ABSTRACT
In the 1950s and 1960s political scientist Phil Converse used large national surveys to study Americans' opinions and values, and he concluded that relatively few had consistent belief systems – roughly 15 percent, who he termed "ideologues" or "near ideologues". Around the same time Robert Lane conducted lengthy open-ended interviews with 15 working-class men, and, while he found little more consistency of "surface" opinions than did Converse, he identified a set of relatively coherent underlying beliefs about the social order that were widely shared. This chapter presents interviews that show many inconsistencies of "surface" opinions (as Converse found) but coherent "underlying" world-views and identities (as Lane found). Most psychological theories of belief systems seek to identify characteristics associated with where people place themselves on the conservative–liberal continuum that defines the political cultures of the United States and most "modern" democratic societies.
