONG, McCLOSKY AND ZALLER Individuals differ, however, in their opportunities and capacities for social learning, and hence for the learning of society's norms. In general, people who are politically aware, or who have appropriate social characteristics and psychological dispositions, learn them more effectively than others do. American elite opinion is fairly unified in its support for democratic values. However, two interpretations of the capitalist tradition prevail: welfare-state capitalism and laissez-faire capitalism. Three conventional patterns of support for the values of capitalism and democracy can be identified - the welfare- state liberal pattern (high on democracy, low on capitalism); the nineteenth- century liberal pattern (high on both capitalism and democracy); and a pattern favoured by some strong conservatives (high on capitalism, low on democracy). Political elites and the more politically aware members of the general public tend to organize their attitudes towards capitalism and democracy in keeping with one of these three patterns. The least aware members of the general public, on the other hand, verge towards an 'anti-regime' belief pattern characterized by low support for the values of both capitalism and democracy. An individual's social and psychological characteristics also affect his capacity for learning society's norms. For example, people living outside the main- stream of political discourse or toward society's periphery, less often encoun- ter messages carrying the values of the political culture. Individuals who are inflexible or otherwise psychologically impaired may experience additional difficulty in comprehending political norms even when they encounter them. Consequently people possessing these characteristics tend to score low on the values of both capitalism and democracy. While the politically aware are usually able to overcome such impediments by virtue of their greater political awareness and involvement, the less sophisticated, whose opportunities for social learning are already marginal, often cannot. Even individuals who have been thoroughly exposed to the values of the two traditions differ in their inclination to accept them. People heavily concerned with order and stability are predisposed to score high on capitalism and low on democracy. Those who emphasize change and reform tend to score high on democracy and low on capitalism. Since attitude consistency is usually taken as a sign of political sophistication, it is scarcely surprising that political elites tend to be far more consistent in their political attitudes than the unaware. However, in certain areas having to do mainly with democratic issues of a visceral, moralistic, or punitive nature, the unaware achieve fairly high levels of consistency. To the extent that attitude consistency exists among the unaware, it is to be distinguished from attitude structure, in the sense that it arises primarly from the projection of social and psychological dispositions rather than from an understanding of the
Support for Democratic and Capitalist Values 435 organizing or overarching principles that are involved. Apart from their responses to issues which invite such projections, the least aware exhibit little attitude consistency. While elites are also subject to such social and psychological influences, they are, by virtue of their greater sophistication and awareness, better able to incorporate them into historically sanctioned belief systems. As a result, they can respond in a structured fashion to a wide range of issues, whether those issues reflect affectively neutral principles, or are visceral or moralistic in nature. By combining a large number of items into lengthy scales for measuring attitudes toward capitalism and democracy, we were able to measure the attitudes of the unaware toward the two traditions with almost the same degree of reliability as those of the more aware. None the less, the nature of the attitudes being measured in each case is different. Among the most aware, who appear to grasp the general principles underlying the two traditions, our measures tap attitudes toward capitalism and democracy as systems of ideas. Among the unaware, however, we found little indication that respondents were reacting to the values of capitalism and democracy at this level of abstraction. While they may possess very general inclinations to favour or oppose the values of the two traditions, they often fail to understand the connections between these inclinations and particular issues. In sum, the two traditions of belief that have dominated American political culture throughout its history are only imperfectly understood by large segments of the population. We say imperfectly understood rather than rejected for two reasons. First, nearly all Americans endorse general state- ments of the values of capitalism and democracy. Second, the internal structure of the attitudes of the unaware (who exhibit the least support for the values of the two traditions) is too weak to warrant the use of a term like 'rejected', which implies a considered or principled form of opposition. Their low levels of support for the values of capitalism and democracy can more reasonably be attributed to a failure of social learning. APPENDIX I Democratic Values Scale (OVS Study) (44 items)28 The employment of radicals by newspapers and TV: is their right as Americans/should be forbidden.* If a speaker at a public meeting begins to make racial slurs, the audience should: stop him from speaking/let him have his say and then answer him.* * Clear norm. 28 'Neither' and 'Undecided' response alternatives were also provided for each item in the democratic values and capitalist values scales.
436 CHONG, McCLOSKY AND ZALLER For children to be properly educated: they should be protected against ideas the community considers wrong or dangerous/they should be free to discuss all ideas and subjects, no matter what. Which of these opinions do you think is more correct? Like fine race horses, some classes of people are just naturally better than others/all people would be about the same if they were treated equally. When a criminal refuses to confess his crimes, the authorities: are entitled to pressure him until he does/have no right to push him around, no matter what.* Meetings urging America to make war against an enemy nation: are so inhuman that we should not allow them to be held/have as much right to be held as meetings that support peace.* The use of federal agents to spy on radical organizations: is necessary for national security/violates their right to political freedom.t Most of the people who are poor and needy: could contribute something valuable to society if given the chance/don't have much to offer society anyway. A radio or TV station that always speaks for the rich and powerful against the poor and oppressed: should be required by law to present a more balanced picture/should have the right to favour or oppose any group it chooses. 'Crackpot' ideas: have as much right to be heard as sensible ideas/sometimes have to be censored for the public good.* Should a community allow the American Nazi Party to use its town hall to hold a public meeting? Yes/No. In enforcing the law, the authorities: sometimes have to break the rules in order to bring criminals to justice/should stick to the rules if they want other people to respect the law. Giving everyone accused of crime the best possible lawyer, even if the government has to pay the legal fees, is: necessary to protect individual rights/wasteful and goes beyond the requirements of justice. A newspaper has a right to publish its opinions: only if it doesn't twist the facts and tell lies/no matter how false and twisted its opinions are. Which of these comes closer to your own view? Nobody has the right to decide what should or should not be published/to protect its moral values, a society sometimes has to forbid certain things from being published. If minorities aren't receiving equal treatment in jobs or housing: they should try to act better so that they will be accepted/the government should step in to see that they are treated the same as everyone else.* Our laws should aim to: enforce the community's standards of right and wrong/protect a citizen's right to live by any moral standards he chooses. The freedom of atheists to make fun of God and religion: should not be allowed/is a legally protected right.* Tapping telephones of people suspected of planning crimes: is necessary to reduce crime/should be prohibited as an invasion of privacy. When it comes to free speech, extremists: should have the same rights as everyone else/should not be allowed to spread their propaganda.* Prayers in the public schools should be: permitted/forbidden. Laws protecting people accused of crime from testifying against themselves should be: strengthened/weakened or abolished. * Clear norm. t Contested norm.
Support for Democratic and Capitalist Values 437 It is a good idea/a bad idea for the government to keep a list of people who take part in protest demonstrations? A person who holds a position of great responsibility such as a doctor, a judge or an elected official: is entitled to be treated with special respect/should be treated the same as everyone else. On issues of religion, morals and politics, high school teachers have the right to express their opinions in class: even if they go against the community's standards/only if those opinions are acceptable to the community. Teaching that some kinds of people are better than others: goes against the American idea of equality/only recognizes the facts. Censoring obscene books: is necessary to protect community standards/is an old- fashioned idea that no longer makes sense. Requiring policemen to tell a suspect that he has the right to remain silent: prevents the police from doing their job properly/is necessary to a fair system of law enforcement.* Complete equality for homosexuals in teaching and other public service jobs: should be protected by law/may sound fair but is not really a good idea.t In dealing with crime, the most important consideration is to: protect the rights of the accused/stop crime even if we have to violate the rights of the accused. When the country is at war, people suspected of disloyalty: should be watched closely or kept in custody/should be fully protected in their constitutional rights. Freedom in sexual conduct between adults should be: left up to the individual/ regulated by law.* Books that preach the overthrow of the government should be: banned from the library/made available by the library, just like any other book. Keeping people in prison without trial: is never justified, no matter what the crime/is sometimes necessary when dealing with people who are dangerous. An American citizen: should not mind having his record checked by patriotic groups/is entitled to have his privacy respected, no matter what he believes.* Searching a person's home or car without a search warrant: should never be allowed/is sometimes justified in order to solve a crime. How do you feel about movies that use foul language or show nudity and sexual acts on the screen? They should be banned/they have as much right to be shown as other films. The right of a minority family to move into a particular neighbourhood: should depend on whether the neighbours want them or not/should be the same as that of any other family.* If a person is found guilty of a crime by evidence gathered through illegal methods: he should be convicted no matter how the evidence was collected/he should be set free. If some minorities haven't succeeded in business or the professions the main reason is that: they don't have the natural ability/they haven't been given enough training and opportunity. Efforts to make everyone as equal as possible should be: increased/decreased. If an employer is forced to lay off some employees, he should: let the women go first, especially if they are married/treat men and women employees exactly the same.* The laws guaranteeing equal job opportunities for blacks and other minorities: should be made even stronger/sometimes go too far. Government efforts to bring about racial integration have been: too fast/too slow.t * Clear norm. t Contested norm.
438 CHONG, McCLOSKY AND ZALLER Capitalist Values Scale (OVS Study) (28 items)29 When it comes to making decisions in industry: workers should have more to say than they do now/the important decisions should be left to management. The profit system: teaches people the value of hard work and success/brings out the worst in human nature. The private enterprise system: is generally a fair and efficient system/mostly leads to depression and widespread poverty. A lumber company that spends millions for a piece of forest land: has the right to cut down enough trees to protect its investment/should, nevertheless, be limited by law in the number of trees it can cut. If the system of private industry were abolished: most people would work hard anyway/very few people would do their best. The poor are poor because: they don't try hard enough to get ahead/the wealthy and powerful keep them poor. Unskilled workers (such as janitors, dishwashers, and so on) usually receive wages that are: about right, considering the amount of skill required/much too low for the dirty work they do. Workers and management: have conflicting interests and are natural enemies/share the same interests in the long run. Getting ahead in the world is mostly a matter of: ability and hard work/getting the breaks. Trade unions: have too much power for the good of the country/need the power they have to protect the interests of working people. A person's wages should depend on: how much he needs to live decently/the importance of his job. When people fail at one thing after another it usually means: they are lazy and lack self-discipline/they weren't given a good enough chance to begin with. Under a fair economic system: all people would earn about the same/people with more ability would earn higher salaries.* The way property is used should mainly be decided: by the individuals who own it/by the community, since the earth belongs to everyone. Public ownership of large industry would be: a good idea/a bad idea.* Most businessmen: do important work and deserve high salaries/receive more income than they deserve.t Private ownership of property: is as important to a good society as freedom/has often done mankind more harm than good. The use of strikes to improve wages and working conditions: is almost never justified/is often necessary. Men like Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller should be held up to the young people as: models to be admired and imitated/selfish and ambitious men who would do anything to get ahead. When businesses are allowed to make as much money as they can: everyone profits in the long run/workers and the poor are bound to get less. The land of this country should be: turned over to the people/left in the hands of private owners.* * Clear norm. t Contested norm. 29 See footnote 28.
Support for Democratic and Capitalist Values 439 Government regulation of business: usually does more harm than good/is necessary to keep industry from becoming too powerful.t Working people in this country: do not get a fair share of what they produce/usually earn about what they deserve. Can you depend on a man more if he owns property than if he doesn't? Yes/No. When people don't work hard on a job it's usually because: they just don't care about doing an honest day's work/their job is dull, unpleasant, or unimportant. When it comes to taxes, corporations and wealthy people: don't pay their fair share/pay their fair share and more.t The free enterprise system: survives by keeping the poor down/gives everyone a fair chance. Competition, whether in school, work, or business: leads to better. performance and a desire for excellence/is often wasteful and destructive. APPENDIX II Inflexibility Scale (OVS Study) (15 items)30 In my personal habits: I try to see that everything is carefully planned and organized/i don't usually follow a strict routine and am not always orderly. In politics, you have to think of people: as either with you or against you/as likely to agree with you on some things and oppose you on others. Whom do you admire more? People who go their own way without worrying what others think/people who learn to fit in and get along with others. If I didn't know where my friends stood on the really important questions: it would trouble me a great deal/it wouldn't really upset me. On important public issues, I believe you should: either be for them or against them and not take a middle course/always keep in mind that there is more than one side to most issues. Compromising with people who don't wholly agree with you: is often necessary to get the job done/shows personal weakness. In my behaviour: I sometimes act impulsively/i rarely do things spontaneously, on the spur of the moment. I take pride in the fact that: I try to keep an open mind on most things/i know where I stand on everything I care about. Once I've made up my mind on a public question: I'm not likely to change it easily/i can often be persuaded to change it if someone has a good argument. When it comes to the really important questions about religion and philosophy of life: a person must decide them, one way or the other/it doesn't especially bother me to leave them undecided. When I finish a job: I can hardly wait to get on the next one/i like to relax for a while. In my conduct: I set a high standard for myself and feel others should do the same/i realize that nobody's perfect and I try to relax about it. Which comes closer to what you believe? Most people are strong in some ways, weak in others/the world is divided into two kinds of people, the weak and the strong. * Clear norm. t Contested norm. 30 'Neither' and 'Undecided' response alternatives were also provided for all the items in the Inflexibility Scale.
440 CHONG, McCLOSKY AND ZALLER Most important questions: have a right answer and a wrong answer/can usually be answered in more than one way. In trying to accomplish anything in politics you should: settle for nothing less than total victory/try to achieve the best possible compromise. APPENDIX III A norm can be said to be 'clear' when opinion leaders are highly united in their support of it. A norm is 'contested' when elites hold conflicting positions on it and attempt to solicit public support for their respective positions. Ideally, the determina- tion of clear and contested norms would rely on an extensive and systematic content analysis of the views expressed by the nation's opinion leaders (politicians, the press, etc.). Research economy, however, has compelled us to employ a surrogate measure of the content of elite discussion, namely, the degree to which the respondents in our sample of opinion leaders converge or diverge in their attitudes toward specific issues of public policy. When 80 per cent or more of elite respondents from both sides of the Left-Right spectrum support a democratic or capitalist issue, we have classified it as a clear norm. When differences between the elite ideological camps exceed 50 per- centage points,31 we have classified the issue as a contested norm. The items meeting these criteria at the time of our survey have been so designated in Appendix I. Although we have relied on Left-Right divisions as the basis for determining whether a norm is contested, we recognize that other bases of elite division might have been employed with equal warranty. 31 The calculation of these percentages has been based on respondents who selected one of the two substantive alternatives.