Political Sophistication and Political Deviance: A Matter of Context

The results show that most of the predictions of the context hypothesis are confirmed: (1) There are linear relationships between racism and intellectual and political sophistication, indicating that the greater an individual's level of racism, the lower his or her cognitive and political sophistication; (2) Quadratic relationships are found between political-economic conservatism and political sophistication, indicating that the more individuals deviate from the center of political-economic issue space, the higher their observed levels of political sophistication; and (3) LISREL structural equation analyses disclose that the causal assumptions underlying the context hypothesis relating political sophistication, self-esteem, various indices of political deviance and racism are, in large part, consistent with the empirical data. The theoretical implications of the findings are discussed.