International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

An ideology is a consistent set of related ideas about the nature and goals of society, such as liberalism, conservatism, or socialism. Ideological bias refers to the skewed thoughts and perceptions that such perspectives can produce. One such misperception is →  pluralistic ignorance , an inaccurate perception of how a group member's own opinions relate to those of the larger group. The communications media are widely believed to produce biases in →  public opinion , but the extent and direction of media content and effects are still contested by both scholars and political actors (→  Social Perception ). The behavioral sciences treat political ideologies as internal maps or →  scripts that we all make use of to interpret social and political behavior (→  schemas ; Schemas, Knowledge Structures, and Social Interaction ). An ideological perspective is not necessarily biased or prejudiced. Individuals with a high degree of ideological consistency tend to be well informed and to vote for candidates whose views match their own. In this sense, ideologues are the most “rational” citizens ( Zaller 1992 ). Recent research in cognitive psychology treats ideological bias as a failure of →  information processing. It consists of stereotyped thinking in which new information is distorted in order to make it conform to existing beliefs ( Kinder 1998 ; →  stereotypes ). Social psychologists ... log in or subscribe to read full text