MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING? Revisionists and Traditionalists Choose an Introductory English Syllabus

One perspective on social conflict asserts that attitudes and behavior are relatively independent, thus suggesting that opposing partisans may differ minimally in concrete actions, but may assume great differences in attitude and ideology. Alternatively, we proposed that partisans' concrete preferences are linked to ideology, and that partisans would exaggerate the ideological extremity of their opposition. These hypotheses were tested within the '' Western Canon debate'' by asking revisionist and traditionalist partisans (English faculty) to select from a list of 50 books a syllabus of 15 books they would teach in an introductory course and 15 books that they believed their ideological counterparts would choose. Consistent with the hypotheses, traditionalists selected books of more traditionalist ideology than did revisionists (who chose more books by female and minority authors) and exaggerated the extremity of revisionists' preferences. Revisionists made less ideological book selections and Judged traditionalists more accurately. This asymmetry may reflect the standing of the two groups relative to the status quo. The "Westem Canon debate," a fractious dispute over the choice of books in introductory civilization and literature courses, has divided faculty and students alike on campuses such as Stanford, Michigan, Howard, Wisconsin, and Berkeley (e.g.. Bloom, 1987; D'Souza, 1991; Hunter, 1991). Traditionally, the canon has included books by authors such as Homer, Melville, and Shakespeare, who helped define the principles and methods of Westem civilization. One group of academics, traditionalists, advocates preserving the prominence of the traditional canon in the curriculum. Revisionists, in contrast, advocate teaching more works by female and minority authors, claiming that such contributions are underrepresented in the traditional canon. Although revisionists and traditionalists differ in their attitudes toward literature, pedagogy, and educational policy (see Keltner & Robinson, 1995), our focus here is on their actual behavior, the books they choose to teach. Most studies of ideological disputes, including research on liberals and conservatives (Converse, 1964), orthodox and progressive ideologues (Hunter, 1991)., proand antiabortion partisans (Robinson, Keltner, Ward, & Ross, 1995), and prodevelopment advocates and environmentalists (Palmer & Smardon, 1989), in contrast, have concentrated on partisans' differing attitudes. Such reAddress correspondence to Robert J. Robinson, Harvard University, Graduate School of Business Administration, Soldiers Field, Boston, MA 02163; e-mail: rrobinson@hbs,harvard.edu. search has had little to say about the differences, both perceived and real, in partisans' concrete behavior. To fill this lacuna, we asked three questions about revisionists' and traditionalists' actual book preferences for an introductory English course, as well as their assumptions about their opposition's likely selections. First, are partisans' concrete preferences guided by their ideologies? Second, do the two groups actually differ in their concrete behavior? Finally, do they recognize the potential differences in their concrete behavior? THE TWO-LEVEL VIEW OF SOCIAL CONFLICT Most conflicts involve clashes in attitudes and values or clashes in concrete interests and actions (Pruitt & Rubin, 1986), One prevalent view holds that opposing partisans' attitudes and values are independent from their concrete behavior and interests (Druckman & Zechmeister, 1973; Fisher & Ury, 1981; Ichheiser, 1970), Global attitudes are often weakly related to specific behavior (Rajecki, 1990; Wicker, 1969), which suggests that the concrete preferences opposing partisans pursue may be minimally related to their values and ideologies. The assumed independence of opposing partisans' concrete behavior and attitudes underlies prevalent claims about social confiict. First, it is asserted that opposing partisans' differetices in concrete behaviors are often modest, and more negotiable than differences in attitudes and values. For example. Fisher and Ury (1981) posited that "behind opposed positions lie shared and compatible interests" (p. 43). Based on this rationale, prenegotiation exercises that "delink" values from concrete interests have been advocated (Druckman, Broome, & Korper, 1988). Second, some researchers claim that opposing partisans themselves fail to differentiate between their attitudes and behavior. Ichheiser (1970) suggested that "a great many most virulent, seemingly moral, disagreements among men are actually not moral but factual in nature" (p, 155). According to this view, opposing partisans underestimate, or even fai! to recognize, the differences in their behavior, and instead attribute their confiict to their different attitudes and beliefs. There is, however, a more complex view of social conflicts suggested in the literature. The first assumption, that behaviors and attitudes are unrelated, is challenged by studies showing that when people have direct personal experience with the object of their attitudes, attitudes consistently predict behavior (Fazio & Zanna, 1981), Thus, we hypothesized that revisionists and traditionalists, with direct personal experience in choosing books for English courses, would choose books that were (a) consistent with their contrasting ideologies and (b) therefore different. 18 Copyright © J996 American Psychological Society VOL, 7, NO, 1, JANUARY 1996 PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Robert J, Robinson and Dacher Keltner The second assumption, that opposing partisans do not recognize the differences in their behavior, is countered by studies showing that opposing partisans exaggerate the differences in their concrete preferences and actions (Pious, 1985; Schelling, 1960), morals (Brewer, 1979; White, 1977), and attitudes (Robinson et al., 1995) as part of a stereotypical image ofthe enemy (Holt & Silverstein, 1989). Opposing partisans polarize their differences because they attribute hostile intentions and ideological bias to their opposition (Bar-Tal & Geva, 1986; Pious, 1985; Robinson et al., 1995). Given these findings, we hypothesized also that revisionists and traditionalists would (c) exaggerate the differences in their book selections and (d) attribute ideological bias to their opposition's book selections.