Explaining Political Sophistication

Author(s): Robert C. Luskin

Source: Political Behavior , Dec., 1990, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Dec., 1990), pp. 331-361
Published by: Springer

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/586188

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Political Behavior, Vol. 12, No. 4, 1990

EXPLAINING POLITICAL SOPHISTICATION*

Robert C. Luskin

Debates over the political sophistication of mass publics smolder on. The more
fundamental question, however, is why people become as politically sophisticated or
unsophisticated as they do. This paper develops a nonlinear simultaneous equation model
to weigh explanations of three general sorts: the political information to which people are
exposed, their ability to assimilate and organize such information, and their motivation to
do so. The estimates suggest that interest and intelligence, representing motivation and
ability, have major effects, but that education and media exposure, the big informational
variables, do not. I consider the reasons and sketch some implications for the sophistication
of mass publics, for the study of sophistication and other "variables of extent," and for
democratic theory.

It is in the nature of representative democracy that only a small

proportion of the population can participate in politics to the fullest. The
number of citizens far exceeds the number of offices. Even as ordinary
citizens, however, many people do less than they could. Not everyone
votes, even where voting is easy. In the United States, where registering to
vote takes forethought and initiative, voting turnout just barely clears 50%,
even in presidential elections. Still smaller percentages take an active part
in the campaign or attempt to influence public officials between elections.
Participation, alas, is a variable.'
The quality of participation also varies. The more strenuous forms of
activity are as a rule firmly grounded in perceptions of self, group, or
societal interest. Few people write their congressman or member of
Parliament without definite reason. But voting, because easier and more

Robert C. Luskin, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712.

* An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest
Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 9-11, 1987. The data were made available by
the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research. Douglas Arnold, John
Bolland, Thad Brown, Carol Cassel, Philip Converse, George Kateb, Jan Kmenta, Kathleen
Knight, James Kuklinski, Kenneth Langton, Melvin Manis, Diana Owen, Thomas Rochon,
Marianne Stewart, Paul Sniderman, James Stimson, and Herbert Weisberg have provided
feedback and encouragement. James Gibson relayed his results on the intelligence measures,
even as they came off the printer. Mary Lee Luskin helped in many ways. If errors remain,
they are mine.

331

0190-9320/90/1200-0331$06.00/0 ? 1990 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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332 LUSKIN

common, is more capricious. Voters respond to the personalities and

personal characteristics of the candidates as much as to policy issues.2 So far
as they do take policy into account, they may do so ineptly, either mistaking
their interests (as others would see them, and as they themselves would
presumably see them with further thought or better information) or
mistaking the policies that best serve their interests (even as they
themselves do see them). Under any construction that does not make the
accurate perception and efficient pursuit of one's interests tautologously
perfect, people inevitably make errors, and some people make more than
others.
At bottom, these variations in citizens performance reflect variations in
cognition. Some people know and have thought much more about politics
than others: Their "political belief systems" are more elaborate. This was
the variable the famed "levels of conceptualization" (Campbell, Converse,
Miller, and Stokes, 1960) were designed to measure, the variable about
which Converse (1964) was writing in "The Nature of Belief Systems in
Mass Publics." Terminology varies, but the name on which the literature
seems to be settling is political sophistication.

SOPHISTICATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

More precisely, a person is politically sophisticated to the extent to which

his or her political cognitions are numerous, cut a wide substantive swath,
and are highly organized, or "constrained."3 Some psychologists write in
this vein of cognitive complexity (Schroder, Driver, and Streufert, 1967;
Tetlock, 1983, 1984), meaning the extent to which a person's cognitions of
some stimulus domain are both highly differentiated (roughly, numerous
and wide-ranging) and highly integrated (organized or constrained). Others
refer equivalently to expertise (Larkin, McDermott, Simon, and Simon,
1980; Fiske, Kinder, and Larter, 1983), meaning the extent to which the
person's knowledge of the domain is both extensive and highly "chunked."
Political sophistication is political cognitive complexity, political expertise
(Luskin, 1987b).
This is also the continuum behind the frequently drawn distinction
between ideological and nonideological belief systems. Ideology, in the
sense of this literature, is the high end of sophistication: a political belief
system that is particularly large, wide-ranging, and organized is an ideology.
But all this focus on ideology is unfortunate. It is a person's actual degree of
sophistication, not merely whether or not it exceeds some high and
necessarily arbitrary threshold, that matters.
As matter it does both theory and scattered evidence suggest that the
more politically sophisticated are apt to be more interested in politics (a

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POLITICAL SOPHISTICATION 333

theme on which I shall expand presently); more participatory in voting and

other political activities (Verba and Nie, 1972; Klingemann, 1979b;
Inglehart, 1979); better at spotting and pursuing their political interests (for
inferential evidence of which, see Converse, 1964; Chong, McClosky, and
Zaller, 1983); more resistant to persuasive appeals (Scott, 1963; Chaiken and
Baldwin, 1981; Cacioppo and Petty, 1980) and less susceptible to agenda
setting and priming by the media (Iyengar, Peters, and Kinder, 1982;
though cf. Iyengar and Kinder, 1987); more easily persuaded by reasoned
argument and less easily by mere symbolic display (Chaiken, 1980; Petty
and Cacioppo, 1979, 1984); and more attentive to policy issues and less to
the candidates' personas in deciding how to vote (Miller and Miller, 1976;
Wyckoff, 1980; Knight, 1985).4
I have phrased all this at the individual level, but it obviously follows that
the aggregate distribution of sophistication affects the whole quality of
democratic politics. The less sophisticated the public, the less alert to its
interests, the less active and unswerving in pursuit of them, and the less
resistant to manipulation from above-the further, in short, from the
democratic ideal.5 If, as Converse (1964) has argued, the distribution is
invariably clumped toward the bottom, the limits the kinds of political
behavior we can realistically expect or prescribe.

THE NATURE OF THIS RESEARCH

The greatest single portion of the literature has focused on the descriptive
aspect of this distributional question: How sophisticated or unsophisticated
a public? A somewhat more pregnant question, consuming the next greatest
share of attention, is whether the American public has become dramatically
more sophisticated since the early 1960s. These long roaring disputes may
at last be dying down. The evidence, read aright, is clear. "By anything
approaching elite standards, the American public is extremely unsophisti-
cated about politics and has not become appreciably more so. ... Other
publics . . . are similarly unsophisticated" (Luskin, 1987b, p. 889; see also
Kinder, 1983).
But though this finding obviously compels some doleful premises for
descriptive democratic theory, it still leaves a loophole for lofty prescription.
The publics we have studied may not be very sophisticated; they may not
have become markedly more sophisticated over the periods we have
observed; yet they may nonetheless be capable of becoming so. The
remaining question, then, is how far a largely unsophisticated public can
become or be made more sophisticated, and by what means. Beyond this, in
turn, lies the question of how the distribution is generated.
On this score, the literature is not only scant but theoretically

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334 LUSKIN

underdeveloped. What variables affect sophistication, and why? Which of

its correlates are causal, which consequential or spurious? How do the
variables that affect it affect it? Are their effects constant or variable? If
variable, how do they vary? Does sophistication affect any of its causes in
turn? The questions have scarcely been raised.
This is largely true even of the best previous analyses, in Neuman (1986),
Hamill and Lodge (1986), and Hamill, Lodge, and Blake (1985).6 It is not
just that the theory behind their models is veiled; the theory might be
inferred if the models were sufficiently compelling. But they are not.
Neuman blurs interest and attentiveness with sophistication, then regresses
this composite on a fourteen-variable medley, the majority of whose
members seem remote causes at best. Hamill and Lodge lump education
with intelligence and media usage and political interest with political
activity. The cleanest and most sensible specification is Hamill, Lodge, and
Blake's. Their variable list reads very like the roll of my sophistication
equation, below. But even this model is single-equation and linear, and
mistaken, as I shall argue, in both respects.
It should also be mentioned that these studies estimate their models on
small, local, nonprobability samples.7 The Stony Brook studies (Hamill,
Lodge, and Blake, 1985; Hamill and Lodge, 1986) are experiments,
designed to examine sophistication's effects on information processing, and
are well suited for that purpose. But the study of sophistication's own
dependence on other variables is another story. The process of becoming
more or less sophisticated is too secular for laboratory manipulation. For
this purpose, experiments offer only the hope of more precise measurement
to offset their cost in external validity.
I want here to offer a more explicitly reasoned model. For theoretical
reasons, developed below, the model is multiequation and nonlinear. I
separate intelligence from education, interest from media usage, and the
latter two from sophistication. And I estimate the model on a national
probability sample, from the 1976 American National Election Study
(ANES). I split the sample randomly in two, reconnoitering the first half to
help guide the model and using the second for the "official" estimation. The
results speak to the questions of what variables affect sophistication, under
what conditions, and by how much. It will hardly give away the ending to
say that they contain some surprises.

THE SOPHISTICATION EQUATION

As a very general matter, the conditions that promote any particular

behavior can be grouped under the headings of opportunity, ability, and
motivation. Bedouins in the Sahara do not become champion swimmers;

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POLITICAL SOPHISTICATION 335

ordinary people who enjoy music do not compose great symphonies;

professors with research assistants do not do their own leg work. They lack
the opportunity, the ability, and the motivation, respectively.8
Where the behavior at issue is the acquisition and structuring of political
information, opportunity lies in the information to which one is exposed, so
that the headings effectively become information, ability, and motivation.
To become highly sophisticated, we must encounter a certain quantity of
political information, be intellectually able enough to retain and organize
large portions of the information we encounter, and have reason enough to
make the effort.
In this light, the sophistication equation should include:

Interest in politics: Internal motivation is "interest." People with a keener

interest in politics notice more of the political information they encounter
and think more seriously about the political information they notice
(Chaiken, 1980; Petty and Cacioppo, 1979). They also seek more political
information - an indirect effect we shall come to-but even under a uniform
quota, they would tend to consume more.
Education: Education, too, may be motivational in part. In educated
society, the blankest ignorance of politics may be a solecism. Yet it is hard to
believe that the social penalties for ignorance can be dire, or that the level
of knowledge at which they cease to apply can be terribly high. No, most of
education's effect must be informational. Classes, informal discussions, and
readings expose many students to large quantities of political information.
Retention is of course another matter, but the lengthier the schooling, the
greater, on average, the exposure.
Exposure to political information in the print media (EPIPM): The most
obvious source of political information is the mass media. But for all their
reach, the electronic media convey surprisingly little. Broadcast news is brief
and shallow, and much watching and listening wholly or intermittently nom-
inal, a mere accompaniment to other activities (Robinson, 1977; Stevenson
and White, 1980). Entire newscasts float by, essentially unattended. What
does penetrate, since most people use the media for entertainment, not
information (Stephenson, 1967), may be on the order of Nancy Reagan's
wardrobe. Majorities of TV network news audiences, interviewed shortly
afterward, cannot recall a single story covered (Neuman, 1976; Patterson and
McClure, 1976; Patterson, 1980). Newspapers, by virtual default, are "the
chief source of remembered information" (Graber, 1984, p. 85). Small won-
der, then, that the relationship between exposure to political information in
the electronic media and political information holding is generally slight to
negative (Clarke and Fredin, 1978; Kent and Rush, 1976; Chaffee, Jackson-
Beeck, Duvall, and Wilson, 1977; Robinson, 1972; McClure and Patterson,

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336 LUSKIN

1976; Patterson and McClure, 1976; Patterson, 1980). In the first half of the
present data, too, the inclusion of television and radio reduces the media
exposure coefficient and the R2. Thus, to give the variable a fair chance, I
have confined it to the print media.
Intelligence: We need not see cognitive ability as unidimensional to find
intelligence, defined as the central tendency of cognitive abilities, a useful
concept (Carroll and Maxwell, 1979). Experiments confirm that brighter
subjects do better at learning, retaining, and extrapolating from information
of any complexity (Baron, 1982; Campione, Brown, and Bryant, 1985). The
more complex, the steeper the gradient. Thus, brighter people should
accumulate more, and more complex, information about politics, other
things (most notably interest) being equal (White, 1969; Harvey and
Harvey, 1970; Renshon, 1977; Graber, 1984). Indeed, the dependence on
intelligence should be greater for political than for many other sorts of
knowledge, because politics is more abstract and remote-simply "harder
material"-than, say, sports or cooking.
Occupation: In large proportion, those willing to spend the time and
effort to obtain large quantities of political information may be "those who
need the details for other purposes: e.g., a farmer who needs to know about
trade legislation in order to determine what proportion of his land should be
planted in crops" (Popkin, Gorman, Phillips, and Smith, 1976, p. 788). The
more politics impinges on one's work-the more political, governmental, or
conditioned by government policies it is-the more politically sophisticated
it may be necessary, profitable, or professionally advantageous to be. In
addition, more politically impinged occupations provide more political
information. Information about what the government is doing or is likely to
do, at least in certain policy domains, and about what effects its actions are
likely to have, marches even unbidden across the desks of many corporate
executives, for example (Popkin et al., 1976).

FURTHER EQUATIONS, ADDITIONAL VARIABLES

Not all these variables can be taken as exogenous. Sophistication depends

on interest, but interest also depends on sophistication. We need only think
of our likely reaction to the prospect of reading some potentially informative
text, on advanced topology, for instance, for which we utterly lack the
technical background. Intelligibility is a function of prior knowledge
(Bransford and Johnson, 1972; Dooling and Lachman, 1971; Chiesi, Spilich,
and Voss, 1979), and unintelligibility the nemesis of interest. There is a
"cognitive element to information costs" (Converse, 1975, p. 97). But if
interest is therefore endogenous, EPIPM must be endogenous, too, because
people who are more interested in a subject tend to read more about it.

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POLITICAL SOPHISTICATION 337

Hence we must write two further equations, for interest and EPIPM. For
the interest equation, two additional variables suggest themselves:

Parental interest in politics: Through both observational learning and

direct reinforcement, children should tend to absorb the political
enthusiasm or apathy of their parents. By adulthood, the influences of other
people and experiences have diluted the effect, but some correspondence
remains (Jennings and Niemi, 1974; 1981; Brody and Sniderman, 1977).
Age: For various reasons-declining competition from more pressing
concerns, "mere exposure" (Zajonc, 1968) perhaps-political interest should
and apparently does increase monotonically with age (Glenn and Grimes,
1968).

Education or occupation, sex or race? Several other variables may seem

to enter the model at this point. Incentives to learn about politics may
eventually be internalized in "interest," and to the extent that this occurs,
the variables that control the incentives-occupation and, more arguably,
education-should be in the interest equation. Another possibility is that
sex or race has an effect, the residue of historical exclusion and
discouragement. When added, however, these variables all have thoroughly
insignificant effects.9 The social barriers that may once have dampened
blacks' and women's interest must no longer be steep enough to do so, and
the internalization of educational and occupational incentives must occur
through their effects on sophistication.10

For the EPIPM equation, the pool is unfortunately thinner. Only one
addition variable suggests itself:

Exposure to the print media in general (EPMG): People obviously cannot

get political news from newspapers or magazines without reading them, and
the more regularly they read them, the more often they will at least bump
into the political information they carry.

This, then, in causal outline, is the model. Note from the diagram in
Figure 1 that these direct effects we have been positing imply indirect
effects as well. Sophistication affects EPIPM through interest; EPIPM
affects interest through sophistication; age, parental interest, and EPMG
affect sophistication through interest and EPIPM.1

A QUESTION OF FORM

Alas for convenience, the reasoning with which we launched these

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338 LUSKIN

Exposure to the Print

Media in General (EPMG)

Parental Exposure to Political

IntInterest Interest in * Information in the
Politics Politics Print Media (EPIPM)

Age Political
Sophistication

Intelligence Education Occupation

FIG. 1. The model

hypotheses suggests something other than the usual linear equation

People somehow kept from birth from all political information will not kno
anything about politics, no matter how cognitively able they are or how
interested in the subject they might (hypothetically) be. Neither will people
who have no reason or desire to give politics their attention, no matter how
able they are or how much political information there is about them. An
neither will people in comas, no matter how much political informatio
passes in front of them and no matter how interesting they migh
(hypothetically) find it. No one factor-neither information, nor motivation,
nor ability-can have an effect unless the other two are nonzero. T
greater the others, the greater the effect. Motivation makes a bigger
difference for the abler and more information-exposed, information a bigge
difference for the abler and more highly motivated, ability a bigg
difference for the more highly motivated and information-exposed. In short
we expect the effects to be positive and increasing functions of the othe
variables.
The simplest and most tractable form consistent with this reasoning
the multiplicative. Letting y, = sophistication, Y2 = interest, y3 = EPIPM
xl = education, x2 = occupation, x3 = intelligence, x4 = age, x5 =
parental interest, and x6 = EPMG, we write

Yil= YloY10Y2y13 Yi1 x2x3u,il (1.1)

where the O3's and y's are unknown parameters,

disturbance, and the i subscript distinguishes the ith ob

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POLITICAL SOPHISTICATION 339

... ., N). First-half estimation of the Box-Cox model in the same variables
supports this specification over the linear alternative.12
Now, for continuous y's, interest's (y2's) direct effect on sophistication
(yl)-the immediate change that could be expected in yl for each
unit-change in Y2, if Y2 could be manipulated independently of yl and y3-is

aEO(YillYi2,Yi3,Xil,i2,xi3)/Y 2 2 ' +2(ol2-)yi313x1Ylllx2l12xY313, (2)

where E? denotes the hypothetical expectation from (1.1) if u1 were

independent of Y2 and y3 (see Goldberger, 1964, p. 387), and the "adjusted
scale factor" 'yj+ = (exp 12 oa)y^lo.13 Given that the variables are always > 0
and that Yio0 (and thus Y10) > 0, this effect is nonzero iff (if and only if) 112 0
0, positive iff P12 > 0, and negative iff 312 < 0. If positive, it is an increasing
function of y2 iff P12 > 1, a decreasing function of y2 iff P12 < 1, and constant
with respect to y2 iff P12 - 1. Again if positive, it is an increasing function of
some other explanatory variable, say xi, iff y1l > 0, a decreasing function of
x1 iff y11 < 0, and constant with respect to xl iff yl1 = 0. The theoretical
expectation that the effects are all positive and increasing functions of the
other explanatory variables thus becomes a stipulation that the 3's and y's
be positive.
For simplicity, we cast the other equations similarly, a choice that seems
as good as any for interest and theoretically attractive for EPIPM. Politically
apathetic readers may ignore the political content of the newspapers and
magazines they read, while even the most avid spectators cannot get
political information from newspapers and magazines unless they read
them. Each variable's effect should increase with the value of the other.
Hence, the rest of the model is

Yi2 = 'Y2oy21xY44x2si2 (1.2)

Yi3 = Y30y32x 36ui. (1.3)

MEASUREMENT

The measurement of most of these variables is straightf

conventional and needs no extended comment. Age
scored in years, the latter up to 17 for postgraduate st
(which would snarl estimation), people with no formal
at .01. EPIPM is gauged as the sum of the frequenci
respondent reads about politics in newspapers and abou
magazines, EPMG as whether or not he or she reads a d
is indicated by the extent to which the respondent

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340 LUSKIN

going on in government and public affairs most of the time, whether there's
an election going on or not," as opposed to not being "that interested." The
general scheme is to score the polytomies by (1, 2,. . . , C), where C is the
number of categories, and the dichotomies (occupation and EPMG), whose
bottom categories seem closer to absolute zero in relation to the category
above, by (.5, 1.5.).14
Only three variables need further discussion, the first of course being
sophistication itself. The measure of sophistication is a compound of three
elements: two measures of integration (1, and 12) and one measure of
differentiation (D). The first two are streamlined, trichotomous versions of
Campbell et al.'s (1960) "levels of conceptualization" (LC)15 and Converse's
(1964) typology of "recognition and understanding" (RU), based, respec-
tively, on the questions soliciting open-ended evaluations of parties and
candidates and the questions asking respondents to say which party is (or is
generally seen as) more conservative and what they mean (or is generally
meant) by that. The present versions distinguish only (1) responses abstract
enough to have at least the scent of "ideology," (2) narrower but still
substantive responses, referring to clearly defined issues or groups, and (3)
vague, policy-irrelevant, or empty responses.16 Both are scored (0, 1, 2). The
third element D is simply the number of policy issues, out of a total of 11,
covering much of the landscape of then current political debate, on which
the respondent can both locate him- or herself and correctly locate the
parties (the Republicans to the right of the Democrats).17 The combination

S = (I, + 12 + 1) (D + 1),

thus yields a scale from 1 to 60.18

I claim several advantages for this measure. First, the original LC and RU
measures make some dubious distinctions-between Levels B (group
references) and C (mostly specific issue references) in the former and among
the three lowest strata (mildly different manifestations of ignorance) in the
latter. 1, and 12 avoid these distinctions. Second, devices like the LC, by far
the most popular sort, overrate respondents who use terms like "liberal"
and "conservative" without understanding them much (Smith, 1980, 1981).
Devices like Converse's RU, on the other hand, overrate respondents who
understand the terms but do not apply them much. Thus, the combination
11 + 12 is better than either I1 or I2 individually. Third, the more direct
admeasurement of differentiation in D, a novel feature, lifts S above ,1 + 12.
In all, S performs handsomely (see Luskin, 1987b, for details).
A second refractory variable is occupation qua political impingement. As
a rough first swipe, I attempt only the dichotomous distinction between
more and less politically impinged occupations. By way of illustration, I

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POLITICAL SOPHISTICATION 341

place factory and clerical workers, computer specialists, and even teachers
outside the social sciences in the low-impingement category and lawyers,
physicians, entrepreneurs, and most administrators in the high-
impingement category.19 This measurement is admittedly crude but at least
addresses the right variable. The norm is to score occupation by status, but
status is not what should matter; political impingement is.
The most elusive variable, however, is intelligence. Few national
probability samples provide much to work with. Education, the most
frequent stand-in, is conceptually and empirically too different. We all must
know people who never went to college but are mentally nimble and lithe;
certainly, we all must know dull-witted students who will nonetheless get
their degrees. Education may sharpen ability but is far from the same thing.
The General Social Survey (GSS) conducted at irregular intervals by the
National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago has
frequently included a vest-pocket measure of intelligence in the 10-item
Gallup-Thorndike vocabulary test, but lacks the political items to cover the
rest of the model. Neuman (1986) makes passing use of a similar test in the
1973 Bay Area Survey, and Lodge and his colleagues (Hamill, Lodge, and
Blake, 1985; Hamill and Lodge, 1986; among other studies) have applied
lengthier ones in their experiments, but these data are all from small, local,
nonprobability samples, as previously noted.
The only real option, in a national probability sample extensively
questioned about politics, is the interviewer's rating, at the end of the
ANES interviews, of the respondent's "apparent intelligence," a measure
with obvious problems. Interviewers are hardly expert judges, and their
ratings may in part be seepage from other variables. Following an interview
about politics, interviews may rate more politically sophisticated respon-
dents as more intelligent. Or they may rate more highly educated
respondents as more intelligent, on the assumption that they must be.
Still, a variety of circumstantial evidence suggests that the interviewer
ratings do catch something that behaves plausibly like intelligence. A panel
on an earlier survey found a same-interviewer reliability of .7 and an
inter-interviewer reliability of .6 (Campbell, Converse, and Rodgers, 1976).
And the correlations between "intelligence" and sophistication (.41) and
between "intelligence" and education (.58) are no higher than might be
expected if "intelligence" measures only intelligence, which should after all
be substantially correlated with both. Indeed, the correlation with
education accords beautifully with correlations between education and IQ
scores, which cluster fairly tightly around .6 (Duncan, 1968).
The most direct-and reassuring-evidence, however, comes from a
panel on the 1987 GSS survey. The interviewers rated the respondents'
intelligence on much the same scale as the ANES interviewers do, and in a

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 342 LUSKIN

paper and pencil questionnaire administered after the interview, respon-

dents took both the usual 10-item Gallup-Thorndike test and a second
12-item test due to Cattell. There is no reason to expect these interviewers
to be any more expert at judging intelligence or any less swayed in their
judgments by the respondent's possession or lack of diplomas than their
ANES counterparts, and since the interview schedule for this special panel
is heavily political (focusing on tolerance), the ratings may be deflected
toward sophistication, just as the ratings in the ANES study may be. Yet, for
all the likely error and confounding, the interviewer ratings are as highly
correlated with the Gallup-Thorndike measure as the Gallup-Thorndike and
Cattell measures are with one another, at .40 (Gibson and Wenzel, 1988).20
In all, the interviewer ratings seem about as empirically valid as most of
the attitudinal measures we unabashedly use all the time. This may be
something of a backhanded compliment, and I do not even wish to insist
that it is perfectly true. In the end, it is simply a case offaute de mieux. A
more objective, psychometric measure would be nice, but for now this is all
we can do, and the importance of separating intelligence from education
makes it worthwhile.
Table 1 provides a summary and reminder of these scorings in the form of
the variables' minima, means, and maxima.21

ESTIMATION AND RESULTS

Logarithmic transformation renders (1.1), (1.2), and (1.3) linear in the

parameters (with the innocuous exceptions of yio, Y20, and y30), and the usual
rank condition confirms identification, so that any standard simultaneous
equations estimator will serve. Table 2 presents the two-stage least squares
(2SLS) estimates, their asymptotic standard errors, and the R2s.22

TABLE 1. Minima, Maxima, and Means

Sample*
Minimum Maximum Mean

Political sophistication 1 60 16.740

Interest in politics 1 4 2.902
EPIPM 1 7 3.662
Education .01 17 11.756
Occupation .5 1.5 .690
Intelligence 1 5 3.320
Age 17 87* 44.904
Parental interest in politics 1 5 2.798
EPMG .5 1.5 1.208

* The maximum valu

other minima and ma

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POLITICAL SOPHISTICATION 343

TABLE 2. Structural Parameters

Equation Explanatory Variable Parameter Standard Error

Sophistication
Constant 1.750 .418
(adjusted) (2.331)
Interest 1.680 .587
EPIPM - .075 .306
N = 740 Education .016 .075
R2 = .299 Occupation .176 .066
Intelligence .381 .199
Interest
Constant .838 .120
(adjusted) (.906)
N = 744 Sophistication .427 .034
R2= .270 Age .005 .034
Parental interest .067 .029
EPIPM
Constant .799 .073
(adjusted) (.918)
N = 846 Interest 1.389 .101
R2 = .441 EPMG .180 .043

Direct Effects

The estimates generally conform to expectation. All but three are

significantly greater than zero, as predicted, although the insignificant ones
are thoroughly insignificant.23 Neither EPIPM nor education seems to affect
sophistication, nor does age seem to affect interest. We shall return to these
negative results presently.
Assessing the nonzero effects is difficult, because they vary. Interest's
effect on sophistication depends significantly on occupation, intelligence,
and interest itself (and insignificantly on education and EPIPM). How
influential is interest? To some extent, the answer can only be, it depends.
Yet some effects are generally much bigger than others, even so. A partial
but useful summary is the greatest possible difference (hereafter, GPD) that
any change in the explanatory variable can be expected to make to the
dependent variable.24 The GPD for interest's (y2's) effect on sophistication
(yi) is

o(4)f12ya13,yllx21Y 3 -y lo(1)12yl3x1llX11x2xy 3 ,

where 1 and 4 are interest's minimum and maximum. note the continued
presence of Y3, x1, x2, and x3. The nonlinearity has been integrated out, but

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 344 LUSKIN

TABLE 3. Greatest Possible Differences (Direct)

GPD
When the Other Explanatory
Variables Are at Their:

Dependent Explanatory
Variable Variable Minima Means Maxima

Sophistication
Interest 15.390 30.171 44.810
EPIPM -.260 -2.911 -6.726
Education .204 -2.149 5.442
Occupation .354 3.924 8.718
Intelligence 1.407 10.922 22.774
Interest

Sophistication 4.367 4.700 4.902

Age .008 .028 .050
Parental interest .103 .348 .603

EPIPM
Interest 4.743 5.558 5.780
EPMG .175 .773 1.212

the nonadditivity rema

variables, however, the G
yl. Table 3 shows the estim
all at their minima, all at t
These figures show that
variables are discouraging
do with politics-a max
sophistication by some 15 p
to 30 for people of averag
intelligent people in polit
more conditional effect, be
interest and occupation
maxima, however, it can
Brains, in the absence of in
interest, they count for a
more conditional in turn. O
having a politically impin
due to education and EPIP
much stock in even these
insignificant by miles.
Interest, for its part, de

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POLITICAL SOPHISTICATION 345

TABLE 4. Reduced-Form Parameters

Equation Explanatory Variable Parameter Standard Error

Sophistication Constant 2.484 1.708
(adjusted) (3.182)
Education .049 .178
Occupation .538 .251
Intelligence 1.165 .251
Age .024 .157
Parental interest .323 .139
EPMG -.041 .170

Interest Constant 1.235 .490

(adjusted) (1.334)
Education .021 .076
Occupation .230 .112
Intelligence .497 .112
Age .015 .101
Parental interest .205 .067
EPMG - .018 .073
EPIPM Constant 1.072 .603
(adjusted) (1.210)
Education .029 .106
Occupation .319 .155
Intelligence .691 .160
Age .021 .128
Parental interest .285 .090
EPMG .156 .118

an enormous differe
interest also makes a d
of sophistication. E
differences in inter
much exposure to th
interested in politi
appreciable differenc

Total Effects

The multiplicative structural equations (1.1) (1.2), and (1.3) imply

multiplicative reduced forms. For sophistication (yl), for instance,

Yil = Tr10ii2
oXfl'1Xlx212^xr13xr14X`515l5x16'V,
-i3 -i4 -i5 -i6 vi i , (3 (3)

where the Tr's, known functions of the structural 1's and y

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 346 LUSKIN

and vl, a known function of the structural P's and u's, is a disturbance.26
Taking expectations and derivatives gives the exogenous variables' total
effects-their effects controlling only for the other exogenous variables
(hence leaving the intervening endogenous ones free to operate). For
example, education's (xl's) total effect is

aE(YillxXi,xi2 .. . xi6)/+axil
x~)/x~= -'
1)T1Tx112
1Trl"0-il 213
'~i2` 14XT-50 t 16
'~i3 'i4 aiS- '~i6' (4)

where the adjusted scale factor rTo- = (exp 1/2(r)Trlo, where ar now denotes
E(ln vil)2.27
The Tr's must be positive, if the B's and y's are,28 and the total effects
should consequently be positive and increasing functions of the other
exogenous variables.29 We can estimate the Tr's by implication from the
2SLS estimates of the PB's and y's, obtaining the asymptotic standard errors
as in Goldberger, Nagar, and Odeh (1961).30
Table 4 shows that all the significant estimates are indeed positive,
although not all are significant. Intelligence, occupation, and parental
interest affect sophistication. Education, age, and EPMG do not. EPMG
arguably affects EPIPM, while intelligence, occupation, and parental
interest affect both EPIPM and interest. Education and age affect neither.

TABLE 5. Greatest Possible Differences (Total)

GPD When the Other Exogenous

Variables Are at Their:

Dependent Variable Exogenous Variable Minima Means Maxima

Sophisticaiton Education .810 5.611 17.445
Occupation 1.484 12.224 25.485
Intelligence 10.164 24.608 48.351
Age .074 .704 2.195
Parental interest 1.255 8.821 23.151
EPMG -.085 -.824 -2.515
Interest Education .181 .445 .753
Occupation .308 .815 1.163
Intelligence 1.311 2.059 2.868
Age .027 .075 .126
Parental interest .418 .966 1.464
EPMG -.021 -.061 -.102
EPIPM Education .195 .776 1.632
Occupation .339 1.499 2.488
Intelligence 1.650 3.524 5.648
Age .028 .207 .284
Parental interest .470 1.718 3.096
EPMG .151 .645 1.325

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POLITICAL SOPHISTICATION 347

With the possible exception of EPMG's effect on EPIPM, which only

scrapes significance at the conventional .05 level, these results are no
surprise, given the structural results in Table 2.
Again the best way of sizing up the effects is by the corresponding GPDs.
Now, however, the appropriate GPDs are total, instead of direct:
differences of expectations based on the reduced form. The total GPD that
education (xl) can make to sophistication (yl) is

TlO(17Tlx-11X 12Xr13X 14X-r15~.J1X16 X'12314.15,'16

1 i2 i3 i4 6 r( 01)1lx i2 2X i13Xi4 X4X15x-i6

where .01 and 17 are education's minimum and maximum. Ta

the estimated total GPDs when other exogenous variable
minima, means, and maxima.
Here we see that with interest factored out, sophisticatio
heavily on intelligence. Even for people from politically uninvol
and in politically impinged jobs, a maximum difference in
makes a perceptible difference to sophistication. For people
politicized families and in politicizing jobs, it makes an enormou
Occupation and parental interest are less important. Neithe
influence when other variables are unpropitious. Occupatio
difference for unintelligent people from apolitical fami
politicization of the family makes little different for unintellig
politically uninvolving occupations. Both, however, gain some m
as the other variables approach their averages, and a sizable one b
the other variables approach their maxima. For highly intelli
politically impinged occupations, growing up in a family th
versus not much interested in politics can raise or low
sophistication by 25 points, and for highly intelligent people br
highly politicized families, working in a politically imping
politically insulated occupation can account for a similar differen
the lower portions of the table show that intelligence domin
reduced form equations as well. Occupation, parental interes
(in the case of EPIPM) have some impact, but not nearly so m

DISCUSSION

I offer this analysis with some diffidence, given its reliance on the
interviewer ratings of intelligence. These may indeed bear some
responsibility for the results, in which intelligence looks quite important
and education unimportant. They may inflate intelligence's effect, perhaps
at the expense of education's. And the conservative reader may wish to
regard the estimates above and interpretations below as more than usually

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348 LUSKIN

tentative. Further studies, with better measures, will tell how far they are
right. Yet, for various reasons, I do not think we should discount on this
basis too much. I have already cited evidence that the interviewer ratings
are more valid and reliable than they may appear; other evidence supports
the estimated effects more directly. But let us return to this question.
By far the most influential variable, unsurprisingly, is interest. We learn
about the things we care about. The next most influential, after intelligence,
is occupation, a result that needs more comment. The usual pattern is for
education's effect to survive a control for occupation but not vice versa
(Converse, 1974), but here we see that with occupation scored by political
impingement rather than by status-and with intelligence also con-
trolled-it is occupation's effect, not education's, that survives. At the same
time, the effect is relatively tame, contrary to Popkin, Gorman, Phillips, and
Smith (1976). This is not because occupation is handicapped by exclusion
from the interest equation. When added, it has no effect. Occupation's
effect on interest seems to be through sophistication, an effect the model
already reflects. On the other hand, the effect might well be larger, could
political impingement be measured more finely.
Two further positive findings deserve underlining. The first is that
interest depends on sophistication as well as vice versa. The effect, indeed,
is gigantic. And since interest affects other political variables (posterior to
the model, except for EPIPM), the effect redounds to sophistication's
importance, both in the causal scheme of things and (therefore) as an object
of inquiry. The second point is that intelligence, through sophistication, has
a sizable effect on interest and EPIPM as well. Clearly, this is a variable that
deserves more attention, beginning with better measurement.
The most interesting findings, however, are null. Education, in the
conventional wisdom, is "probably the prime predictor of dependent
variables reflecting political interest, participation, and mobilization"
(Converse, 1974, p. 730). Studies showing association between education
and sophistication, in particular, are legion. Why, then, does education fail
so abjectly here? Two simple explanations can be quickly dismissed. The
absence of effect is not just an idiosyncrasy of the second half-sample. The
estimate was similarly insignificant in the first half, and I gave the variable
this second chance only in deference to its place in the literature. Nor does
education affect sophistication through interest, as we have seen.
It is possible, on the other hand, that education has some effect outside
the model. It may not affect sophistication directly. It may not affect
sophistication through interest. But it may still affect sophistication through
intelligence, occupation, or EPMG. Let us consider this possibility more
closely. Education cannot have much effect through EPMG, because
EPMG's own effect is minor. It can have some through occupation, but

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POLITICAL SOPHISTICATION 349

probably not too much because occupation's effect is only moderate, and
political impingement is only moderately tied to education. The largest of
these submerged effects is presumably through intelligence. Certainly
education and intelligence are correlated. But why? Education may sharpen
the intellect, but students who are brighter to begin with are apt to go
further in school. In addition, intelligence and education share a
same-signed dependence on many of the same (or different but positively
correlated) "third" variables, including parental intelligence, aspirations,
and class. To the extent that the correlation is due to intelligence's effect on
education and their mutual dependence on other variables, rather than to
education's effect on intelligence, education's hidden effect must be small.
For now, we can only speculate. To estimate such prior effects, we should
have to push the model's rear boundary back, making intelligence,
occupation, EPMG, education itself (depending as it does on intelligence),
and probably other variables not yet in the model endogenous. But many of
the requisite variables-parental intelligence and child-rearing practices in
the intelligence equation, for instance-lie hopelessly beyond the capacity
of these or any other current data on sophistication to operationalize.
Even short of estimating some such larger model, however, there is
reason to think education's effect overrated. Closer-range studies, of
students in school, show little political learning. High school civics courses
leave only the lightest imprint (Langton and Jennings, 1968). Seniors know
more than they did as freshmen (Torney, Oppenheim, and Farnen, 1975;
Merelman, 1971; Andrain, 1971), but most of the gain is probably due to
maturation, information from other sources, the politicization that results
from being part of a panel study about politics, and improved guessing
ability (Merelman, 1981). Beck (1977), surveying the literature, concludes
(p. 139) that "research has failed to show that the school, either as an
institution or in terms of the individual teachers within it, has much
influence on the political learning of students."
Why, then, do so many cross-sectional analyses of adult samples show a
relationship between education and sophistication? The simplest explana-
tion is the paucity of controls. The studies showing an education effect do
not always partial on interest, and never on intelligence or occupation qua
political impingement. So "education's" effect may really be intelligence's,
occupation's, and interest's. Education may be taking credit for other
variables' work. Students must pick up some political information in school,
but apparently do not wind up knowing much more, other things being
equal, the longer they spend there. This makes perfect sense, once we
recognize that the problem of becoming politically sophisticated by these
standards is not one of scouring a barren environment for obscure
information. In the schools, in the media, on the job, in ordinary

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350 LUSKIN

conversation--messages involving terms like "liberal" and "conservative" or

referring to the parties' positions on prominent issues are almost hard to
avoid. The problem is one of absorbing, retaining, and organizing the
information one meets-a problem of motivation and ability.
Again, this pattern could have been accentuated or produced by the
measurement of intelligence. But that particular cloud would look more
threatening if other recent studies, some with better measures, did not
show similar results. Intelligence has an important effect both in Hamill,
Lodge, and Blake (1985) and Neuman (1986, Figure 5.4); education looks
somewhat more important than intelligence in Neuman, I suspect because
he does not control for interest, but much less important in Hamill et al.
Graber (1984, p. 196) concludes on the basis of her in-depth analysis of 21
Chicago-area residents that intelligence and "experience" (primarily
occupation) predict sophistication better than education. These analyses
have weaknesses of their own, as previously noted, but the generally strong
showing of intelligence and generally weak showing of education suggest
taking the estimates here at something not too far from face value.
How far these results generalize to other dependent variables is
uncertain, but they at least cast a shadow on education's effects. The
selection of education as column variable or regressor is too conventional
and too easy. Education, defined as years of schooling, is easy to measure.
And it is certainly related to participation and other "variable of extent." But
to what degree are education's effects really education's? Does education
affect participation, or is the effect really sophistication's or (one step back)
intelligence's? Arguments for education effects are often really arguments of
intelligence, interest, sophistication, or occupation effects. It is time to
unconfound these variables.
EPIPM's failure may be of similar cloth. Again the result is not merely a
quirk of the half-sample. In the first half, too, the EPIPM parameter
estimate was insignificant, and only (shaken) faith kept it in the equation.
Again there may be excuses. It may be thought, for example, that the
exclusion of the broadcast media is to blame. But the information that comes
over the airwaves is very dilute and lightly attended, and including the
broadcast media worsens the variable's performance. Or it might be argued
that it is cumulative rather than current exposure that matters. Sans
measurement of cumulative exposure, we can only guess about this, but my
guess is that a past perfect version of the variable could not diverge
sufficiently from the present tense to produce very different results. And
again, too, the finding of negligible effect finds some company in previous
research (Robinson, 1972; Chaffee, Jackson-Beeck, Duvall, and Wilson,
1977; Hamill, Lodge, and Blake, 1985).
Hence I believe the lack of effect is authentic. EPIPM and sophistication

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POLITICAL SOPHISTICATION 351

are related, of course, but mainly as a result of EPIPM's and sophistication's

mutual dependence on interest and EPIPM's dependence on sophistication
through interest. People obviously acquire political information from
newspapers and magazines, even radio and television. But they do not
acquire much more, the more often they read, watch, or listen to the news,
with intelligence, occupation, and interest held constant. It does not take
much time with the newspapers, magazines or newscasts for an able,
motivated person to maintain a relatively high level of sophistication. The
key is paying serious attention to and thinking seriously about the
information one encounters, in the media and elsewhere.
People are influenced, to be sure, by what they see and hear. News
coverage may set agendas, shifting public attention from some events and
problems to others (Iyengar, Peters, and Kinder, 1982; Iyengar and Kinder,
1987). Despite selective exposure and perception, political advertising may
change some attitudes. But such effects do not imply much effect on
sophistication. Think of a belief system as a canvas, with the most
elementary cognitions as individual marks or strokes. Some canvases
contain only widely scattered, incoherent dots and squiggles. Others are
dense with meaningful elements, themselves organized into meaningful
scenes. News coverage or political advertising may alter the hue or
arrangement of particular elements, but is unlikely to transform a sparsely
filled Jackson Pollock into a Breugel or a Grandma Moses.
The failure of age is a different story. Perhaps competing demands on
time and attention do not really diminish with age. Or perhaps they do, but
do not really deter interest (as opposed to activity). Either would be
consistent with some previous results. Klingemann (1979a) finds only a
small correlation between age and sophistication. Wolfinger and Rosenstone
(1980, p. 50) find "no consequential relationships between age and such
'motivational terms' as interest in the campaign and in politics, use of the
mass media, and political information." On the other hand, age, unlike
education and EPIPM, shows up with a significant parameter estimate in
the first half-sample (the only difference in significance between halves). Is
its failing to do so in the second half mere eccentricity? Reestimating the
model on additional data should yield a firmer conclusion.
These empirical successes and failures follow a pattern. Sophistication
depends, above all, on motivation (interest, occupation, and, indirectly,
parental interest). It also depends on ability (intelligence). But the big
informational variables (education and EPIPM) have little effect. Education
probably has some effect outside the model, but mostly through ability
(intelligence), not the dissemination of political information. Of the variables
that succeed, only occupation is even partly informational, and it has a
powerful motivational side as well. Sophistication, in these results, is much

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352 LUSKIN

less a function of the information to which people are exposed than of what
they can and are motivated to make of it. The readiness is pretty nearly all.
All this makes for a gloomy forecast. Most of us probably believe-I
myself believe-that where sophistication is concerned, more is better. The
balance of evidence suggests, however, that mass publics everywhere are
woefully unsophisticated by anything approaching elite standards (Con-
verse, 1975; Kinder, 1983; Luskin, 1987b). Is there any prospect for
improvement? From the time of John Stuart Mill at least, most hope has
lain with education (see Thompson, 1970). But if education had the effect it
is supposed to have, the revolutionary spread of education since the 1950s
should have brought a similarly dramatic increase in sophistication. That
there now seems to have been little such increase (Converse, 1975; Kinder,
1983; Luskin, 1987b) is another reason for crediting the estimates above. If
accurate, moreover, the estimates suggest that we cannot expect much from
education in the future, either. Education's effect outside the model may
produce small increases in aggregate sophistication-it may in fact be
responsible for the small increases that seem to have occurred-but it can
only do so much.
A fairer prospect may lie with occupation. The growth of government and
the increasing professionalization and bureaucratization of society have
brought increasing proportions of the work force into politically impinged
occupations and will probably continue to do so. Indeed, the small increases
in aggregate sophistication since the 1950s may owe more to increases in
political impingement than to increases in education. Still, occupation's
effect seems only moderate and probably cannot be expected to tilt the
distribution of sophistication very far.
Other variables have larger effects but little prospect of aggregate change.
Aggregate intelligence may increase with better pre- and postnatal
nutrition, higher average education, and so forth, but surely not very much.
Interest in politics-as opposed to a particular campaign-should be quite
stable, due in part to the inertial drag or pull of prior ignorance or
sophistication. None of the model's variables both has a big effect on
sophistication and promises to change very much in the aggregate.
"Constructively," as opposed to "reconstructively,"31 there does not seem
to be much we can do. At most, we can expect a gradual and very limited
increase, as education continues to spread and the proportion of politically
impinged occupations continues to grow. To hope for more, we should have
to change the parameters, not just the variables, by changing the system.
But such structural changes may be impracticable or undesirable on other
grounds. Sufficiently small polities, for example, may encourage involve-
ment by making the stakes more vivid. But the interrelatedness and
international tensions of the modern world make city-states unattainable.

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POLITICAL SOPHISTICATION 353

And even under a more facilitative regime, the combination of limited

cognitive resources and competing attentional demands may keep politics a
minority pursuit, as it seems to have been even in ancient Athens (Dahl,
1984). This is not the place to dilate on democratic theory, but these results
suggest that a highly sophisticated, participatory public is not even feasible
prescription. How distressing this is, in unclear. But theory, if these results
are right, must accommodate itself to the fact.

NOTES

1. For recent reviews of the levels of public participation in democratic politics, see Crewe
(1981) and Powell (1982, 1986).
2. The literature attempting to weigh issue versus candidate or party-oriented voting is all
atangle -the weights depend on the definitions of the variables and the specification of the
model (compare Page and Jones, 1979, with Markus and Converse, 1979)-but it seems to
me a fair reading that raw partisanship and reactions to the candidates' personas generally
have more influence than perceptions of the candidates' stands on the issues. For a recent
review, see Asher (188, pp. 203-205 and passim).
3. Many authors confuse "constraint" with the statistical patterning of attitudes across
individuals. Here, and as Converse (1964) originally intended it, constraint means cognitive
organization, of which the statistical patterning of attitudes across individuals is merely an
aggregate measure, and an extremely dilute one at that (see Luskin, 1987b).
4. For some brief arguments and further references in support of these propositions, the
reader may wish to consult Luskin (1987a).
5. The less, too, it appears, a less sophisticated public will support the application of
democratic norms like majority rule and the freedoms of speech and assembly to specific
cases (McClosky, 1964; Gibson and Bingham, 1985; McClosk-y and Zaller, 1984).
6. Hamill et al.'s is not explicitly an analysis of sophistication. One of their dependent
variables, however, "partisan schema usage," is almost a doppelganger for D, below, and the
other two, class and ideological schema usage, have a similar thrust. These are all measures
of what Fiske and Taylor (1984) call schema development, an object-specific version of
sophistication, and for objects sufficiently prominent, like the parties, the development of
different political schemas should be highly intercorrelated, and highly correlated with
sophistication as a whole (Luskin, 1987b; Bolland, Kuklinski, and Luskin, 1987).
7. This is not entirely true of Neuman, some of whose analyses use ANES data. His most
important analysis, however, displayed in his Figure 5.4, is based on a small, nonprobability
subset of a Bay area sample.
8. One cannot help but think, in this connection, of the detective's criteria for suspects: means,
motive, and opportunity. Sniderman (1975) places the variables affecting a person's
adoption of a particular opinion under similar rubrics.
9. Altogether, they boost the R2 for the interest equation (1.2), below, by .005.
10. It is in fact education's association with sophistication that those who see an education-
interest connection frequently seem to have in mind (Rosenstone and Wolfinger, 1978, p.
28, for example).
11. A number of macro-level variables-the ideational richness of the debates among rival
elites and the magnitude of the policy difference between them, the frequency and
vehemence of wars, depressions, race riots, and other politicizing events-may also affect
interest and sophistication (and EPIPM) over time or across polities (Field and Anderson,

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354 LUSKIN

1969; Nie, Verba, and Petrocik, 1976; Miller and Levitin, 1976; Miller et al., 1976), but are
constant for a given public at a given time.
12. There are actually several Box-Cox models of varying complexity (Box and Cox, 1964). The
one estimated here is

(Yil- 1) + al=ao
(Yi2 +
1) a+ +
a(Yi3
a +1)a3
+ a(Ni)
(il- )q (N1)
q q q q

(Xi4 - 1)Q (xia - 1)q

+ a4 q + a5 + eil
q q

where q and the a

linear and additive
likelihood) tells wh
since the estimatio
which sustains the
13. I assume here t
which it follows
assumption that E(
equivalent steps lat
(cf. Goldberger, 19
14. In multiplicative
assigned values mak
15. Smith (1980) has
Nie, Verba, and Pe
well. This wilder c
Hagner, 1982) and
(whose face validit
measure here res
improved on theirs
16. These measures
abstraction, baldly
supported by cogn
17. This is a fairly
details.
18. The combinati
requires integratio
score of 0 on eithe
their score on the o
19. The high impin
030-031, 055, 061-
230, 235-245, 265,
20. Their correlation with the Cattell measure is .28.
21. Not-really-quite-interval data may seem to urge a multiequation probit model, but the
measures of EPIPM and especially sophistication are too finely discriminated to make this
attractive, and the difficulty of incorporating nonlinearities in the endogenous variables is
a further discouragement. Another line of attack would be a covariance structure model, to
cope with measurement errors. Again, however, the representation of nonlinearity is a
problem, as is the scarcity of indicators.

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POLITICAL SOPHISTICATION 355

22. 2SLS provides estimates of the exponential parameters (y11, Y24, 132, etc.) and the logged
scale factors (^y = In ygo, g = 1, 2, 3). To recover estimates of the scale factors themselves,
we set ^ygo = exp ygo), where the "As" indicate estimates. Then, to estimate the adjusted
scale factors, we set /go = (exp 2rg) j'go, where Uc denotes the 2SLS-derived estimate of
the logged structural disturbance variance cr2 = E(ln Uig)2, g = 1, 2, 3. The R2s are
computed as the r2s between the actual and 2SLS-predicted dependent variables.
23. All significance statements refer to the asymptotically appropriate one-tailed test at the .05
level.
24. Although to refer to the greatest possible difference is implicitly to take the variables'
maxima and minima seriously, the device applies beyond discrete or limited variables.
Even with more nearly continuous and unbounded measures, we should be able to examine
greatest likely differences, substituting relatively extreme values (those lying so many
standard deviations above or below the means, e.g.) for absolute maxima and minima. See
Luskin (forthcoming).
25. In speaking at once of maxima and minima, and of the variables' being at their means, I am
presuming the existence of values between but not beyond the actual scores, a stance of
convenience I take throughout.
26. In matrix notation, the logged versions of (1.1), (1.2), and (1.3) are

B In Yi + C In xi = wi,

where ln Yi, In xi, and wi = In ui are the 3 x 1, 7 x 1, and 3 x 1 vectors of the ith
observation on the endogenous and exogenous variables and disturbances, respectively, and
B and C are the 3 x 3 and 3 x 7 matrices of parameters associated with the endogenous
and exogenous variables. (The first element of In xi is 1, and the first row of C consists of
In 1lo, In Y2o, and In Y30.) The logged reduced form equations, therefore, are

In yi = P In xi + ei,

where

(N2) P = -B-C

and ei = B-lwi. Exponentiatin

equations. In (3), supra, for inst
is the antilog of the first elem
27. The linear relationship ei =
E(vil) = exp 1/2?a (where again

E(yillxil, Xi2 , Xi6) = TT+O

28. By (N2).
29. By (4), parallel as it is to (2
30. The estimates of the unlogge
adjusted constants yet another
31. A distinction I am taking fr

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