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The logical foundations of ideology
Author(s) -
Grofman Bernard,
Hyman Gerald
Publication year - 1974
Publication title -
behavioral science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.371
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1099-1743
pISSN - 0005-7940
DOI - 10.1002/bs.3830190403
Subject(s) - ideology , epistemology , sociology , philosophy , management science , cognitive science , psychology , political science , engineering , politics , law
College students' assignments of probabilities to a set of 15 interrelated propositions are shown to be highly consistent with a formal model of belief systems which satisfies the axioms of probability theory and propositional logic and which is based on the operation of symmetric difference. The model allows us to impute subjectively perceived truth functional relationships between propositions in a belief system to actors on the basis of their subjective probability assignments to these propositions and their pairwise conjunctions. The model also enables us to derive measures of the distance between sets of beliefs; of the congruence and consistency of belief systems; and of the degree of polarization of belief systems.