TY - JOUR
T1 - The Market for Belief Systems
T2 - A Formal Model of Ideological Choice
AU - Gries, Thomas
AU - Müller, Veronika
AU - Jost, John T.
N1 - Funding Information:
Earlier versions of this article were presented under the auspices of the Center for Social and Political Behavior at New York University and the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA) on September 10, 2020. We thank Andrew Caplin, Eric Dickson, Frederik Hjorth, and Yaacov Trope for especially helpful comments on those occasions.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Belief systems play a crucial role when it comes to guiding human information processing, evaluation, judgment, behavior, and social coordination. But why do individuals and groups adopt the specific ideologies they do? And is it possible to use the tools of economics to understand the decisions that are made in the market for ideology? To address these and related questions, we synthesize insights garnered from standard rational choice models, characteristics demand theory, and the distance theory of voting, as well as theory and research on “elective affinities” in psychology. We offer a formal analysis of the role of psychological and consumption needs in shaping the individual’s choice of ideology under circumstances of uncertainty and limited resources and other constraints, including informational costs associated with learning about the potential match values of specific ideologies. After providing a few examples, we mention one non-obvious implication of our model, namely that people can be “wrong” about their own ideological preferences according to the criteria of rational consistency and utility maximization.
AB - Belief systems play a crucial role when it comes to guiding human information processing, evaluation, judgment, behavior, and social coordination. But why do individuals and groups adopt the specific ideologies they do? And is it possible to use the tools of economics to understand the decisions that are made in the market for ideology? To address these and related questions, we synthesize insights garnered from standard rational choice models, characteristics demand theory, and the distance theory of voting, as well as theory and research on “elective affinities” in psychology. We offer a formal analysis of the role of psychological and consumption needs in shaping the individual’s choice of ideology under circumstances of uncertainty and limited resources and other constraints, including informational costs associated with learning about the potential match values of specific ideologies. After providing a few examples, we mention one non-obvious implication of our model, namely that people can be “wrong” about their own ideological preferences according to the criteria of rational consistency and utility maximization.
KW - Behavioral economics
KW - consumption preferences
KW - formal modeling
KW - political ideology
KW - psychological needs
KW - voting
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U2 - 10.1080/1047840X.2022.2065128
DO - 10.1080/1047840X.2022.2065128
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85133635427
SN - 1047-840X
VL - 33
SP - 65
EP - 83
JO - Psychological Inquiry
JF - Psychological Inquiry
IS - 2
ER -