The structure of political cognition: A new approach to its meaning and measurement

Recent studies of political beliefs have largely abandoned the traditional concern with their ideological content for a newfound interest in their cognitive content. This interest in shared cognition has shed new light onwhat people think about politics, but it has largely ignored the question ofhow people think about politics. This paper addresses one important dimension of that void by considering the structure of political cognition and, more specifically, how that structure varies across people. It uses a schematic approach to (1) develop a general unifying theory of the structure of political cognition; (2) suggest the political implications of different types of cognitive structure; and (3) develop an easily administered and construct-valid methodology for measuring the structure of political cognition. By way of illustration, this methodology is used to measure the structure of individuals' political cognitions about issues in their community.