Beyond Content: Psychological Structure of Political Beliefs

Research on the structure of political beliefs is predominantly focused on identifying the dimensions underlying issue positions. In contrast, the goal of this research was to uncover the psychological structure underlying ideological beliefs regardless of their content. Drawing from the diverse literature, we identified 18 potentially relevant dimensions that could describe political beliefs. Guided by motivational model of belief, we expected three overarching factors: importance, certainty, and metacognitive difficulty. Using a comprehensive list of 50 political issues, we verified this structure across the three countries: the US, Poland, and India (total N = 2,838). Our predictions were largely confirmed in the US sample. However, in Poland and in India, there were two main uncorrelated factors: (1) importance & certainty, and (2) metacognitive difficulty. We also found that higher importance, higher certainty, and lower metacognitive difficulty were associated with more extreme positions. However, importance was the key predictor of advocacy intentions. These findings offer a unifying framework for describing ideological beliefs regardless of their content and have implications for understanding ideological thinking, political prejudice, or cultural differences in ideology.