Public Opinion about Public Opinion

That great philosopher, Lucifer, once said:

   Public opinion is nothing more than this,
   what people think that other people think.

Okay, Victorian playwright Alfred Austin actually put these words in the mouth of his title character, Prince Lucifer, in his 1891 play.

(yes I've mentioned this before, back in 2008)

What I'm discussing here is part of a larger work I'm fiddling with, the idea that we don't spend enough time studying people's opinions about public opinion -- or, for lack of a better word, meta-opinion.  There are theoretical traditions where this is more common (Spiral of Silence comes immediately to mind).  These traditions tend to view public opinion from a social control perspective.  Two factors come into play here: (1) we're always sensing the climate of opinion around us, and (2) a fear of isolation leads us to go with the majority, or at least not express our minority viewpoints as readily as we might.

Psychology has examined this in detail at the micro, individual level, or small-group level (my favorite, false consensus, but see also pluralistic ignorance for a more macro and contradictory approach). 

My point is related to, but separate from, what people think about public opinion polls.  In a sense, people view such polls negatively when the results disagree with their own positions, an example of the hostile media effect.  It's vital we tease out the difference between how people respond to a poll -- and who published it -- and how they think about public opinion in a broader sense.  In the latter, I'm talking about their acceptance (or rejection) of the idea of public opinion, their acceptance that other opinions have merit, their acceptance of whether such opinions should guide policy.  How do people define public opinion?  And has this definition changed in a world that has moved from mainstream few-to-many media to social media in which we have an almost instantaneous access to, as our friend Lucifer said above, "what other people think?"  I'm guessing social media, From Facebook to Twitter, have changed our ideas of what truly is public opinion.  And I'm guessing it's become something more narrow, more in tune with our "friends" and "followers."

And it's entirely possible I'm completely wrong.

This is me thinking aloud as I work on a longer, more thorough examination of the topic, hopefully with actual data gathered (or found elsewhere) to fully explore whether people think of public opinion today in a very different way than they used to -- and what that means for public policy, for elections, and ultimately for a healthy democracy.

Perceived and Actual Knowledge

There's what people know, and what people think they know.  In this piece, Nicole Skibola in a Forbes blog notes:

In his book The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki discusses how disconnects between status and knowledge often lead to inefficient outcomes in decision-making processes. Groups, and obviously business organizations, tend to give deference to individuals with perceived or actual status, often with little to no correlation with actual knowledge.  As the group coalesces around one perceived knowledge holder, minorities are less likely to share their own perspectives, despite the fact that minority opinions make groups wiser as a whole.

Think of it as a micro version of the spiral of silence in which minority viewpoints tend to spiral into, yes, silence, because the majority speaks up so much, and so loudly, and our fear of isolation is such that we don't dare speak out.

I should point out that, despite what the book suggests, actual and perceived knowledge are typically correlated with one another.  Not perfectly, mind you, but there is a tendency for those who know something to also believe they know something.  I note the imperfection of the relationship because I've been reading a study on misinformation and how confident people are in their completely irrational beliefs, such as whether Barack Obama is Muslim.  The more misinformed, some studies suggest, the more confident people are in that misinformed belief.  In other words, it's damn hard to shake someone loose from crazy beliefs, even with facts.

Being uninformed, and being misinformed, are two conceptually distinct matters.  More on this another time.

Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann

Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann died last week at the age of 93.  She was a remarkable public opinion scholar, perhaps best known for her spiral of silence, which described why some in the minority on some issue might be unwilling to speak out, and as fewer in the minority speak out, a spiral occurs, and minority viewpoints disappear.  Fear of isolation was a driving motivation for some to not speak out, and she also posited a "quasi-statistical organ" that suggested people are constantly monitoring the opinion climate.  The theory had a significant impact on political communication research.

Public Opinion

Public opinion is no more than this,
what people think other people think.

- Alfred Austin, 1891
in Prince Lucifer

I've always been partial to the above definition of public opinion -- and to Victorian-era plays named after the devil, but that's a different story. The play itself sucks. I read it in grad school when I came across this definition. Kept the definition, forgot the play.

Scholars in various fields have nibbled around the idea that the perception of opinion matters. Read spiral of silence, or false consensus, or pluralistic ignorance, or bandwagon effect, or third-person effects and you'll find the roots lie in what people think other people think. The consequences depend on your theoretical approach. In spiral of silence, for example, the perception that one is in a distinct minority on some issue creates a fear of isolation and results in people being a little less likely to speak out on their position. The "spiral" in this case is the slow disappearance of minority viewpoints.

Okay, we've had our dose of Theory for the Day. So what?

Perception matters. If people sense a shift in the opinion climate, some will follow and some will simply grow more quiet, some will jump on the bandwagon and some will root louder for the underdog. It's interesting that as the presidential campaign gets closer to ending (thank God!) and Obama eases away from McCain, we've seen some ugliness on both sides. The perception of opinion going against your way can lead to people staring at a TV screen in disbelief. The poster child for this is the guy at the McCain rally the other day who begged McCain to go negative, that he can't believe America is following Obama. It's fascinating stuff.

I should also mention polls here and the discrediting of polls when they go against our side. "They never asked me or anyone I know" is often heard from people who don't like what the polls tell us about the opinion climate. Since we tend to hang out with people like ourselves, we create these artificial bubbles of like-minded opinion. When polls say otherwise, they just don't make sense. My guess is people for McCain right now are scratching their heads, wondering how this is happening (it's the economy, stupid). Supporters of Kerry and Gore did the same thing in 2004 and 2000.

It's human nature. Our perception of opinion is biased by those we hang out with, those we talk to, those we see in our neighborhoods or at work. When a broader measure of opinion disagrees with that, we're stumped. And that screws with our perceptions of opinion. Some people correct their own estimations of opinion, some argue with the source of the disagreement.

Again, cool stuff.