Applied social psychology has linked up with political psychology to figure out our political behavior and why we do what we do or don't do. One thing the influence and change agents want to know is whether ideology is still important today or has it changed from previous generations. The importance of this knowledge will help them to better predict people's voting behavior. They assumed that if ideology still mattered that people would vote consistently with their ideology, such as left/liberal & right/conservative and vote accordingly. However, that is not what they discovered. They found that since WWII, the left/right ideological differences no longer played an important role in politics.
Because:
1. People's attitudes lacked consistency.
2. People didn't seemed to be moved by ideological requests.
3. There wasn't a fundamental difference between left/right ideologies.
4. There wasn't ample differences between left-wing and right-wing view points.
This research was done in 2006. Personally, I find this hard to believe. Most right-wing conservative are vehemently different than left-wing liberals. Just mention Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin to a liberal and see how that goes. Or mention the legalization of medical marijuana to a conservative and be sure to duck. I see people firmly planting their political actions accordling to their ideology. Nevertheless, I am just stating what I am being taught in a major university.
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