HOW DO PEOPLE CHOOSE IDEOLOGIES?
Many factors determine the political attitudes and ideological allegiance of people.
A few examples will show how values predispose people towards certain ideological preferences. Belief in an individual’s right to privacy and woman’s personal liberty leads Liberals to support abortion without restrictions. Belief in sanctity of life underlies the conservative view that pregnant women are morally obliged to bear their children, and have no right to abort except in extreme circumstances. Liberals again invoke individual liberty to support homosexuality. Conservatives oppose because it negates natural processes and family values.
There is no need to multiply examples. We have already discussed various ideologies and the principles on which they rest. Each ideology takes stand on a whole range of social, political and economic and cultural issues. Each ideology is like a packet with attitude objects and appropriate attitudes towards each such object. Ideologues are therefore unable to get over their predetermined attitude sets towards issues.
An individual’spsychologicaltraitsalsoinfluence his ideological orientation. Individualpersonalityis moulded by family, education, culture and work. Psychologists claim that five individual personality traits influence his/her ideological preferences.
Extraversion signifies an active and energetic approach to social world. It includes traits such as sociability, activeness, assertiveness, positive emotionality or cheerful, optimistic outlook. Agreeableness implies a pro-social and community orientation (as opposed to antagonism) and includes traits such as modesty, altruism, tender mindedness and trustworthiness. Conscientiousness refers to socially prescribed impulse control that facilitates goal-directed behaviour. Its attributes are thinking before acting, delaying gratification, following norms and rules, and planning, organizing and prioritizing tasks. Emotional stability stands for equanimity and is the opposite of negative emotionality. Negative emotions which it avoids include feeling anxious, nervous, sad or tense or
angry. Openness to experience, as opposed to close-mindedness, signifies breadth, depth, originality and complexity of an individual’s experienced moral life.
Political attitudes are typical adaptations that result from interactions between essential dispositional traits and environment. Individuals observe political issues and ideological labels in the social environment. The big five dispositional traits shape the response to such issues, and lead to formation of political attitudes. US political scientists made studies showing connections between these dispositional traits and political attitudes. Conscientiousness is seen to promote a conservative outlook. People with pronounced openness to experience prefer liberalism and leftist views. Those who tend to be anxious opt for authoritarian views. However, many writers still think that political attitudes spring from economic roots.
Besides dispositional traits, some peopleare more psychologically attuned to liberalism or conservatism than others. A liberal has to be fairly tolerant to disorder. Many people are not so inclined; therefore, though they may have no great stake in the system, they resist change because they fear disorder. Yet, some people crave for almost constant change; the status quo never satisfies them.
Age is important in determining political attitudes. Ordinarily, the young are more likely to be liberal than the elderly. One reason could be that older people have a vested interest in the status quo whereas the young would not have yet acquired it. Young people may have weaker sense of commitment and belonging. The elderly feel a stake in society, partly because they have created it, and partly because they have become used to it. Neither of these reasons operates strongly with the young.
One crucial determinant of whether one will be leftist or rightist is how he she views human nature. If one believes that people are bad, selfish, and aggressive, then one is likely to be conservative. Anyone who thinks that people are inherently evil will tend to rely on strict laws and punishment for violators to control errant behavior. On the other hand, people who believe that human beings are well meaning and rational will lean toward the left. They will try to avoid reducing human liberty by “unnecessarily” severe laws, and they will try to reason with offenders. The difference lies in assumptions about human nature on whether people are good or bad.
Traditionally, economic factors were seen as the main determinants of political attitudes. More specifically, it was thought that a person’s economic class determined his political beliefs. It was argued that people from different economic classes generally had different economic interests and these translated into different political viewpoints. Karl Marx was the most prominent proponent of this view. One’s class position and class interest determine one’s political attitudes. Max Weber, while conceding the role of economic interests in determining political viewpoints, was of the view that Marx had over-emphasised the relationship between individuals and the means of production.
Weber argued that a well-paid worker may have more in common with capitalists than with other lower paid workers. It was not the bond between workers that creates a shared set of preferences, but the bond between similar levels of wealth and consumption.
After the Second World War, many features of the classical description of industrial societies became outdated. Increasing mass prosperity created new well off classes and increased the bourgeoisie character of society. The simple distinction between workers and owners of capital or between the wealthy and the poor broke down. New theories emerged based on a sophisticated understanding of the interaction of economics and social structure, and the increased complexity of post-industrial advanced democracies. A new middle class emerged with the fragmentation of society and this group sometimes sided with the traditional workers and at other times with elites.
In Indian politics, caste, religion and regional identities also determine political identities. These are important factors in political mobilisation process, as these factors reflect economic interests. Indian Marxists often identify class with caste. This leads to odd conclusions as when a poor Brahmin priest is seen as embodiment of dominant bourgeoisie ideology in a village. Students can reflect on their own as how the other two factors influence political attitudes.