I have long defined ideology as “an army of convictions about how the world is and ought to be.” This definition is remarkably similar to the one provided by Cory Clark and Bo Winegard in their 2020 paper, Tribalism in War and Peace: The Nature and Evolution of Ideological Epistemology and Its Significance for Modern Social Science:

By ideology, we mean, roughly, a mental model of the world and the social order that is both descriptive (how the world is) and normative (how it should be); and by sacred value, we mean, roughly, a value that is held particularly fervidly and that one is incredibly reluctant to relinquish.

Convictions are like sacred beliefs: both are deeply felt and resistant to change. With that in mind, here are some excerpts* from my summer reading:

van Prooijen, J-W. (2021). Overconfidence in radical politics. In J. P. Forgas, B. Crano, & K. Fiedler (Eds.), The Psychology of Populism: The Tribal Challenge to Liberal Democracy (pp. 143-157) Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003057680-10 .

Epistemic clarity [is] the experience of having a meaningful understanding of the world.

Radical political beliefs are associated with epistemic clarity, that is, a clear-cut and straightforward perception of the social and political world. 

Put differently, radical movements tend to oversimplify complex societal problems and processes, which provides perceivers with the feeling that they have a solid understanding of the causes and necessary interventions to address these issues. 

Politicians who take a relatively extreme position in a political debate articulate less complicated arguments than politicians who take a relatively centrist position. 

The political extremes perceive the social and political world in more clear-cut and sharply defined categories than moderates do. 

Belief confidence is a natural implication of epistemic clarity. It stands to reason that when one sees the world as relatively simple and straightforward, people hold their beliefs about the world with high confidence. 

One implication of such belief confidence is belief stability: Attitudes held with high confidence are less likely to change over time than attitudes held with low confidence. 

Zwicker, M. V., van Prooijen, J.-W., & Krouwel, A. P. M. (2020). Persistent beliefs: Political extremism predicts ideological stability over time. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 23(8), 1137–1149. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430220917753

Previous research suggests that political extremists have stronger convictions in their beliefs than moderates. The present research examines the relationship between political extremism and belief stability, defined as the extent to which people change their ideological beliefs over time. [Our two cross-sectional studies] revealed that participants at the left and right extremes report more stable beliefs than political moderates. We then reanalyzed a longitudinal study that tracked actual ideological changes over time during a referendum (Study 3, N = 5812). Results indicated that for ideological orientation measured at three time points, politically extreme respondents had…more stable ideologies over time—than moderates. Furthermore, the effect appeared more pronounced among people at the left than people at the right. 

Turner-Zwinkels, F. M., & Brandt, M. J. (2023). Ideology Strength Versus Party Identity Strength: Ideology Strength Is the Key Predictor of Attitude Stability. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672231189015 

Attitudes tend to be more stable when they are more accessible, more certain and unambivalent, more important, and more morally convicted. [In our study, we found that] individuals with a stronger ideology than average [as self-reported] had more stable attitudes in the United States and the Netherlands.

Putting it all together, then: ideologues are certain their understanding of the world is correct. They know what they know and would be happy to educate others on what should be obvious to everyone. They tend to simplify complex problems and view the solutions as obvious. They perceive the social and political world in terms of sharply defined categories. They know the is, the ought, and how to get from one to the other. Don’t bother trying to change their minds.

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* For the sake of prettiness, I’ve started each excerpt with the capital letter, though some were uncapitalized in the original, because they came later in a larger sentences.

Additional References:

Are Some Political Groups More Ideological than Others? Exploring the Problem Space, February 28, 2023

Beyond Red vs. Blue: The Political Typology. Pew Research Centre, November 9, 2021  

One Way to Detect Signs of Groupthink in Political Circles. Exploring the Problem Space August 10, 2022

Cory J. Clark & Bo M. Winegard (2020) Tribalism in War and Peace: The Nature and Evolution of Ideological Epistemology and Its Significance for Modern Social Science, Psychological Inquiry, 31:1, 1-22, DOI: 10.1080/1047840X.2020.1721233