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LRED Dissertation - FINAL v2.pdf (1.51 MB)

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The Importance of Core Values for Hard and Easy Issues

Elliott-Dorans, Lauren R
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1466677832

Abstract Details

2016, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Political Science.
There are few points of consensus in political science as prominent as the finding that Americans are generally lacking in political knowledge and ideological structure to their opinions. If not knowledge nor ideology, then what drives political attitudes? Are individuals - particularly those lacking political knowledge - capable of forming political preferences that are consistent with some sort of guiding belief system? I argue that core values, such as commitment to liberty and equality, drive political attitudes, even among those who exhibit almost no understanding of political affairs. More so, I argue that these values shape attitudes for issues on the political agenda that are most difficult to understand. Given the grim findings regarding political sophistication in the mass public, some scholars have turned to core values as a substitute for ideology. Researchers argue that while Americans may not be particularly knowledgeable about politics, they are able to use their innate, guiding values in order to discern their preferences on key political issues. While this provides some reason for optimism with respect to the capacity of the general public to form political preferences, there is a large gap within this literature. For nearly thirty years, political science scholarship has differentiated between two types of issues: hard and easy. “Easy" issues are long-standing on the political agenda, and offer clear partisan divides: examples include desegregation and abortion policy. “Hard” issues, such as nuclear energy policy, lack clear partisan divisions. They are often technical, complex, and temporally brief. Research investigating the role of values in shaping political attitudes has focused upon the one issue area in which values are most likely to drive attitudes: easy issues. Despite the recognition that there are easy and hard issues, scholars have largely failed to differentiate between these two types in empirical tests of the relationship between values and political attitudes. In this sense, values have been subjected to the “easy” test for guiding political preferences. The aim of this dissertation is to put them to the “hard” test. Here, I present research from two data sources: the first is an original census-representative survey that asks participants to consider a myriad of political issues to determine whether the public actually perceives differences between hard and easy issues. Next, I test the relationship between values and political attitudes on these hard issues. I then replicate these findings on a suite of issues from the American National Election Studies Time Series data set dealing with same-sex rights. Overall, I find that values indeed pass the “hard” test for shaping political attitudes, although other considerations such as partisanship and affect toward the policy beneficiaries more strongly and consistently predict issue preferences.
Thomas Nelson, PhD (Committee Chair)
Kathleen McGraw, PhD (Committee Member)
Thomas Wood, PhD (Committee Member)
Irfan Nooruddin, PhD (Committee Member)
236 p.
Political Science
attitudes; hard issues; easy issues; political psychology; values

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Elliott-Dorans, L. R. (2016). The Importance of Core Values for Hard and Easy Issues [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1466677832

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Elliott-Dorans, Lauren. The Importance of Core Values for Hard and Easy Issues. 2016. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1466677832.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Elliott-Dorans, Lauren. "The Importance of Core Values for Hard and Easy Issues." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1466677832

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1466677832
555
© 2016, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.