Political sophistication and political deviance: A structural equation examination of context theory.

Abstract

Context and ideologue theory each imply different causal relations between political sophistication, self-confidence, and political deviance. This study used linear measurement and structural equation models to test the plausibility of various causal models dealing with the relations among indexes of political sophistication, self-confidence, print media usage, racism, and political deviance. The findings were consistent with the expectations of context theory and contradictory to the expectations of the various ideologue models. Since at least the time of Gustav Le Bon (1908, 1913), the dominant view in the Western world has been that political deviates and extremists (e.g., fascists and communists) tend to possess overly simplistic, rigid, and generally unsophisticated political schemas. Although this view was challenged by early members of the Frankfurt school (see Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950; Frenkel-Brunswik, 1948, 1949; Fromm, 1941), it still remains by far the dominant model for understanding the nature of the personality-ideology interface. This position has become known as