Introduction PART ONE: COGNITION Ideas and Beliefs Social Beliefs Structures and Strategies Structures of Ideologies Values Mental Models Consistency Consciousness Common Sense Knowledge and Truth Identity Social Cognition PART TWO: SOCIETY Ideology and Society Groups Group Relations Elites Dominant Ideologies? Institutions PART THREE: DISCOURSE The Relevance of Discourse Discourse Structures Context Reproduction From Cognition to Discourse Persuasion Legitimation Ideological Discourse Structures The Ideology and Discourse of Modern Racism Conclusions

background

Justice, self-interest, and the legitimacy of legal and political authority.

Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach

The self-interest motive is singularly powerful according to many of the most influential theories of human behavior and the layperson alike. In the present article the author examines the role the assumption of self-interest plays in its own confirmation. It is proposed that a norm exists in Western cultures that specifies self-interest both is and ought to be a powerful determinant of behavior. This norm influences people's actions and opinions as well as the accounts they give for their actions and opinions. ionparticular, it leads people to act and speak as though they care more about their material self-interest than they do. Consequences of misinterpreting the “fact” of self-interest are discussed.

The norm of self-interest.

Few concepts are more central to the analysis of democratic politics than public opinion. It is, or seems to be, a completely familiar idea, simply part of the landscape of politics we take for granted today. Yet to the specialist, getting a grip on public opinion is not that easy. Public opinion is, as Converse (I 975) once put it, "impalpable," "amorphous ," and ·'mercurial" (p . 77). Public opinion is hard to pin down. Conceding that my subject is complicated and difficult, I nevertheless hope to say something systematic and intelligible about it here. My particular topic is public opinion, but the chapter can be read more broadly as another installment in the continuing conversation between political science and social psychology. This conversation began, one could say, just after the tum of the century with publication of Graham Wallas 's Human Nature in Politics (1908), and it has been carried on over the decades by Harold Lasswell (1930) , Solomon Asch (1987), Carl Hovland (1959) , Robert Lane (1959a , 1973), David Sears (1969), Philip Converse (1970) , Herbert Simon (1985), and William McGuire (1993), among others. Following in these large footsteps, and now nearing the end of the twentieth century, I take up here a series of political topics-the competence of citizens , the ingredients of opinion, the power of social context and political discussion , the translation of

Opinion and action in the realm of politics.

Objectives. Considerable evidence suggests that enforcement efforts cannot fully explain the high degree of tax compliance. To resolve this puzzle of tax compliance, several researchers have argued that citizens' attitudes toward paying taxes, defined as tax morale, helps to explain the high degree of tax compliance. However, most studies have treated tax morale as a black box, without discussing which factors shape it. Additionally, the tax compliance literature provides little empirical research that investigates attitudes toward paying taxes in Europe. Methods. Thus, this article is unique in its examination of citizen tax morale within three multicultural European countries, Switzerland, Belgium, and Spain, a choice that allows far more detailed examination of the impact of culture and institutions using data sets from the World Values Survey and the European Values Survey. Results. The results indicate the tendency that cultural and regional differences affect tax morale. Conclusion. The findings suggest that higher legitimacy for political institutions leads to higher tax morale.

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What Shapes Attitudes Toward Paying Taxes? Evidence from Multicultural European Countries*

Five studies examined the hypothesis that people overestimate the influence of self-interest on attitudes and behaviors. The results strongly supported the hypothesis. In Study 1, participants overestimated the impact that financial reward exerted on their peers' willingness to donate blood. In 4 subsequent studies, participants overestimated the impact that group membership had on their peers' attitudes (Studies 2, 3, and 4) and behaviors (Study 5). The tendency to overestimate the impact of self-interest on others was largely unrelated to the impact that it had on participants' own attitudes and behaviors. Implications of the lay person's belief in the power of self-interest are discussed.

Justice, self-interest, and the legitimacy of legal and political authority.

Citations

Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach

The norm of self-interest.

Opinion and action in the realm of politics.

What Shapes Attitudes Toward Paying Taxes? Evidence from Multicultural European Countries*

The disparity between the actual and assumed power of self-interest.

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