Conservatism, Personality and Political Extremism

The empirical study of political ideology in mass publics must ultimately be related to political behavior; otherwise, the ideological description of such publics exists in an action vacuum. Yet, the most detailed and sophisticated descriptions and analyses of American conservatives and their characteristics are those which have most notably failed to connect their findings (about opinions, attitudes and ideologies) with consistent or predictable political activity of any kind. This absence of systematic linkage between belief and behavior is primarily a consequence of the general absence of ideological structure in the political orientation of the broad American electorate. But it is also a consequence of the researchers' reliance on a priori ideological measures of doubtful validity. Hence, when the student of politics is informed that reputed conservatives are, or tend to be, authoritarian, anti-Semitic and ethnocentric, or imbued with “… feelings of worthlessness, submissiveness, inferiority, timidity …, …. hostile and suspicious, … rigid and compulsive, … inflexible and unyielding …,” he must question the adequacy of the political designation “conservative” both on descriptive and predictive grounds. Because of these methodological and empirical problems, I suggest that the findings of prior resaerch and hypotheses related to them, be tested in a different manner. For example, if one examines the membership and/or known supporters of organizations which exist to aggregate and channel conservative political demands, the analysis of political ideology and its correlates can be conducted in a definitively political context, with the labels being supplied (or implied) by the actors themselves.