Ferguson Political Map - Radicalism vs Conservative, Tough vs Tender
We recommend that along with this section of the Culture War Encyclopedia, you see the sections on other political alignment charts.
The Eysenck writes (pages 145 to 147) that L.W. Ferguson
has made a determined effort in a large number of research papers to solve the problem of structure in the attitude field. He used ten carefully constructed scales dealing with evolution, birth control, God, capital punishment, treatment of criminals war, censorship, communism, law, and patriotism, which he administered to various groups of students. We shall not follow the whole course of his very extensive and careful work, in which he showed that his original results could be duplicated on different populations and at different times, but will instead reserve consideration to the main outcome of his analysis. This is shown in Figure 27.*
(* The actual analysis on which Figure 27 is based was carried out by the writer on the basis of figures published by Ferguson. This was necessary as Ferguson has never published the full results of an analysis of all ten measures.)
It will be seen that he also finds two main factors in his analysis and that the positions of the various attitude scales in this two dimensional universe are practically identical with those found in our own work. Attitudes favouring capital punishment and the harsh treatment of criminals are found in the toughminded Conservative quadrant; attitudes favourable to evolution, Communism, and birth control are found in the tough-minded Radical quadrant, anti-war attitudes in the tender-minded Radical quadrant, and attitudes favourable to God, censorship, and the law, in the tender-minded Conservative quadrant. Patriotism appears to lie almost exactly on the Radical-Conservative axis itself. In so far as there is overlap between these attitudes and those measured in our own work, agreement is almost complete.
We are jumping ahead a little bit by referencing the contemporary political compass (consider it a preview), but note that according to what Eysenck above writes about L.W. Ferguson’s model, his toughminded Conservative quadrant is a lot like what we would today characterize as the authoritarian right quadrant, his tough-minded Radical quadrant is like today’s authoritarian left quadrant, his tender-minded Radical quadrant is like our left-wing libertarian quadrant and that his tender-minded Conservative quadrant is like our right-wing libertarian quadrant (see the political compass section).
However, a libertarian would want more personal freedom and less law. We read above that the tender-minded Conservative quadrant is associated with attitudes favorable of law and censorship. Libertarians want little to no law and censorship. Authoritarians want law and order and censorship. Thus, our comparison is flawed. Perhaps it is fair to say that right wing libertarians would adhere more to tradition than to law. In honor-based societies, tradition would do what law does in legalistic societies. Therefore, if we were to replace law and censorship with tradition, than our comparison is far more fitting. We will return the contemporary political compass below. Eysenck continues,
Ferguson, however, does not use these factors or axes as they stand; he rotates them through 45 degrees, as indicated in Figure 27 and emerges with two factors which he calls Humanitarianism and Religionism. These terms describe with sufficient accuracy the nature of the two dimensions or continua which he believes to underlie the structure of social attitudes, and, as we pointed out before, it is impossible to decide between his choice and ours on the basis of the intercorrelations themselves. Both solutions are equally justifiable statistically and both describe the facts with equal accuracy.
What we write and quote here is, or course, no substitute for the book itself. It’s free. No excuses. Read The Psychology of Politics by Hans Eysenck (1954).
Again, we recommend that along with this section of the Culture War Encyclopedia, you see the sections on other political alignment charts.
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We recommend that along with this section of the Culture War Encyclopedia, you see the political alignment charts section.
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