“Cognitive Style and Political Belief Systems in the British House of Commons”, 1984 (; similar):
This study used the integrative complexity coding system to analyze confidential interviews with 89 members of the British House of Commons. The primary goal was to explore the interrelation between cognitive style and political ideology in this elite political sample.
Results: indicate that moderate socialists interpreted policy issues in more integratively complex or multidimensional terms than did moderate conservatives who, in turn, interpreted issues in more complex terms than extreme conservatives and extreme socialists. The latter two groups did not differ statistically-significantly from each other.
These relations between integrative complexity and political ideology remained statistically-significant after controlling for a variety of belief and attitudinal variables.
Results are interpreted in terms of a value pluralism model that draws on 1973/1979’s two-value analysis of political ideology and basic principles of cognitive consistency theory.