Periodic Reporting for period 2 - BSP (Belief Systems Project)
Berichtszeitraum: 2020-01-01 bis 2021-06-30
Belief systems help people understand their social and political world. Social scientists often treat belief systems as if they exist on a single left-right dimension, with some people endorsing left-wing beliefs and other people endorsing right-wing beliefs. Sometimes this is further complicated by treating belief systems for cultural and economic issues separately. In this project, we aim to test the idea that belief systems can be understood as a more complex and dynamic web of beliefs about politcs. This aims to understand the complexity of belief systems and how that complexity can sometimes give rise to other phenomenon like extreme political beliefs and people's reasoning about issues, parties, and politicians. Overall, we aim to estime the structure of belief systems, compare belief systems between groups, compare belief systems within individuals, and examine how belief system structure is associated with feelings of threat (e.g. from terrorism, economic downturns) and persuasion.
At this point in the project, we have examined what is central to belief systems. We find that people's political identities are particularly central to their belief systems and that political policies are less central. On going projects are assessing how belief systems change over time, how they differ between countries, and how they differ between people who see themselves as left-wing or right-wing.
The state-of-the-art typically treats belief systems as if they exist on a single dimension. We've expanded that to treat belief systems as if they are complex and dynamic systems.